In this section, Dr. Blyth focuses on providing different examples of OER materials and guiding instructors to become proficient researchers and implementers of OER by effectively using repositories and library catalogs.
Objectives
1. Recognize main type of available OER for language teaching and learning;
2. Explain main affordances of using OER in language learning;
3. Explore OER repository to find specific resources.
Self-reflection
- What kind of resources you normally search on the internet?
- What criteria do you consider when searching and selecting these resources?
- What are the challenges of finding relevant resources for your classroom?
- Are you familiar with OER repositories? If yes, which one do you generally use?
In the first segment, Dr. Blyth describes core features of diverse OER for language learning showcasing projects from COERLL. He highlights the diversity of authors, language content, and types of OER which can be easily accessed at large repositories.
In the second part of the lesson, Dr. Blyth demonstrates how to utilize two common tools to find relevant OER content. First, he describes how Advanced Search in Google (Google Advanced Search) facilitates finding OER materials by selecting different licenses. The second search tool he presents is Creative Commons (Creative Commons ), the largest engine to find OER content. Creative Commons is celebrating its 20 years in 2022, and it lists more than 2 billion items in several languages and modes.
In the final part of the lesson, the presenter defines OER repositories and provides a general recommendation for educators new to OER. Instructors would benefit of revising, implementing and then modifying already-made OER content. After they have become familiar, the logical next step would be to create and share their own materials by uploading them to a repository. As an example of ‘search and find’, Dr. Blyth models a search in Merlot (a well-known repository for multimedia educational content with a large selection of items for Spanish). Merlot’s editors revise and curate the items before publishing them, and each resource includes peer and user reviews, facilitating the search and select process.
Activity 1
Using Google Advanced Search or Creative Commons engines, find the following OER items, considering the Spanish classes you teach: a photo, a lesson plan, a podcast, a piece of music or song, and a visual artwork piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.).
Complete the table indicating: title; attribution; type of license; short description; usage.
| Item | Title | Attribution | License type | Description | Pedagogical implementation |
| Image | |||||
| Lesson plan | |||||
| Podcast | |||||
| Song – music | |||||
| Artwork |
Now, write a short reflection considering these questions: Did you find what you were looking for? Do the licenses allow you to modify and remix content? Are you planning on modifying them? Is any of the items Public Domain or all of them have a license? How do you plan to attribute the work to their authors?