RSS feed for Teachers sharing resources online

Introduction

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

This unit is designed to help you learn about how learning resources can be shared using online repositories, i.e. websites that allow for the uploading of electronic materials that can then be used and adapted by others. The unit comes about through collaboration between The Open University and TSL Education Ltd, the company behind one of the leading examples of such websites – TES Connect. While the unit draws its examples and activities from this site its principles are designed so that they may be applied to others. These include international sites, local sites perhaps provided by regional grids for learning, academy chains or teaching school alliances, or individual school’s websites or virtual learning environments (VLEs).

The unit is organised in five sections: an overview, sections on finding and selecting resources, evaluating and adapting them, sharing your own resources and, finally, a conclusion with a quiz.

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Learning outcomes

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

After studying this course, you should be able to:

understand the benefits of resource sharing to creators (teachers), their institutions, their pupils and to those who use the resources
evaluate a range of resource sharing sites for suitability to a personal context
select and evaluate shared resources for use in this context
create a learning resource for sharing with others
select a site for uploading and upload the resource.

1 Overview

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

The activities in this unit will encourage you to consider the issues around selecting and evaluating resources you find online. You will be encouraged to share your own resource also. Three practitioners, who use and share resources online to help their teaching practice, will introduce you to their experience.

Activity 1

30 minutes

Watch the video case studies of teachers (Kayleigh, Raj and Martyn) explaining how they use resource sharing. Make notes of the benefits it brings and any issues you perceive.

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Kayleigh

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Transcript: Kayleigh

Kayleigh

I first started using TES Connect when I was a trainee teacher and I still use it as I’ve gone throughout my career.

It’s a big help in your planning time. It cuts down a lot of your time and effort. As you start off as a teacher you don’t have hundreds of resource bank available to you, and as you get more experienced it does build up but sites like TES always have something more to offer you as well. I remember starting off with a year 4 class, everything new to me and TES was great. The forums are fantastic. The advice people gave and the resources as well. It just makes that little bit less daunting. Maths isn’t my strong point. It’s something that I’m always looking at utilising the advice of other people for and one resource I downloaded off TES recently was a maths outdoor learning ideas and it’s something I then used as part of lesson observation. It was creative. It taught maths outside of the classroom and it made it fun for the children as well. It’s something that I wouldn’t thought of if I hadn’t have come across that resource on TES.

As a professional you’ve got to be time efficient and you’ve got to be a lifelong learner yourself as well. Part of this as a teacher is utilising the skills of other people. It can be done by observing more experienced teachers’, asking subject leaders for help and by using resources that other people have taken their time to make.

It’s a big time saver. It’s a big help and you’ve got to use the skills other people have because everybody has strengths and weaknesses.

One topic that I used TES for when I first started out was ‘Britain since 1948’. I remember downloading a resource pack that was full of questions and pictures and answers that I thought would really enrich the children’s experience. It’s not something I couldn’t have done myself but it saved me hours of time being able to use that and it was a big help. Then as I went through that topic, other resources I made that I couldn’t find out there already. I then uploaded so that the next person that came along to teach that topic had something else for them to use as well.

TES is good right from the word go, whether you are in training or an NQT as I am now. It broadens your knowledge and gives you another support tool because you’ve got to meet certain standards and you’re doing things that quite often for the first time topics or the year group that you’ve not taught before.

TES is great in enriching your knowledge and the knowledge you can therefore pass onto your pupils as well. It’s very simple to use. There is a search bar at the top of the screen. You can type in either keywords or a particular aspect that you’re looking at. TES then narrows it down for you an awful lot. It can give you keyword matches or key stage matches so if you’re early years, primary or secondary, it breaks it all down for you. If you then decide this resource is good then you can open it up. You can look at the rating scale as well. People can rate from 1 to 5 of how they found this resource to be useful. If its got high ratings, it’s likely that you might find it useful as well. If you don’t think its useful for you right now it might be something you can use in future, in that case you can use a favourites bar. You just star it and its saved in your shortlist for next time.

When you’re looking for resources it’s going to be different to what everybody else is looking for because you’ve always got in mind the needs of your learners and the children you will be teaching. Sometimes you’ll adapt resources because it might have a good theory behind it but you’ve got to word things differently for your children. Sometimes it can be visual resources, sometimes audio or sometimes it’ll just give you an idea for a practical hands on thing to do, so it addresses the different way children learn as well.

I first started uploading my own resources when I was doing supply teaching. As a supply teacher you’ve always got to have a bank of ideas or a bank of resources just in case, because you don’t know what the children you’re going into teach are like, and that kind of inspired me because the resources people uploaded were such a big help to me that I thought if the resources I made were a help to somebody else then that would be fantastic.

So when you decide to upload a resource, its usually something you’re quite proud of yourself, something you’ve taken time to make and something that’s worked well with the children.

Sometimes it is necessary to adapt your own resources before uploading them, for example if you’ve got any children’s names on planning you would need to take away obviously nothing that can identify learners or the children. Sometimes it’ll be your own details on there if you’ve used an example but apart from that most of the time if you’ve created something for a display for example you can upload it as it is. So it all depends on the resource you’re going to make.

When you’re logged into TES there’s a simple link that says add new resource. You click on it and it’ll actually select a file from your computer. Once you’ve done that, you just say what subject it is and what key stage it is. You’ll give it a title, maybe a bit more information and you’re done. It takes a few minutes. It doesn’t take hours of your time, so why not do it?

When you upload a resource, people have the option to rate it with a five star system and they also have options to comment as well. A lot of the feedback personally I’ve got is: ‘Wow that was a big help, it was a big time saver, I was really struggling with this, thank you so much’ and its similar feedback that I’ve given to other people.

It’s also nice to hear feedback from people saying ‘the children loved this, it worked really well with this, or I also did this’ so they can give you advice back as well; anything constructive is always going to be beneficial. It’s just lovely to see that resources you’ve uploaded are being utilised by other people and other children and they’re grateful for that.

TES brings people together in a sense of a teachers community, there are forums on there, especially where you can ask for advice if there’s something you’re not sure about. You can put a question on there, sometimes with the resources I’ve uploaded instead of writing a comment underneath them people that have used them have sent me a private message over TES. We’ve often exchanged email addresses and they then have come back to me and said I’ve adapted it, here’s what I did, you might be able to use this. So it’s really broadened the teacher community I feel part of. I believe there something for everybody on there no matter who you’re teaching or what you’re teaching. Yes, there are lots of resource websites out there; some of them you have to pay for, some of them you have to be a particular member for. TES is just one of the easiest to find everything you’re looking for under one roof.

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Rajbir Nandhra

My name is Rajbir Nandhra, and I’m from Coppics Performing Arts School in Wolverhampton, and I’ve worked here for about six years now and I’m a Key Stage 3 Science Coordinator.

When I first started teaching and my boss told me about TES, I didn’t use it that much. You’re so busy trying to get your own practice perfect that you’re sort of isolated and you’re doing it yourself. But when you look at the TES you realise, oh my god, there’s so much out there, then you feel a bit inspired. It was almost like I was addicted. I was like I need this resource, I need that resource. I was looking all the time at resources and then one day I tried to upload one resource and it was a year 7 scheme of work that I’d done. They have to have skills about the Bunsen burner, investigation, graphs, things like that. I was really proud of it and I uploaded it and what I noticed was I kept getting emails and feedback and people kept putting stars by it. I really liked that, the fact that I was working out of school now and I was getting feedback and it was really positive, that then inspired me to really upload and then I ended up uploading 750 resources in the end.

The way I use TES Connect is when I’m doing lesson planning. I need ideas, inspiration for the lessons obviously cause of all the different abilities of the children. I had a lesson on alcohol with a bottom set so I wanted them to know the right things about alcohol. I had a resource and I thought well it needs a bit of tweaking, so let me see if I can find a quiz or something to really start the lesson. I just literally went on the TES, typed in ‘alcohol quiz’ into the search bar and then when you get into the search bar you get a lot of a different types of resources coming up. The best way to get the best ones are it will say recommended on the side. If other teachers like something they can also favourite it, they can add stars to it out of five, and they can comment on it.

Some of the things that its helped me to develop with is roles. I mean got this straight off the TES, and when we’re doing group work in science, there is always a couple of students who are not focused, not working. These sort of things give students a role to do; you got the time keeper, the scribe, things like these have really helped and inspired me in my lessons. And then sometimes, when we’re doing debating, get some talk cards so half the class can be debating, some of the class are watching some of the others so that’s something I’ve used as well.

Here’s a resource I adapted off the TES. What I basically did, I went in, got a resource on metals and non-metals, and this table came up which is really quite good. With materials: is it hard? Does it conduct electricity? And the PowerPoint that went it was absolutely fantastic. But when I looked at my group they needed a lot more stretching. If I start saying ‘oh today’s lesson’s on metals, non-metals’ its quite boring straight away. So what I did I sort of designed this lesson where I took a robot and I said that this robot’s come from outer space and it’s confused about its own body and how its body might react when it comes to this planet. I got them to put post it notes all over here to find out what they already knew. I said right, put post it notes around this robot to tell him what you know. They couldn’t really tell me much, they were like ‘well, it’s hard, it’s a metal’ and that’s where it kind of stopped. I didn’t want them to know so much and it was quite good that they didn’t know that much but what we then did we sort of moved on and we did the practical work so I made these and it’s got all of the science behind why things happen. So we put this all around the room as extension material for them, and then after that, they told the robot right actually you’re sonorous, you make a noise if someone bangs you, you’re malleable you can be squashed, and then they tracked their progress along here and they’d made so much progress. So I did adapt it but I needed that inspiration at the beginning to start my lesson from somewhere.

When I put resources on, usually the resource just goes on as it is, like, if it’s a worksheet anything like that just goes on straight away. If it’s a lesson plan, then you have to definitely take some information, so I’ve got to take off the names of children who are special needs, the gifted and talented, all that personal detailed data it comes off, but then I just upload the whole thing and that’s fine, and sometimes in some of the PowerPoints like I’ll put like a random picture of me, I… look at energy resource, Dragons Den and I’ll put my face on, sometimes I’ll knock that off but sometimes I do forget.

One of the most important things about TES is it’s atime saver when you go home sometimes there’s no time to make outstanding resources so when there’s one already there for you it is really useful. You will need to change it, etc. but the impact it’s had on time for me, it’s amazing. Teaching – it’s taken me to outstanding which I never thought I would get to, considering I’m from a school that had a 15% pass rate at school. Impact on the students they love it because some of the resources and the sound effects and some of the fun things that have come up, are absolutely hilarious, and they do enjoy it, and you know something, you can be the most creative teacher in the world but there are teachers out there who are very inspirational and you can gain a lot. So the impact on the students is I’m hoping that it has made a difference to their progress. So its affected me cause I’ve lots of time and I can create good resource; the students love it.

The TES, it does fit into my life in a big way I think. It’s very inspiring. You gain things from there that I couldn’t gain from anywhere else, for example, behaviour. If I need to talk to a colleague about the students behaviour and what to do and how to move this forward, you know, I know you could go on the TES and google that and people have put like really all of their work on there and sometimes they’ve put on from twitter as well. They’ve added links on, so its really good you can gain a lot from that. I mean overall I don’t think there’s nothing that it hasn’t got. It would be everything: behaviour, management, professional development, special needs, literacy, science, you know, personally I think it’s got everything that I need.

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Martyn Robinson-Slater

My name is Martyn Robinson-Slater. I now work at the International School of Bremen. I have been in the teaching profession for over 36 ... this is my 36^th year of teaching.

Using TES Connect I would say it improves the quality of teaching. It allows for a different style of teaching to take place and delivery within the classroom, and it really allows the young people to see quality presentations. I love the ones where people are uploading and you’ve got a whole package.

If I can explain one that really set me off on this sort of journey of sharing it was the one I did around the rock cycle. I had a low ability year 7 class that I had to teach and wanted to get this concept across of the change of structure of rocks, so I thought why don’t I do it using cheese toasties? I brought in all of my equipment; slices of the bread, grated cheese and that sort of thing. And we got the kids to go through the process of erosion, that’s the grating of the cheese. We had 2 colour cheeses; we had a red and white cheese, and then they would put the two slices together, put it into the cheese toasty maker and that then would replicate heat and pressure. The great thing, of course was that they ate them at the end. But that’s what started me off with sharing resources because I uploaded that with a total package of a poem, what the rock cycle was about, and it took off, but that was fun and to share that with other people. I actually got a feature at the back of the TES magazine because of that as well.

I’m proud of what I’ve actually done so I’m uploading it for others to use. I’ve got uploads on behaviour management. I’ve got communication because I was in a business and enterprise school so there’s a wide and varied spread of things that I’ve uploaded and my expectation is that I’ve put them there to assist people. My belief is that sharing is the way forward and so when that resource goes up I’m fully aware of the surrender of the intellectual property. It’s something that you are saying: here it’s yours to use as you wish.

My subject area is geography and I tend to try and get topicality into my teachings. If there is an earthquake, sort of extreme weather conditions, flooding, I’ll be using that sort of footage. And then, of course, there’s good old YouTube, which you can use some extensive video clips there to enhance and to reinforce your teaching.

Recently I have been doing work around flooding so I’ve chosen to go on to the TES Connect site and picked up on an absolutely excellent action aid resource there that has taken me through what happens within Pakistan and then you can develop and modify worksheets that are also available on the site for a comparative study say of Bangladesh, which I’ve done.

The way I would find a resource would be to actually go into the site and there’s a good search procedure within that. Using the topic so you can put the topic in to the search engine at the top there, you can then modify the search on the side there to the specific, particular area of the curriculum you are looking at and then, judging the quality of it, I would probably be looking at the reviews that are written up about that particular resource as well as looking at the ones that don’t have reviews because, of course, if someone uploaded as I say on to that site it’s been specific for their needs, so invariably what you have to do is to modify to what your requirements are within the classroom and the particular part of the curriculum you are actually going to be working on. So if I’m looking at the effects of earthquakes, I would be going there to look for what sorts of effects they have on people, what they sort of people have effect on the land but if there’s a specific reference to a textbook that has been used that I won’t have in this facility in this particular school I’m going to have to build that around some of the resources that I have got available within my classroom.

I view it we are a big community, a big learning community as I say, and we want the best for the young people that were working with, so why should we be care about sharing common resources?

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Discussion

The use of resource sharing means that the teacher is open to new ways of supporting their teaching and learning, is able to develop their resources with the support of peers, is able to become part of a community of teachers discussing the use of resources and, by extension, ways of teaching and learning.

1.1 Pedagogical approaches

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

The approach that we take here draws on models of adult learning (Knowles, 1975), reflective practice (Schön, 1983; Eraut, 1994, 2000), social constructivism (see, for example, Vygotsky, 1978), communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998, 2006) and the teacher as learner (see, for example, Cochrane-Smith and Lytle, 1999). In these ways we see teachers as learning together and constructing new shared knowledge. In doing so a community is developed around the learning, knowledge and the resources, and individual teachers adopt roles within the community. Those who come new to the community are apprenticed into it (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Those who have shared many resources and who are looked upon as experts by others, become the ‘elders’ of the community (Kim, 2000), and may be regarded as leaders of learning (see, for example, Swaffield and Macbeath, 2011).

A shifting context of professional development

The sharing of resources provides, we believe, an ad hoc basis for professional development (PD). At its simplest level this is through exposure to new ideas, content and methods. At a deeper level it comes through the immersion in a community of peers from whom a teacher learns. Such activity is set against the wider picture of PD, a picture which is changing as governments find new ways of working with their teaching force. These can be seen in the devolution of control for PD in England, the emergence of a leading role in PD for the General Teaching Council for Scotland, the establishment of the Professional Academy for Teachers in Egypt, the national schemes of PD in India, etc.

Alongside this comes the rise of peer-to-peer PD, of which resource sharing is a part. This is fostered by the democratising actions of technology-enabled social media whereby Twitter and other online networks are tools of PD as well as for entertainment (Forte et al., 2012). It is also seen in the rise of the TeachMeet movement enabling teachers to meet and talk directly with other teachers.

Activity 2

20 minutes

Reflect on your own context. Where do you get professional development from?

Answer

This might include formal programmes of in-school training, it may come from a local, regional or national provider, or from a university and perhaps include Masters level work. On the other hand it might also include discussions and work with peers in your school or elsewhere and it might include sharing and developing of resources.

2 Finding and selecting resources online

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

There are many freely available resources for teaching and learning on the web, many of which are also copyright-free. The key challenges are:

finding the most suitable resources to meet your needs
knowing how to use them effectively
knowing how to use them legally.

2.1 Why make use of other resources?

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

You may already be familiar with the notion of reflective practice, which typically has four stages:

identifying a need
planning how to address that need
carrying out an activity or action
reflecting upon the effectiveness of that action.

The Practitioner Research Cycle (Twining, 2011) extends that by adding in two further stages:

finding out what the wider community already knows about the need you have identified
sharing in return what you’ve learnt through your activities or actions to further enrich the community knowledge base.

Activity 3

10 minutes

Read this brief introduction to practitioner research by Twining: What is Practitioner Research?

Write down a few sentences on how this might relate to finding and reusing learning and teaching resources you can find on the web.

Discussion

By making use of resources created by other educators, you can learn from their experiences and find new ways of approaching a topic. Your students are given the opportunity to access expertise from different sources, often giving a different context or point of view and potentially enriching or breathing new life into a subject area.

As a teacher, time is a valuable commodity and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Making use of high quality existing resources can free up time to spend on other activities.

Activity 4

Watch this video, which is one of the case studies you watched in Activity 1 at the start of this unit. Note in particular the reasons Raj gives for making use of shared resources. Consider her statements. Were there aspects to resource reuse that you had not previously considered?

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Rajbir

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Rajbir Nandhra

My name is Rajbir Nandhra, a Science teacher in Wolverhampton, and I’ve worked here for about 6 years now and I’m a Key Stage 3 Science Coordinator.

One of the most important things about TES is it’s atime saver when you go home sometimes there’s no time to make outstanding resources so when there’s one already there for you it is really useful. You will need to change it, etc. but the impact it’s had on time for me, it’s amazing. Teaching - it’s taken me to outstanding which I never thought I would get to, considering I’m from a school that had a 15% pass rate at school. Impact on the students they love it because some of the resources and the sound effects and some of the fun things that have come up, are absolutely hilarious, and they do enjoy it, and you know something, you can be the most creative teacher in the world but there are teachers out there who are very inspirational and you can gain a lot. So the impact on the students is I’m hoping that it has made a difference to their progress. So its affected me cause I’ve lots of time and I can create good resource; the students love it.

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Answer

Benefits to using shared resources might include:

accessing resources that you don’t have the tools or skills to create yourself, for example a film or video or set of photographs
refreshing your teaching materials – new resources are being created and shared all the time and a ‘stale’ lesson can be reinvigorated with something new
course or curriculum requirements can change and you may find that others have already created resources to meet these new needs
accessing resources that use other contexts than those with which you are working in
gaining feedback from others, which you may then use to improve your resources.

2.2 Legal considerations

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Whether you find resources for teaching and learning on a favourite website, from a colleague or a social network, there are a number of things you need to take into account before using them. As well as ensuring the resource is of a high quality and the source reliable, you also need to consider some legal issues surrounding their reuse. You are not necessarily free to use and/or modify a resource simply because it is freely accessible on the internet. Issues of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and copyright must be taken into account.

Often resources protected by copyright can only be used in whole or in part with the permission of the owner. The rules on copyright become more complex in an online context because it is so easy to access, copy and transfer electronic information. Anything you find on the web, whether text, an image, video clip or piece of audio, ‘belongs’ to someone else, and you should check the copyright statement, if there is one, to ascertain what you can legally do with the material.

Using material you find on the web has been made easier in recent years through Creative Commons which provides a simple system of licensing to enable people to share and re-use information easily. This is a straightforward system that enables you to license your work up front and so works particularly well if you are sharing material via your own website or blog. Alternatively, there are some repository websites such as TES Connect or iTunes U that host resources created by individuals and organisations under pre-agreed copyright licenses, enabling educators to download, reuse and adapt them to suit their own needs.

Activity 5

15 minutes

Read the ‘Conduct’ and ‘Rights in posted content’ sections of the TES Connect Terms and Conditions that relate to both using and sharing resources found on the website and answer the questions that follow.

1 All the resources on the site have been quality assured.

Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it

2. You can guarantee that any photographs, videos or music included in a resource have been ‘cleared’ for copyright and you can reuse them legally.

Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it

3. If you upload a resource to TES Connect you cannot share it anywhere else.

Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it

2.3 A personal learning network

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

There is a wealth of teaching and learning resources available on the internet. They may have been created by other teachers, educational institutions or commercial organisations and can come in a variety of formats – from an idea posted on a blog, an online tool or app, a worksheet or presentation or a fully formed lesson plan. Finding and keeping track of quality sources of suitable materials that meet your individual needs is a valuable, but often time-consuming process.

A Personal Learning Network (PLN) (see Tobin, 1998) is an informal network of connections, linking a learner with people, tools and resources from which they can derive knowledge and information. This kind of network is not a new concept, and whether you are aware of it or not you will already have one. Where once it may have been made up of friends, colleagues and professional publications, technology has greatly expanded the possibilities. The internet, social media, blogs, wikis and other tools have enabled educators to develop truly personalised networks, connecting with peers and other experts across the globe on a variety of levels, in their particular areas of interest (see, for example, Kelleher and Hutchinson, 2010; Okada et al., 2012).

Activity 6

30 minutes

Read Chapter 6 pp.109–128 of Emerging Technologies in Distance Education. The chapter is titled 'Developing Personal Learning Networks for Open and Social Learning', by Alec Couros. Pay particular attention to pages 123–128.

Now think about your own personal learning network and sketch out how it might look. You may wish to consider the following questions:

What sources do you use regularly?
Where or who do you look to for sources of information or resources?
Are there gaps in your network?
How might you extend your network?

Discussion

Everyone’s PLN is unique, being made up of sources they find specifically useful or relevant. It may encompass people, publications, websites and even social networks and be at varying stages of development.

The power of community

The community that builds up around particular websites, tools or networks is often one of the key strengths of the website, tool or network. Frequently it is the community that is responsible for reviewing and rating the materials available, much to the benefit of other users. This type of peer review system can help to distinguish the high quality resources and establish the reputation of individual creators and sharers.

2.4 TES Connect – Finding a suitable resource

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

TES Connect is one example of a resource sharing website where educators can share and download teaching and learning resources. It may already be part of your PLN.

If you are not registered on this site, you will need to do so in order to complete the following activities. Registration is free – https://account.tes.co.uk/ Register.

Activity 7

45 minutes

Watch again this video featuring Kayleigh talking about her regular use of the TES Connect website to find and share teaching and learning resources.

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Kayleigh

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Kayleigh

I first started using TES Connect when I was a trainee teacher and I still use it as I’ve gone throughout my career.

It’s a big time saver. It’s a big help and you’ve got to use the skills other people have because everybody has strengths and weaknesses.

So when you decide to upload a resource, its usually something you’re quite proud of yourself, something you’ve taken time to make and something that’s worked well with the children.

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Now consider a forthcoming lesson or topic you are planning to teach. Search the TES Connect Teaching Resources and shortlist three to five resources that may be suitable for your lesson. Mark each of these resources as a favourite using the tool provided on the website. (You will use these resources later in Activity 10). Think about the factors that help refine the search process.

Discussion

There are a number of factors to consider that may help refine the search process. These include:

What are your learning objectives for the lesson?
Who is the resource for? Is it for a particular class or age group?
What subject and topic area is it for?
Does the format of the resource matter, for example are you looking for an image, audio recording, video, document or interactive whiteboard file?
What type of resource are you seeking, for example an activity, a game, a poster, a lesson plan?
Is it tied to a particular event, for example Christmas, World Maths Day, Holocaust Memorial Day or Science Week?
Are there particular key words that will help identify suitable resources?

You will now have a shortlist of potential resources to use in a lesson. In the next section you will review and evaluate these resources and select one to adapt for your learners.

3 Evaluate and adapt resources

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

The internet has had a transformative effect on the volume and range of materials that teachers and other educators can access. Doing a simple internet search can lead to hundreds of thousands of results, and the challenge can be to narrow this down and find quality resources that meet your needs.

This can be a time-consuming process, however, there are some ways that the process can be accelerated. There are many websites that act as repositories for teaching resources, and where communities of users have built up around them.

Activity 8

30 minutes

Spend a few minutes exploring some of the teaching resource websites listed below. Those listed are a small selection of the sites available. Factors you may wish to consider when using the sites include:

How have the resources been categorised?
How easy is it to find a resource for your area of interest?
Have the resources been reviewed or rated?

Take note of the sites that you might like to investigate further at a later date. Are there any that you could see becoming part of your personal learning network?

Please note that while these sites are free to use, some may require you to register before accessing a resource.

The Guardian Teacher Network

www.theguardian.com/ teacher-network

An extensive site offering a range of community-created resources, alongside a number of other services for teachers.

Share my lesson

www.sharemylesson.com

An American site modelled on TES Connect. Whilst resources are clearly tailored to US standards and curricular, it can be useful to see a different perspective or approach to common topics and subject areas.

Primary Resources

www.primaryresources.co.uk

An independent site that hosts a wealth of resources aimed at those in a primary setting.

3.1 TES Connect – selecting a resource

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

The quantity of resources available is huge and selecting one that suits your needs can be overwhelming. The following activity will equip you with tools to manage the selection process.

Activity 9

10 minutes

Watch again this video featuring Martyn discussing how he shortlists resources from the TES Connect website and the factors he considers during this selection process.

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Martyn

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Martyn Robinson-Slater

My name is Martyn Robinson-Slater. I now work at the International School of Bremen. I have been in the teaching profession for over 36 ... this is my 36^th year of teaching.

If I can explain one that really set me off on this sort of journey of sharing it was the one I did around the rock cycle. I had a low ability year 7 class that I had to teach and wanted to get this concept across of the change of structure of rocks, so I thought why don’t I do it using cheese toasties? I brought in all of my equipment; slices of the bread, grated cheese and that sort of thing. And we got the kids to go through the process of erosion, that’s the grating of the cheese. We had 2 colour cheeses; we had a red and white cheese, and then they would put the 2 slices together, put it into the cheese toasty maker and that then would replicate heat and pressure. The great thing, of course was that they ate them at the end. But that’s what started me off with sharing resources because I uploaded that with a total package of a poem, what the rock cycle was about, and it took off, but that was fun and to share that with other people. I actually got a feature at the back of the TES magazine because of that as well.

I view it we are a big community, a big learning community as I say, and we want the best for the young people that were working with, so why should we be care about sharing common resources?

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Martyn

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Reflect on the processes he follows and consider how you could use these in your own search.

In Activity 7you shortlisted a number of resources that may be of use in a forthcoming lesson. The next stage is selecting one of these and adapting it for use in your setting.

Activity 10

30 minutes

Consider the resources you shortlisted in Activity 7. These should be stored in your favourites section on the TES Connect Resources website.

Make a brief list of the factors that you should consider when making your final choice. Re-examine your selected resources and choose one to adapt for use in your setting. When you have made your selection, download the resource and save it on your computer. You will go on to adapt your chosen resource in Activity 11.

Discussion

Has the resource been reviewed by other users?
- If so, read a selection of the reviews.
- If not, has the creator uploaded other resources? If so, are there any reviews of those resources that may be indicative?
Is the resource in a file format that you can open and edit? For example, it may have been created for a particular interactive whiteboard.
What learning outcomes does the resource address? Do these align, at least in part, with what you are trying to achieve in your lesson?
Can you be reasonably confident that you are not infringing copyright by using the resource? In other words, do you believe the person who shared the resource had the right to do so? If in doubt, it is better not to use it.
Do you have all the equipment necessary to use the resource, for example an interactive whiteboard, a specific book, art materials and so on, or can you see how the resource could be adapted for your needs?

3.2 Adapting a resource

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

When making use of other people’s resources, you will often find that they need to be adapted for use in your setting. For example, you may need to modify it to fit with the level at which your students are working or remove parts that are not relevant. Ensuring the resource meets your specific needs is key to ensuring its successful use in your lesson.

Activity 11

45 minutes

Watch again this video featuring Raj. Pay particular attention to when she talks about how she adapted resources found on TES Connect.

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Raj

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Transcript: Raj

Rajbir Nandhra

My name is Rajbir Nandhra, and I’m from Coppics Performing Arts School in Wolverhampton, and I’ve worked here for about 6 years now and I’m a Key Stage 3 Science Coordinator.

One of the most important things about TES is it’s a time saver when you go home sometimes there’s no time to make outstanding resources so when there’s one already there for you it is really useful. You will need to change it, etc. but the impact it’s had on time for me, it’s amazing. Teaching - it’s taken me to outstanding which I never thought I would get to, considering I’m from a school that had a 15% pass rate at school. Impact on the students they love it because some of the resources and the sound effects and some of the fun things that have come up, are absolutely hilarious, and they do enjoy it, and you know something, you can be the most creative teacher in the world but there are teachers out there who are very inspirational and you can gain a lot. So the impact on the students is I’m hoping that it has made a difference to their progress. So its affected me cause I’ve lots of time and I can create good resource; the students love it.

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Consider the resource you selected in Activity 10, which you will now adapt for use in a forthcoming lesson.

a.What factors will you need to consider when adapting the resource for use in your setting?
b.Make the necessary adaptations to your selected resource. You may wish to save it with a new file name to distinguish it from the original resource.

Answer

Here are some of the factors you may have considered. This is not a definitive list.

Is the resource at the appropriate level for your learners? Do the tasks, content or activities contained within it need to be differentiated?
Will the resource help you meet your specified learning outcomes?
Will the resource be effective in your context – do you have access to the equipment, tools or expertise to deliver it? If not, can you make adaptations or substitutions?
Would the resource be more effective if you personalised it, for example adding references to your school, class or local environment?
Are there personalised aspects included by the creator of the resource that should be removed, for example information about a particular class?
Can the resource be easily enhanced or extended? Could it be linked to or combined with other resources you already have?
Does the resource link to other websites or online resources and are these accessible to you in your classroom? For example, it may contain a link to a video that is blocked by your school internet security settings.
Can you be reasonably confident that the person who shared the resource had the right to do so and you are not infringing copyright by using the resource?

You will now have a resource adapted for use in your lessons. Use it in class and reflect upon its effectiveness. Did it meet the needs of you and your learners successfully? Are there further adaptations you could make to improve it?

Having viewed or made use of a number of different online resource sites in this section, you may like to consider adding them to your own personal learning network. That may simply involve visiting them on a more regular basis! Some sites, including TES Connect, provide tools that enable you to ‘follow’ individual creators whose resources you find particularly useful.

4 Sharing a resource

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

In this section you will select a resource and upload it onto the TES Connect website. This resource may be one that you create afresh for this unit, one you have already created or one which you adapt for the purpose of sharing.

Activity 12

20 minutes

Watch again this video featuring Kayleigh talking about how she goes about selecting and sharing one of her own resources.

What are the stages in this process?

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Kayleigh

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Kayleigh

I first started using TES Connect when I was a trainee teacher and I still use it as I’ve gone throughout my career.

It’s a big time saver. It’s a big help and you’ve got to use the skills other people have because everybody has strengths and weaknesses.

So when you decide to upload a resource, its usually something you’re quite proud of yourself, something you’ve taken time to make and something that’s worked well with the children.

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Answer

You may have identified, among others, the stages of selecting the resource, reformatting and adapting it, uploading it onto the website and entering metadata and tags. Metadata and tags are the data that describe it and include such things as target age range, subject, topic, etc. You will also have noticed that Kayleigh talks about the importance of copyright and ensuring that, in this respect, the resource is sharable.

Activity 13

10 minutes

1. Before uploading a resource to share with others it is important to check that it may legally be shared because:

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2. If an image or other material is marked ‘Creative Commons licensed’ then it may be freely shared.

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3. When uploading a resource you should think about how accessible it is to others. This means:

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4. When uploading a resource you should make sure that:

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4.1 Selecting suitable resource/topic

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

The following activity will guide you through the process of selecting one of your own resources to share online.

Activity 14

30 minutes

Think about resources you already have and select one that you think might be suitable for sharing on a website. Answer each of the following questions:

Is the resource likely to be of use to others? If so, why do you think so? (It may be that it is a very common topic for example.)
Is it free of copyright or otherwise licensed material?
Do you need to remove any personal or context-specific data or information? If so, how will you do that?
Is it in the right format and of the right file size? If not, can you convert it and/or compress it?
Is it more than one file? If so it may need zipping up before uploading (ie combining into a single file).
Does it have a sensible file name?
Have you applied the criteria you used for selecting evaluating resources in Activity 7?

4.2 Uploading

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

You will now upload the resource you have chosen. This unit is based around use of the TES Connect site but other sharing sites are available. You may choose to upload the resource to a site that you use or that is common for your school or others in your personal learning network.

Activity 15

40 minutes

Go to the TES Connect website and select the subject and age that your resource applies to.

Enter a title, keywords and short description for the resource and upload the file from your computer.

You will receive confirmation once your resource is uploaded and also be told when your resource has been downloaded by others.

4.3 Uploading resources: summary

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

When choosing a resource to upload you must ensure that it can be legally shared with any permissions obtained and licenses checked, ensure that it is accessible, i.e. that it will not cause problems for people reading it, that it is not too large and that it is in a format that is readily available to others.

These are, of course, not the only considerations when thinking about a possible resource to share. You will also want to consider how suitable it is for others, i.e. can it be applied to other contexts, and that it does not contain any personal or context-specific information or data that may be inappropriate or irrelevant to other teachers’ use.

5 Reflecting on your learning

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

The following activity is an opportunity for you to reflect on your learning throughout this OpenLearn free course.

Activity 16

There are no ‘correct answers’ to the following questions but you may wish to use your responses from earlier activities.

1. What do you consider to be the benefits of resource sharing to teachers and others who create them?

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2. What are the benefits, in your view, to their institutions, their pupils?

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3. What are the benefits to those who use the resources?

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4. What resource sharing sites are you aware of and how suitable are they for your own context? How do you evaluate this suitability?

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5. Describe two resources for use in their own context that you have downloaded and why you find them suitable for your own context.

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6. Explain any adaptations you had to make to the resources in question 5.

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7. Describe one resource from your own context that you have uploaded and explain why you chose this one and what you had to do to adapt it.

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8. Explain how feedback on the resources is shared by users and how this leads to an enhanced personal learning network.

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9. Explain how the use of shared resources contributes to your professional development.

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Conclusion

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

In this unit you have learned how learning resources can be shared using online repositories i.e. websites that allow for the uploading of electronic materials that can then be used and adapted by others. You have engaged in activities to select, evaluate and adapt resources and you have considered how you might share your own resources. Crucially, you have considered the role of such sites in developing your personal learning network.

As online communications grow, and the world becomes more socially connected through technologies, opportunities for professionals to develop wider networks of contacts and resources grow too. Whereas the initial impetus for using resource sharing sites might be to find ideas and activities for one’s own use, this is soon enhanced by possibilities for peer review, feedback and adaptation. The very word ‘repository’, often used to describe such websites, implies a passive form of storage that, in this case, is open for others to use.

The TES Connect website, as with others, is much more than this. Just as the real value in many other sites is the ability to read reviews and suggestions, think of online retail or travel sites for example, so the key features for professional network building are those that allow for interaction and feedback in addition to the sharing of resources.

References

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Cochrane-Smith, M. and Lytle, S. (1999) ‘Relationships of knowledge and practice: Teacher learning in communities’, Review of Research in Education, (24), pp. 249–305.

Eraut, M. (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence, London: Falmer.

Eraut, M. (2000) ‘Non-formal learning, implicit learning and tacit knowledge’, in F. Coffield (ed.) The Necessity of Informal Learning.Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 12–31.

Forte, A., Humphreys, M. and Park, T. (2012) ‘Grassroots professional development: How teachers use Twitter’, in Proceedings of the Sixth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media [online] available at http://www.aaai.org/ ocs/ index.php/ ICWSM/ ICWSM12/ paper/ download/ 4585/ 4973 (accessed 21 November 2013).

Kelleher, P. and Hutchinson, S. (2010) ‘Communities of Practice, a social discipline of learning: nurturing a physical and virtual social learning environment’, in World Association of Co-operative Education International Conference on Work Integrated Learning, 3–5 February 2010, Hong Kong, China. Available online at: http://oro.open.ac.uk/ 24071/ (accessed 8 December 2013).

Kim, A.J. (2000) Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities, Berkeley: Peachpit Press.

Knowles, M. (1975) Self-Directed Learning. A Guide for Learners and Teachers, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall/Cambridge.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Okada, A., Mikroyannidis, A., Meister, I. and Little, S. (2012) ‘“Colearning” – collaborative networks for creating, sharing and reusing OER through social media’ in Innovation and Impact – Openly Collaborating to Enhance Education, 16–18 April 2012, Cambridge, UK available online at http://oro.open.ac.uk/ 33750/ 2/ 59B2E252.pdf (accessed 21 November 2013).

Schön, D. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action New York: Basic Books.

Swaffield, S. and MacBeath, J. (2009) ‘Leadership for learning’, in J. MacBeath and N. Dempster, (eds.) Connecting Leadership and Learning: Principles for Practice’, London: Routledge.

Tobin, D.R. (1988) Build Your Personal Learning Network, available online at http://tobincls.com/ wp-content/ uploads/ 2017/ 01/ building-a-personal-learning-network.docx (accessed 15 June 2020).

Twining, P. (2011) What is Practitioner Research?, Open University: The Vital Project available online at: http://edfutures.net/ images/ c/ cb/ What_is_practitioner_research.pdf (accessed 10 December 2013).

Vygotsky, L. (trans.) (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Wenger, E. (2006) Intro to Communities of Practice, [online] available at http://wenger-trayner.com/ theory/ (accessed 10 December 2013).

Acknowledgements

The Open University — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

We would like to thank:

Martyn Robinson-Slater, International School, Bremen

Rajbir Nandhra, Science teacher from Wolverhampton, UK

Kayleigh Rees, St Augustine’s Catholic School, Warrington

Patrick Hayes, TSL Ltd

Magda Wood, TSL Ltd

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary, used under licence and not subject to Creative Commons licence. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following:

Videos: courtesy of TSL Education Limited, http://www.tsleducation.com/.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

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