Douglas Rushkoff (as cited in Richardson, 2010) uses a phrase “society of authorship” to describe the current knowledge sharing environment that we find ourselves in with the dominance of the Internet. Everyone with internet access has the ability to contribute content to the world and increase the knowledge share. In that spirit, open educational resources (OER) offer anyone the opportunity to share and to access knowledge.
OER Commons is a website designed to host open educational resources contributed by participants. It is essentially a digital library of lessons, simulations, worksheets, activities, textbooks, articles, and much more. Anyone can search the offerings and use the resources without requesting permission or paying a fee. There are more than 50,000 materials on the site and they range from kindergarten to university level. Educators can build their own lessons using OER materials or curate their own collections. If time is limited, educators can select collections of materials that have already been curated for easy use. Finally, educators are encouraged to contribute their own materials to OER Commons to build the knowledge collection on the site.
References
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Morr Ed Tech Ideas 
Kat,
I found your post to be very interesting because it is the first time that I have heard about Open Educational Resources. I would browse the site to find material that is suitable to my course content (especially worksheets and collaborative activities; for example group presentations, that can make the online experience more rewarding), and I would also contribute material to the site.
This site would be very useful for learners because of the wide choices of free resources that are available to them. These they can use to enhance their learning.
Sandra
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