Outside the world of education many may be unfamiliar with the term, OER. It stands for open educational resources. These resources take many forms, videos, research, graphics, lesson plans, books and more. They are designed to be in the public domain, or under a copyright license that allows others to access and share.
Often OER resources reside with a university, department of education, school district or government organization. You may be familiar with one, Wikipedia—which helps create software, documentation and community around OER through MediaWiki.
When I think of the phrase “OER” I think of them as “OUR” meaning the community’s resources. They encourage people to contribute and are a base for the dissemination of knowledge, particularly for those who may not be able to access formal education.
With digital citizenship being such a broad, multidisciplinary topic we at Digital Respons-Ability work hard to disseminate information and advocate for its practice. We put our to OER resources on digital citizenship to educators, parents and community members. We have ours up in Utah, Virginia and are in discussions to share them with our state OER platforms.
In addition to working with other partners we put our resources on our websites such as:
- The website you’re on, here.
- Our digital parenting website.
- And we have resources for school leaders on DeepeningDigitalCitizenship.org.
OER resources are free and available. Check some out today!
