2.3 Your OER places

Although research tells us that open content is hard to find, there is a growing number of repositories and search engines to help you locate what you need.

Here are some suggestions:

  • OER Commons [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] contains 50,000 learning materials in a variety of subjects ranging from preschool to adult education.
  • OpenLearn is the home of free learning materials from The Open University.
  • OpenStax CNX offers thousands of textbook-style resources in a host of disciplines that can be viewed, downloaded, adapted and shared.
  • PhET is a collection of free interactive simulations for Math and Science from the University of Colorado.
  • For language learning materials, head over to the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning at the University of Texas.
  • iBerry The Academic Porthole helps you connect to information and resources in Higher Education.
  • Open Education Europa contains a very useful list of European repositories of OER classified by country, language and subject among other categories.

If you are looking for images, Photos for Class allows you to directly search properly attributed, Creative Commons, age-appropriate images from Flickr; Unsplash contains photos licensed Creative Commons Zero, and Pixabay gives you access to hundreds of thousands of public domain images, including vectors and art illustrations.

Activity 3

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

What websites would you recommend to other people?

Imagine you are helping to crowdsource a list of must-go online places: think of at least one link to your preferred repositories/sites and make a note of it below. Perhaps your colleagues at work would be interested in giving you a hand.

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2.4 An OER rubric