Week 3 Reflection

Based on my understanding, the key characteristic of an Open Educational Resource (OER) is it being licensed in a way that allows users to reuse, modify, and distribute the content. OERs are freely accessible and openly licensed educational materials that can be used for teaching, learning, and research. These resources can include textbooks, lecture notes, course materials, multimedia content, etc. Throughout my school journey, I have used Khan Academy, and it was cool to learn that it is an OER. If anyone can confirm this definition of OERs it would be greatly appreciated!

I am not super familiar or comfortable with the legalities of the Copyright Act and the idea of Fair Dealing, but the class content this week has been a great introduction and demonstrates why educators should be more informed about these concepts. The Copyright Q&A for Teachers link is a great resource, along with the Fair Dealing Decision Tool.

Using the Open Attribution Builder, I experimented with an openly licensed image I found on Google. I am not 100% confident that I executed the attribution process properly – feedback is much appreciated on this!

I decided to explore OER Commons, a “public digital library of open educational resources” where educators can “explore, create, and collaborate with others around the world to improve curriculum”. After investigating the site, I found many diverse and accessible educational materials, including textbooks and lesson plans. I appreciate the philosophy of this platform, as it encourages educators to share, adapt, and contribute resources. OER Commons supports global access, provides search tools, and fosters a community for collaborative improvement of educational content. I can see this being a useful professional development tool for myself as a future educator!

I also looked into some of the video creation tools that were shared this week, specifically iMovie. Again, my experience in this area is limited, but that made it all the more exciting to learn about! I have always wanted to be more fluent with videography tools, and this was a great opportunity to practice. I recorded and added some edits to my video, “Screencasting and editing activity“, using iMovie; however, adding the element of interactivity was a bit too advanced. I think I will have to try that again in the coming weeks.