This post was contributed by Iowa OER’s AEA representative, Denise Krefting.
AEA Learning Online supports K-12 schools in Iowa providing online, blended and self paced instruction. We also serve as an advocate for quality online professional learning by working with other state organizations such as Iowa OER.
AEA Learning Online provides a Resource Hub in OER Commons to bring Iowa educators high-quality professional development OER in many different formats. Our hub can be found at https://www.oercommons.org/hubs/aeaonline.
OER Commons Hubs are a particularly useful tool for pulling together curated collections of OER because it allows two types of sharing:
- Sharing content you (or others) have created with OER Commons’ Open Author Tool
- Linking to content outside of the OER Commons platform.
Although OER Commons Hubs can contains a wide variety of content, the resources developed by K-12 teachers are what we are highlighting today. Not only do we provide collections of OER from national experts, we also provide collections and resources from the Iowa Department of Education, Iowa colleges and Universities, as well as Iowa K-12 teachers.
In several AEAs across Iowa, teachers are creating and sharing content in a variety of professional development scenarios such as AEA Learning Online’s Blending/Flipping Cohort. To view this content, click on any of these groups: Heartland AEA, Prairie Lakes AEA, Northwest AEA, Keystone AEA, Grant Wood AEA, Mississippi Bend AEA, or Great Prairie AEA. Under Folders, you can explore teacher-created resources in the folder “Blending Flipping Cohort Resources.”
The content you will see within the AEA’s Hub are lessons created in Softchalk and the OER Commons Open Author Tool, both of which allow for a student facing-view and a teacher-facing view of content. The resources can be used in your LMS or individually with students. You are welcome to view and reuse the content in these folders with your students. Or better yet, share the creations you have built!
More information about the OER Commons Hub and how it can be leveraged by teachers in K-12 and higher ed will becoming soon!