www.wxshyy.com:Where to find Open Educational Resssources (O...

I normally do not copy a lot from another site, but here is a very useful guide for how to find Open Educational Ressourses. It is taken from http://www.col.org/PublicationDocuments/Basic-Guide-To-OER.pdf page 18

Where do I find OER?
The scope and availability of OER is ever expanding. Every week, new resources are
being added to the global body of resources. A current problem arising out of this
growth is that there is no single comprehensive listing of all OER (nor, given the
rapid expansion of content online, is there ever likely to be one). This means that,
in order to find appropriate OER, the searcher will need to employ a number of
search strategies:

1. Use a specialized OER search engine: While search engines such as Google and
Bing are a good general starting point for finding content online, there are also
some specialized search engines that search specifically for OER. Their listings,
however, are selective based on different search criteria so it is a good idea to try
more than one. Here are a few of the popular ones:
Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) Alliance: www.globeinfo.
org.
Folksemantic: www.folksemantic.com.
DiscoverEd: http://discovered.labs.creativecommons.org/search/en.
Creative Commons Search: http://search.creativecommons.org.
Open Courseware Consortium: www.ocwconsortium.org/courses/search.

2. Locate a suitable OER repository: Searchers should also access the major OER
repositories to search for OER. Most are institutionally based, focusing on the
materials released by that organization. A famous example is the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Open Courseware Repository (MIT OCW). Some
repositories, such as MedEd PORTAL, have a specific subject focus, in this
19
instance, medical photos and multimedia. Below are a few of the more
significant OER repositories (with many more described in Appendices Five and
Six):
OpenLearn: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk.
MedEd PORTAL: http://services.aamc.org/30/mededportal (medical focus).
MIT OCW: http://ocw.mit.edu.
China Open Resources for Education (CORE): www.core.org.cn/en.
AgEcon Search: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu (agricultural focus).
Teacher Education in sub-Saharan Africa: www.tessafrica.net (teacher
education focus).

3. Use OER directory sites: There are many sites that have a search facility whose
results point to places elsewhere on the Internet where resources match search
criteria. They themselves do not act as a repository, but have identified quality
resources and store them in a database of web links. Their databases usually
have a particular focus. In the case of OER Africa, for example, they highlight
quality resources developed in and about Africa. Here are just a few (with many
more provided in Appendices Five and Six):
OER Commons: www.oercommons.org.
Commonwealth of Learning: www.col.org/OER.
OER Africa: www.oerafrica.org.

#Change11