Open Education Resources

Open Education Resources are teaching and learning materials that aspire to be accessible to anyone, whether it be the teacher, student, or even those just interested in the subject.  This concept of OER has a number of Pros and Cons; however, the immediate benefit to OER is its accessibility and lack of cost (usually).  College students pressured into buying hundreds of dollars of books for their classes will be most directly affected as classrooms hopefully incorporate these free resources into the curriculum.  Yet, it has been noted that these resources cannot be as fully trustworthy as published textbooks and definitive resources.  So, my stance is: every OER must be evaluated separately.

1. Summary:

OERs give an opportunity to drastically reduce cost of the college level or high school level books, most of which are even free.  OERs can be used in an online setting, or if an outdated book already exists, in tandem with that existing curricula.  Perhaps a shift in teacher recommended books would see a larger use of OERs.  If college professors begin to explore OERs as potential learning materials for their classrooms, the typical $150 book could be avoided.

Due to the vast amount of OERs available, it also increases the usefulness of those free resources in the classroom.  With a simple search on the website, I was able to find dozens of different physics textbooks and practice problems.  OERs can are easily malleable to the classroom and present a wide angle on the subject at hand.

As mentioned above, dozens of physics results came with a basic search.  Thus, the sheer quantity of OERs continues as a surprise.  If they are all as malleable as the initial ones I found, I can use a variety of sources for different teaching styles: if one resource includes laboratory work, or one has practice problems and the other has more in-text visuals and tables, then those resources become much more valuable and integrated into the classroom.

Yet, there is a problem with OERs.  Many OERs are user-created and are not as reliable as published books.  There is no definitive scale for evaluation; I compare this to the issue of Wikipedia.  Although Wikipedia is bountiful with raucous information, since it has the capability to be user edited, it loosens the credibility and becomes rather useless.  I personally love Wikipedia (and by extension, OERs) but I cannot use them as sole resources, but rather a jumping off point in my lessons.

2. Exploration and Concerns:

I explored the possibilities of Physics with the OER website and found a supplement to introductory Physics courses at the Undergraduate level.  The resource is most commonly used in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University Physics courses.  The resource is a workbook that provides numerous tutorials on physical concepts and gives over 500 practice exercise problems.  It is a tremendous resource that is completely free and undoubtedly helpful.


However, I do have a number of concerns with OER resources; as a Physics teacher at the high school level, I can only imagine students will not have a working knowledge of Physics at the time of teaching.  Thus, tackling such an enormous and complicated subject without direct guidance will be difficult.  It's difficult to learn Physics from multiple resources because there is so much more complexity than what is taught in high school.  Thus, working out of a book is narrowly focused to that curriculum.  Yet, if I can guide the OERs to my classroom, not only would the curriculum be accessible to everyone, but relevant as well.

3. Moving Beyond:


 









This resource is an online copy of a textbook on Newtonian Physics: the first half of a typical Physics course.  I would use this is conjunction with my curriculum and use the provided images or points in order to well round the lesson plan.

This resource has immediate free access to AP Physics resources, including numerous links to videos and lecture notes.  I would use this to provide students with informative videos and possibly upload them to a classroom website for viewing.

This resource is a collection of articles and experiments that give insight into teaching Physics in the 21st century.  I would use this resource as a guideline for teaching each chapter; it gives specific hands-on examples that will undoubtedly keep the class interesting.

I can only speculate that I would use OERs as jumping off points in my classroom; unless I find THE perfect OER, I doubt that it would be as reliable as the typical high school set of physics books.  However, they are no doubt useful and interesting.  Perhaps if the high school I wind up working at does not have physics text books, then I will integrate the OERs.  But that also raises the question of is it fair to only provide an online resource?  Maybe some kids don't have Internet, or some work full-time jobs immediately after school.  It raises a number of concerns but I can only speculate.

Visual Essay

I believe that the key to education is making sure our nation and our students feel that learning is important.

Reflections on the "This I Believe" Visual Essay

Through this project, I discovered the pains of expressing my opinion because I really don't like to trample on toes.

My beliefs took an unexpected liberal turn and came off as anti-American, which is somewhat true.  I don't believe that America has any real grasp on education and it needs federal reform.  Yet, I hate discussing politics and I feel that the video project urged me into making that statement.

Why I didn't choose a typical essay was the sheer lack of excitement, though.  I could preach my beliefs on how a classroom should be run but I have had little to no experience outside of being a student (which will change as the curriculum progresses), but who am I to make those judgments?  However, I do feel that I am qualified a political opinion because regardless of how my classroom will be run, America will still face turmoil.

The project itself, to me, was not fun.  I don't like giving my opinion unless prompted in face-to-face contact.  That, and recording my opinion and condensing it to 3-5 minutes was difficult.  The video interface was unfamiliar and unforgiving.  I did not find this project to have any redeeming value.

I love videos though; I spent three years in my high school video department and won numerous awards at the High School Film Festival.  But my hobby is only for recreation.  This kind of unimaginative project made it difficult to bear through.

I don't plan on using self-created video in my future classroom.  It takes far too much time to even create a five minute slideshow video, let alone an informative lesson plan.  But this is just my opinion, and I dislike sharing it.

This I Believe

       I may or may not have gone over by 75 words, but this is what happens when I get all riled up.

             It is no secret that America is having a rough time with Education and the role of government in it.  And in no way am I informed on every issue and every stance that exists; however, through my own observation, I have noticed that there seems to be a lack of confidence in our educational system and an overall distrust of schools.  But it is my belief that teaching is among the most noble and rewarding jobs to pursue.  And it’s hard as a college freshman to choose a career that appears to be going through quite the ringer.

            I believe that education, next to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is a constitutional right to Americans.  No child should be denied an education based on their social status, gender, ethnicity, race etc.  I consider myself a humanist, in that I wish to progress the complexity and intellectual superiority of humans, regardless of what they believe.  And with that concept, uneducated societies, or societies where education comes at a high cost or is restricted to certain groups, they are only holding their human potential back. 

            Yet, I believe that America is a ridiculous middle ground to my beliefs.  The “American Dream” is a fanciful idea of living your life how you want it, and I feel that numerous success stories of poor kids turned basketball stars and rappers are only instigating the children of today to lose interest in education and pursue wild, unreachable goals.  If only their efforts to become famous could be turned into efforts in academics, then we would see more mathematicians, more physicists, and more writers.  But instead, we see an educational system directly intertwined with money and taxes, and somehow America lost sight of how important education is.

            If only we could neutralize our educational system, then we would not have such terrible scores.  But parents and politicians are quick to blame teachers for our failing system; that teachers are too easily given their jobs and are about as effective as babysitters.  But this distrust of teachers is avoiding the reality; that our culture doesn’t promote learning!  There are so many factors that go into the efficiency of a classroom.  And basing the future of our nation on standardized tests and dropout rates do not measure the teacher!  They measure how much students care.  And the fact is: they don’t.  I believe that these indicators are being twisted to justify collapsing the federal educational system and leaving local and state governments to fend for themselves.  Of all the things to set free, our nation chooses education. 

            But every child has the capability to learn; I know this.  I took PSYC101.  But it does not matter how any one teacher teaches, or how any one school gets an x amount of money from the government.  The true solution to the problem of education in our country is keeping our children optimistic about learning.  Showing them that education has intrinsic value, showing them that it’s okay to learn more than just to pass the next proficiency test is the ultimate goal.  My goal as a future physics teacher is to inspire the next generation to be interested in the science that invented their cell phones, their computers, their cars.  To show them that science is okay, that science is our future.  America is holding us back, and I won’t stand for it.  This I believe.