Maine Open Educational Resources (OER)

Building the capacity of Maine educators to use technology, and engaging teaching and learning strategies, to prepare students for college, career, and meaningful lives in their communities.

 

 


What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are online resources that are open and free for teachers and families to use. OER can be used to help students/children achieve and learn, as well as provide families with activities and ideas to help their children learn or reinforce at home the concepts they are learning in school. There are lots of websites to help families to support the emotion, physical, and academic growth of their child.

Why are OER Important?

OER come in a variety of formats. Some may come in game form to help a child better understand a concept or it may be a video, lesson plan or idea for a family activity. These resources can help families join in creative learning activities with their child, and make learning a family affair!

 

There are also resources available to better inform families about such challenges as cyber-bullying, internet safety, and so forth.

 

Links to Other Subject Area Final OER

English Language Arts: http://tinyurl.com/oerenglishsite

Science and Technology: http://tinyurl.com/oersciencesite

Social Studies: http://tinyurl.com/oersocialstudies

Visual and Performing Arts: http://tinyurl.com/oervisualperformingarts

 

See photos from the workshop "Responding to Teacher Needs: A Wishlist for World Language Education" at the FLAME annual conference March 4, 2011

World Language OER Team Members present at FLAME

>>Visit our Events page to see more photos.

The OER Project:

"I have absolutely loved participating in the OER project. I feel this project has been a very valuable effort, as it has allowed the researchers to locate and evaluate web resources for teachers..."
>>Read more Comments about the project

 

The Maine Department of Education awarded Syntiro multiple grants funded through Title IID Enhancing Education through Technology - American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Competitive Grant monies. These grants support the identification of on-line educational resources and professional development to assist teachers to develop the skills and knowledge to more fully utilize Maine’s rich technological resources to enhance teaching and learning. See below to learn more about the two types of grants awarded, or download the informative Power Point Presentation (ppt).

 

New! Teachers, please visit our Presentation Materials page to find resources to help you plan and implement your OER presentations.


Maine OER Grants

Executive Summary of Maine Open Educational Resources Grants

The Maine Department of Education awarded Syntiro four Open Educational Resources (OER) grants in January 2010. The grants were awarded in the following content areas: Math, Health Education and Physical Education, World Languages, and Career & Education Development. These exciting projects brought together teams of educators to identify high-quality OER in each of the above content areas. Educators who represented the 9 superintendent regions, and who were identified as experts in their content fields, were selected for participation on content-specific teams.

 

Each of the teams identified criteria for quality and alignment to Maine learning standards as they began to select OER recommendations for Maine educators. During this work, the teams also noted the areas (e.g., grade levels, learning standard indicators) where quality OER were lacking. The OER identified by these teams have been posted on Delicious, www.delicious.com/syntiromsn, and other websites, for easy access.

 

Through these four grants, Syntiro supported the achievement of the following Maine DOE goals, ultimately furthering MDOE’s primary goal of building the capacity of Maine educators to better prepare students for college, career, and meaningful lives in their communities through the use of technology, and engaging teaching and learning strategies.


Maine DOE goals:

  1. Enhance the awareness of Open Educational Resources (OER).
  2. Identify existing OER.
  3. Foster the creation or development of content-specific asynchronous and synchronous communities.

OER Professional Development Visual and Performing Arts Integration

The Maine Department of Education awarded Syntiro a fifth Open Educational Resources grant. This grant supports professional development collaboration between Syntiro and the Maine Alliance for Arts Education to provide professional development for educators.  It supports six teams of educators to develop units aligned to the Maine Learning Results that integrate two content areas, one of which is the visual and performing arts.  Using technology is a requirement of this project.  The project will also provide a co-teaching model that can be replicated in other regions of the state. 

 

Find out more about this grant on the Arts page.

 

 

 

The Open Educational Resources (OER) grants in Career Education and Development, Health Education & Physical Education, Mathematics, World Languages, and the Visual and Performing Arts are administered by the Maine Support Network (a division of Syntiro) and are funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act).
Recovery Act logo