5B. Activity

Open Education Resources

Educators may choose to create new online and blended course materials from scratch, but doing this requires a significant investment of time, effort and energy. Educators may consider adapting and using Open Educational Resources (OER) to construct courses as many quality, freely-available resources already exist. Open Educational Resources (OER) are defined in a report to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation as:
"Teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge".  Open Educational Resources are different from other resources a teacher may use in that OER have been given limited or unrestricted licensing rights. That means they have been authored or created by an individual or organization that chooses to retain few, if any, ownership rights. For some of these resources, that means you can download the resource and share it with colleagues and students. For others, it may be that you can download a resource, edit it in some way, and then re-post it as a remixed work. OER often have a Creative Commons or GNU license that state specifically how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared.
There are many collections of Open Education Resources containing a vast array of high-quality digital learning content that can be used by the Professional Learning Leader in blended/online/flipped professional learning situations. Check out these Collections of High Quality Open Education Resources. Read Building Online and Blended Learning Environments with Free, Open Resources for additional information and ideas about how to utilize OER.

Take a look at the sample Terms of Service provided courtesy of Michael Gorman. Based on this sample, which elements in the terms of service he included where:
  1. New to you?
  2. Those you feel to be most important?
  3. Are these things you already do on a regular basis?


5B. Activity

Create a Terms of Service (whether that's in a written form like Michael's post, or perhaps an OER presentation) that you could use later as a resource that showcases what model digital citizenship from a PLL might look like. Focus on the key factors that you feel to be most important and/or that you regularly encounter. Work to make this deliverable something you could continue to use past this course. You may choose to use this form from Ben Nadel's website. It will generate a generic Terms of Service and Privacy Policy statement for use with your web site.