Thing 29: OER

I guess I didn't realize I do some of this, but not enough!  I am a Follett user and we have OER sources on the catalog, not to be better about using them myself and showing the students and teachers to goldmine they have at their fingertips!  I take to the kids bout "Creative Commons" and this year we have worked hard to make sure they cite where they slurp things from and the use of copyright laws... for some this is too big to understand... small chunks at a time for us.

So I have been gathering information for a fifth grade project that is based on the question: What environmental concern makes you want to advocate for us?  I started out finding images through Britannica ImageQuest and taking to them about many issues that we face from global warming to climate change, from endangered species to invasive species, from deforestation to oil spills and how plastic may have been good for many reasons we are now seeing how plastics pollute the world.  They have been doing their own research through or science database: Scienceflix and PowerKnowledge to gain so background information along with possible solutions.  We are taking our information and going to be writing action plans that we will type and send off to a government official of their choice to see if they will advocate for us too.  So I have discovered through: http://www.curriki.org/ an design your own invasive species project from http://www.arkive.org/education/ which has a ton of resources and lessons broken down by age!  Amazing.  May have to revisit this site for my other grades for more ideas.  There is also a Persuasive writing letter too.

OpenEd had an interesting video on invasive species that might help illustrate this to the students. A lot of the resources I found we geared for a higher level, but also found a video for why does climate change matter which might help spark a few more kids to advocate for change.

OERCommons lead me to Connecting Kids to invasive species. And Litter life which talks about a different danger of plastic... how invasive species travel across the water to make new homes.

Ck-12 was set up as a searchable resource allowing easy limiters on grade levels or types of lessons you are looking for.  I stumbled across Ecosystems: New to the neighborhood whic may help a few of my students.

As much as I love Pinterest because it is easy and I am a visual person, trying OER in various places might be the way I try to research a new type of lesson for myself or to get inspired by other educators work.  https://www.edutopia.org/open-educational-resources-guide has a nice list of resources and videos why OER is important.  I would like to share these findings with my faculty to help make some things easier for them as well.

And I am going to put this link https://search.creativecommons.org/ on our Library resources page.  Good for teachers and students!  Interesting list of places to acquire materials: https://creativecommons.org/about/program-areas/education-oer/education-oer-resources/ Something for everyone here.