Teaching Approaches/Adapting and sharing resources

Introduction to OER, Creative Commons, and Open Government Licence

See also, our links page

Adapting and Sharing our Resources

8 How can you deepen your engagement with the ORBIT community and others involved in working with teachers in an open educational resource (OER) environment? [Community of practice]

The ORBIT materials are OERs. This means that they can be freely shared, adapted and used by anyone.

You might start with the community closest to you – in your own context. If you are a teacher educator working in a college or university, these questions might help:

• To what extent do teacher educators at my institution work together?
• How could I benefit from increasing this collaboration?
• Am I personally prepared to put the effort into working together?
• How can I start a conversation about how to do this?

Teacher development may start in an institution, but schools and communities are involved as well.

• How can you share your ORBIT experiences with others who work with teachers in schools and in your local community?

You could use the following steps for selecting and preparing to use ORBIT activities in the curriculum:

1. Select an appropriate theme or teaching approach that you’ve identified as needing attention, or which is on your curriculum/scheme of work for the next few weeks – this might be one which you find particularly challenging to teach, one which your learners have struggled with or a new way of teaching that you want to try out.
2. Locate and review relevant ORBIT materials to identify suitable sections which match your chosen theme, topic or skill.
3. Ask yourself what you as a teacher have planned to achieve through teaching your theme and topic.
4. Read the ORBIT activities and related case studies and resources.
5. Select the relevant ORBIT activities or case studies that match what you planned to achieve. Find the resources you need.
6. Adapt the ORBIT activities to suit your pupils and your surroundings

You should consider the prior knowledge and experiences either of the teachers, or the pupils they’re working with. ^{(Adapted from TESSA Working With Teachers, section SharingPractice).}

Copyright

How to Stay Within the Law

Everyone has favourite websites they use to find information. You may have found some new ones that looked very useful when you shared your sources with colleagues in Activity 1. When you use these sources to find useful-looking material, apart from making sure that it is of good quality, you also need to take account of the conditions surrounding its use. Simply being on the web does not make something freely available to use in all circumstances. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), of which copyright is just one part (along with Patents, Designs and Trademarks) protect the creators of ideas. Materials that are in some way ‘fixed’ like text, music, pictures, sound recordings and web pages, are protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and may often have an accompanying symbol (©) and/or legal statement.

In most circumstances, works protected by copyright can only be used – and ‘used’ can mean copied, scanned, distributed, stored, adapted, broadcasted or shown - in whole or in part with the permission of the owner. You are personally responsible if you use material without having the necessary permissions and could face prosecution and a hefty fine. You also have a moral duty to act as a good role model to the students in your care in order to help them recognise the importance of keeping legal.

In some cases, obtaining this permission results in a fee being charged and obtaining permission can be time consuming. Our focus within this course is on identifying resources that you can use free of charge and don’t need to seek further permission to use. However, in order to be able to do that you need to know a little more about copyright. ^{(Adapted from Copyright: keep it legal/Resource, section CopyrightWithinTheLaw).}

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Wikis

What is a Wiki

{{{3}}} ^{(Adapted from Sharing ideas: developing wikis (primary)/Resource, section Whole).}

In 2008, Becta published the results of a study of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Key Stage 3 and 4 classrooms. You can access this report , or in editable (.doc) format File:Becta report.doc. This is a lengthy report covering all aspects of Web 2.0 tools (including social networking and blogging) but there are some sections that focus on the use of wikis.Go to page 20 of the report for statistics relating to teacher perceptions of wikis and experiences of their use in the classroom. Reflect on the final bullet point that relates to use of wikis and their management. Think about whether wiki management could be an issue for you and your learners and how you might deal with this, for example, creating wikis for smaller groups and introducing a code of conduct. Add to your notes from the previous activities any further thoughts arising from your reading.

Go to page 34 and read the section that considers the issues of private versus collaborative learning. An important point is made here about some learners who prefer their own private space for learning and therefore find it difficult to engage in collaborative activities. Reflect on whether any of your learners may have this preference and could find collaboration through a wiki to be difficult. Could you encourage such learners to become involved by careful selection of a small group of students to work on a wiki-based activity? Again, add any thoughts you have to your notes. ^{(Adapted from Learning together introducing wikis/Resource, section BECTA).}