You can do a quick review of OER projects and people on the OER World Map (licensed CC BY 4.0 at https://oerworldmap.org/) to get a sense of global OER activities.
There are many websites that host large collections of OER (e .g., Wikimedia Commons), but some universities also host their own OER repositories and services. A good first step is to do a general OER search using Google Advanced Search and filter your results by “Usage Rights” (on the pull-down menu at the bottom of the screen). See Google’s post on how to use the tool effectively at https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/find-creative-commons-images-with-image.html.
In addition to sharing your OER on your website or blog, there are hundreds of online platforms on which you can share your openly licensed content. Creative Commons maintains a directory of some of the most popular platforms used by educators, organized by content type (photos, video, audio, textbooks, courses, etc.) at https://creativecommons.org/about/program-areas/education-oer/education-oer-resources/. You can also find OER on these platforms.
When looking for OER, open educators often ask each other for help on Open Education discussion lists. Here is a non-exhaustive tally of discussion lists you might be interested in joining:
- CC Open Education Platform (invitation)
- OER Forum
- International OER Advocacy
- OER Discuss
- Open Knowledge Open Edu
- Open Edu SIG
- Wikimedia Education
- US OER Advocacy
- SPARC: Library OER
- Educause Openness
If you want to know more about the most popular general options for searching for OER, read the Open Washington course Module 6: Finding OER (licensed CC BY 4.0 at http://www.openwa.org/module-6-2/).
Creative Commons redesigned its CC Search (figure 5.5).[1] You can explore the initial version of the new search engine (images only) at https://ccsearch.creativecommons.org. Soon, CC Search will be able to search the entire Commons—all of the public domain and CC-licensed works on the Internet… including OER.
NOTE
- ↑ Creative Commons’ existing Search tool is at https://search.creativecommons.org.
