Have you heard the term open-educational resources? Teachers, schools, and districts use open-educational resources throughout the school year as part of their core curriculum or to supplement their curriculum. The ability to quickly locate up-to-date, relevant content for students is just one reason educators are adding this type of content into their classrooms.
If you’ve stopped by the blog before, you might remember this post from earlier this year featuring Hāpara. In this January post, I mentioned open-educational resources (OER) and why schools and districts are using OER. You might find that one of the three on the list provides a compelling case for incorporating open-educational resources into your work this year.
In today’s blog post, I’ll take you through three things you can do with open educational resources. At the bottom of the post, I have more information to share about Hāpara’s Student Dashboard Digital Backpack. This tool can also help you organize learning materials throughout your classroom, school, and district.
3 Things You Can Do with Open-Educational Resources
Like many EdTech tools and platforms, there isn’t just one reason why open-educational resources are worth exploring. There are certainly lots of things you can do with OER, and on this list, I’m spotlighting three that might be on your list, too.
Access Up-to-Date Content
When using open-educational resources with your students, you can choose relevant and current content. This type of content could include videos, articles, and digital textbooks you want to get in the hands of students. Teachers can pick and choose which open-educational resources to share with students. They can pick up-to-date content that will resonate with their students. For example, you might select articles you want to share with students around a current events topic.
Promote Equity
Can OER promote equity? Open-educational resources shared through a digital platform give teachers the ability to distribute a greater variety of content to more students. Educators can choose content tailored to their district’s needs and ensure all students have access to these materials. When teachers, schools, and districts use open-educational resources like a digital textbook, they have options for distribution. Students can then access these resources on their personal or school-issued devices.
Free Up Funds
By design, open-educational resources are freely available and do not have a cost associated with them. Using OER can free up district funds for other purposes. So if you are in a school or district reexamining your current budget, you might find that using open-educational resources frees up funds to re-allocate to other initiatives. The funds currently used for core or supplemental resources could be used in the future for a different purpose.
Hāpara’s Student Dashboard Digital Backpack
Hāpara is a digital teaching and learning platform that provides a streamlined experience for teachers and students using Google Classroom. Students can access assignments, email, announcements, and G Suite files on one simple, mobile-friendly page thanks to Hāpara Student Dashboard Digital Backpack. Hāpara provides teachers and students with a more manageable way to organize their learning materials – including OER.
With Hāpara Digital Backpack, teachers can customize their students’ learning experiences and which resources they have access to throughout the school year. As I mentioned above, Hāpara can also help support the equitable distribution of open educational resources, including digital textbooks hosted online. Hāpara Digital Backpack gives teachers a space to organize learning materials for students. You can create customized learning experiences for students by sharing open-educational resources.
Learn more about how OER can benefit your school district in this new ebook from Hāpara. It includes an overview of the Go Open initiative, the background of the OER movement and #GoOpen, and the benefits of using OER. Check out the ebook here, and head to this landing page to explore Hāpara’s Digital Backpack.
