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Friday, October 24, 2014

Creating OER Made Easier

Creating open educational resources (OER) may seem like a daunting task, but a new video outreach program from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is showing educators it’s not as difficult as they may think. They just need to keep it simple, according to Tyler DeWitt, student coordinator for the MIT+K12 project.

“Sometimes, when using technology, teachers feel they have to use technology for absolutely everything—it can be frustrating,” DeWitt said in a report for eSchool News. “I hate having to change the way I would present material just because I’m pulling it together in a technological manner.”

DeWitt advises educators interested in creating OER content to reach out to others who have created content they like and allow their students to help with the technology. Smartphones also make it easy to create video and audio content with free apps that have high-quality recording capabilities. There are also free desktop programs available to edit audio and video recordings.

Worksheets are a good place to start when it comes to creating OER. At the same time, instructors should remember that content needs to be their own work, public-domain material, or some other form of OER, according to Dewitt.

“One of the great things about starting OER creation with text and static images is, if you’re like most educators, you’ve already created hundreds of resources that could become OER: worksheets, handouts, quizzes, and tests,” he said.