This week is Open Education Week!
What is Open Education? It is an educational movement that is committed to producing teaching resources that can be used and then reused by other educators without formally seeking permission. In this model creators of educational content freely release their materials to the public. Other educators can then deliver the material freely to their students, as long as they attribute the original creator. These resources are most commonly made available under Creative Commons licences. Many MOOCs, open courses, and regular classes now routinely use this kind of content, because there is no need to get copyright clearance and they can be publicly posted on the web.
Open textbooks, like open courses, are created by experts and then made freely available to the public. Projects like the BCCampus OpenEd textbook initiative and the OER Commons give instructors a way to find free-to-share material, and great resources like the Creative Commons search can help anyone find free to use images and music.
Toronto Metropolitan University Library & Archives is hosting a few events this week to celebrate Open Education Week 2015.
Tips for Finding Free Music, Images, and More: Drop-In
Today 12-1 pm, March 9th, Student Learning Centre (SLC) Rm 515
Find free music & images and more to use in your projects – both commercial and school based. This is a drop-in session.
Is there a Free Textbook in Your Future?
12-1 pm, March 10th, 2015, Student Learning Centre (SLC) Rm 514
Can you imagine a world were some of the textbooks that are used to teach courses you take are free? Find out more about the Open Access Textbook movement.
The Affordable Classroom: Open Access Textbooks (LTO and the Library)
12-2pm March 12th, 2015 POD-372
Do you ever worry about the rising cost of textbooks for your students? Are you interested in hearing about possible alternatives to the traditional textbook model, like open access textbooks? In this workshop you will learn about new Canadian-lead open access textbook repositories, and other open access textbook resources that are freely available on the web to use in your teaching. If you are interested in building your own open access textbook to use in your classroom, this workshop will provide you with the necessary building blocks to get started.