All resources in OER Development Tools and Guidance

Washington OER Hub - Submission Guidelines and Quality Review Criteria

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This document provides background on how resources are submitted to Groups, reviewed, and filtered into Learning Collections on the Washington OER Hub. The criteria are designed to be adapted for any content area to evaluate lessons that may extend over a few periods or days or units that include integrated and focused lessons. The criteria are NOT designed to evaluate a single task or stand-alone activity.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy

Authors: Barbara Soots, Washington OSPI OER Project

Understanding Document Accessibility

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A Reference for Creating Accessible Office Documents Short Description: With much of the world gone digital, learning to create documents that are accessible to everyone is becoming a necessary skill. Intended for a general audience, this free resource reviews a wide range of document authoring applications, including the tools they contain for creating accessible documents, and tests them to ensure they do not contain potential barriers. Learn how to create accessible word processed documents, spreadsheets, presentation slides, and PDF documents, among others, so they are accessible to everyone. Long Description: With much of the world gone digital, learning to create documents that are accessible to everyone is becoming a necessary skill. Intended for a general audience, this free resource reviews a wide range of document authoring applications, including the tools they contain for creating accessible documents, and tests them to ensure they do not contain potential barriers. Learn how to create accessible word processed documents, spreadsheets, presentation slides, and PDF documents, among others, so they are accessible to everyone. Word Count: 113386 (Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Material Type: Textbook

Sample Permissions Request Letter

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If there is a resource you would like to use in your OER project that is not openly licensed, in the public domain, or usable under fair use, permission from the copyright holder is required. Here is some sample wording for that permissions request. Please adapt as suits your situation.Cover mage by Andrew Lloyd Gordon from Pixabay 

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Barbara Soots

Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources - Webinar Series

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As educators begin to develop OER, one component of that process is navigating concerns around copyright when finding digital teaching materials. This webinar series addresses that and is divided into two tracks: K-12 and Higher Education. There are also two stand-alone webinar options that can be attended by both the K-12 and Higher Education community. All of the webinars will also be available on YouTube and linked to this page after the live event has ended.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: American University Washington College of Law

The Ultimate Guide to Copyright, Creative Commons, and Fair Use for Teachers, Students, and Bloggers

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It has never been easier to publish online or consume digital content. This comes with many advantages and can make teaching and learning so much more targeted and impactful. Living in a digital world also brings up many questions — one issue that is very important to understand is copyright. Whether you’re an educator, student, or blogger, copyright is a topic that is often overlooked as it can be confusing or just not considered important. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of myths about copyright circulating amongst the education community. Maybe you’ve heard that you can use any images or texts you find online if you’re using them for education? Or perhaps you’ve heard that you can use any songs in your videos as long as you use less than 30 seconds? Yep, both not true. Copyright is important for all teachers, students, and bloggers to know about. And it doesn’t have to be as complicated as you think. We’re here to break down the basics of copyright and other related topics like fair use, public domain, and Creative Commons.

Material Type: Unit of Study

Authors: Kathleen Morris, Ronnie Burt, Sue Waters

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources

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This Code is a tool for educators, librarians, and authors to evaluate common professional scenarios in which fair use can enable them to incorporate inserts, including those protected by copyright, to create OER. It can provide groups working on OER projects with a shared framework for evaluating and understanding when and how to incorporate existing content to meet pedagogical needs

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Authors: American University Washington College of Law, Meredith Jacob, Peter Jaszi, Prudence S. Adler, William Cross

Permissions Guide for Educators

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This guide provides a primer on copyright and use permissions. It is intended to support teachers, librarians, curriculum experts and others in identifying the terms of use for digital resources, so that the resources may be appropriately (and legally) used as part of lessons and instruction. The guide also helps educators and curriculum experts in approaching the task of securing permission to use copyrighted materials in their classrooms, collections, libraries or elsewhere in new ways and with fewer restrictions than fair use potentially offers. The guide was created as part of ISKME's Primary Source Project, and is the result of collaboration with copyright holders, intellectual property experts, and educators.* "Copyright license choice" by opensource.com is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Material Type: Reading

Author: Melinda Newfarmer

Teachers as Content & Knowledge Creators: Understanding Creative Commons, OER, and Visual Literacy to Empower Diverse Voices

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This module was created in response to an observed need by BranchED and the module authors for efforts to increase the recognition, adaptation, and use of open educational resources (OER) among pre- and in-service teachers and the faculty who work in educator preparation programs. The module's purpose is to position teacher educators, teacher candidates and in-service teachers as empowered content creators. By explicitly teaching educators about content that has been licensed for re-use and informing them about their range of options for making their own works available to others, they will gain agency and can make inclusive and equity-minded decisions about curriculum content. The module provides instructional materials, resources, and activities about copyright, fair use, public domain, OER, and visual literacy to provide users with a framework for selecting, modifying, and developing curriculum materials.

Material Type: Module

Authors: Kimberly Grotewold, Karen Kohler, Tasha Martinez, LisaL Kulka