Week 7 - Open Educational Resources

As part of my preparation for class this week, I viewed several of the lessons available on OERCommons.org (Open Educational Resources). I was most interested in the Physics lectures by Walter Lewin of MIT. I was amazed that all of this material is available online, but it made me wonder how many traditional classroom teachers are actually taking advantage of these incredible resources? This concept is another take on the digital divide, that traditionally refers to the gap between the haves and the have-nots when talking about technology and accessibility. However, another take on the digital divide in the huge gap between the digital knowledge of many of today's teachers and today's students. Students out there are so knowledgable in the ways of the web, but many teachers are not even aware that these resources exist so they don't use them. Also on the OER Commons website was a survey, that if you participated, you could view the results. As of the time I took the survey, there were 2483 responses. I found these results very interesting, because in answering several of the questions, the importance of knowing whether the materials were of high quality was reflected as the highest priority of those using the website. I think these results are indicative of a broader problem online right now, that teachers are hesitant to use many online materials because they are not aware of them, but also because they are unsure of the quality. Everyone right now is concerned with putting material online, but there doesn't seem to be a long term plan to police and maintain this material. This has the potential to become a real problem.