Open Access in Teaching and Learning Communities

     This week, I'm posting on another topic that I find incredibly important as a future educator. Creating online communities that promote open access to others are something that can be beneficial to us as consumers. They are also a place where we can benefit others by putting in our own input on topics and concepts. By participating in this culture of open access, we can become better educators and find ways to help our students to learn in the best way possible. The better we are at sharing our information, the better we can become at teaching.

     In order to capture the spirit of open, networked, and participatory communities in our learning environments, we need to teach students a multitude of things. Dr. Alec Couros provided a lecture in which he gave us a list of things to keep in mind when talking about open educational resources and online communities. The first concept is that we need to embrace and model connected literacies. In order to participate in social media and other outlets, we need to understand how these outlets really work. Being able to use the hashtag on Twitter can improve your experience with the website. Secondly, we need to critically select and analyze information that we find on the web. Next. we should connect, consume, create, remix, and share. By participating in each of these steps, we can create and participate in an online culture. We also need to be sure to help our students understand the online culture and their digital identity. The last major point Dr. Couros made in his lecture is that we all need to be active and socially conscious online. We are connecting to people and not to technology. I encourage you to follow Dr. Couros on Twitter in order to stay current on open networking and other education topics.

     Incorporating open access in the classroom should be a smooth transition. At the current moment, we need to continue to follow state standards for teaching while also adding online resources for education. Using learning communities can help better us as teachers, by giving us more resources for lesson plans. Students should also be taught about open educational resources and ways that they can improve upon their learning experience. Overall, I think that the more we incorporate technology in the classroom, the better reception we will have from students.

     My hope for the future is that OERs will be used in the classroom. The K-12 OER Collaborative is working towards developing open educational resources to be used in the classroom. This would include comprehensive instructional materials, assessments, and other online ways to improve comprehension for students. Websites like Open Educational Resources: Share, Remix, Learn have fantastic resources for teachers to use in the classroom. The website includes tutorials, interactive labs, and other resources that can be used to improve my teaching and hopefully aid in the students learning process.

     By having an interactive community that shares information, we can gain knowledge from anyone, anywhere, and anytime! We can Skype with people from another country. We can watch videos to gain insight on other cultures. We can look at Instagram to see pictures of people across the world. The internet makes learning opportunities endless. As long as we teach students how to properly use all of this technology, the future of learning is bright.

     I think that textbooks will be used much less, if they are used at all. I think some students prefer learning out of a textbook, so textbooks or online books should still be available for use. However, I think that the majority of students will comprehend information better when it isn't in the traditional textbook format.

     Let me hear your thoughts! As always, I'm open for discussion.