PLN: Why open education resources are so important

Open education resources are something that I recently discovered and I never realized how important they are in a classroom until I learned more about them. To me, open education resources are a part of a participatory culture, in which the public contributes by sharing information that they gain. This kind of community is something that is becoming apart of our future as educators and it’s important to start realizing what being open to other resources can do for us, and for our students.

Technology has evolved throughout classrooms for as long as I can remember. One thing that I have experienced while growing up is the process of getting rid of textbooks. Ebooks can do a lot within a classroom and can save the school a lot of money. Students won’t have to worry about damage fees and they also cannot lose the books. They can also interact with the books though highlighting, and note taking features within the books which is nice because they don’t have to worry about marking up a book that they need to return. I strongly believe that textbooks are coming to an end soon and that we are going to start using ebooks. Because there are a lot of schools lending out school ipads or laptops, this will make it easier to do so.

Because technology is starting to play such a huge role within classrooms, it’s important that we as teachers become open to an open classroom environment. Open resources are really important because it gives you the ability to share with your students what you are learning. Many students are already learning openly on their own time when they are trying to learn more about something. I watched a video, by Alec Coures, and it gave me the impression that in an open classroom environment, teachers will be assisting their students how to be safe about what they are learning online. Because I want to be an art teacher, in my classroom, I would teach my students how to search properly when trying come up with an idea of their own for projects. When students are creating projects, they tend to search the project to start thinking of ideas but forget to make it their own. Because there are so many open resources, I plan on either creating or finding a resource that helps create something of their own.

As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of advances with technology in classrooms. After reading an article called, “Participatory Culture” I realized that we need to start capturing the fact that the internet is at our fingertips and we need to take advantage of that within our classrooms. Learning doesn’t have to be a teacher to book experience anymore and can become something that students enjoy more. Internet knowledge can expand the knowledge of not only us but our students. I think that our future as educators holds a lot because teaching and learning can now happen anywhere, anytime, and with anyone. I think that it’ll make our future students more successful if we become open to resources and share with them how to learn openly in the right way.