Curriculum & Instruction Textbooks

Intersections of Open Educational Resources and Information Literacy

Contributors: Cullen and Dill

Publisher: Association of College and Research Libraries

License: CC BY-NC-SA

"The present volume is timely not only because it models creative and effective strategies to advance both open education and information literacy, but especially because it poses critical questions and urges practitioners to go well beyond questions of access to and the use of information. It demands reflection on what is being accessed (and what is not), who is gaining access (and who is not), who is providing access (and who is not), and what the goal is of this access (and what lies beyond access)."—from the Foreword by Rajiv S. Jhangiani Information literacy skills are key when finding, using, adapting, and producing open educational resources (OER). Educators who wish to include OER for their students need to be able to find these resources and use them according to their permissions. When open pedagogical methods are employed, students need to be able to use information literacy skills as they compile, reuse, and create open resources. Intersections of Open Educational Resources and Information Literacy captures current open education and information literacy theory and practice and provides inspiration for the future. Chapters include practical applications, theoretical musings, literature reviews, and case studies and discuss social justice issues, collaboration, open pedagogy, training, and advocacy. The book is divided into six parts:

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Using Open Educational Resources to Promote Social Justice

Contributors: Adams, Anderson, Becknell, Ivory, and Pashia

Publisher: Association of College and Research Libraries

License: CC BY-NC

As so often is the case, the idea for this book came from a twisting path. Not long after we began collaborating and presenting together at conferences, we were invited to draft a chapter on critical race theory (CRT) in academic libraries. An invited chapter is, of course, very flattering, so we proceeded without much thought to who the publisher would be. Angela had been working on social justice issues for a while at that point, while CJ had a wealth of expertise on open educational resources (OER). We merged our two areas of expertise in drafting that chapter, discussing OER as an opportunity to not only save students money but incorporate CRT into the curriculum—both in content and in practice.

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Game Based and Adaptive Learning Strategies

Contributors: Miller, Batsaikhan, and Pluskwik

Publisher: Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

License: CC BY-NC

This book is designed to accompany a graduate-level instructional design course: Game-Based and Adaptive Learning, but could also be used for undergraduate teacher education or instructional design courses.

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Technology in Schools

Contributor: Ackerman

Publisher: hackscience.education

License: CC BY-NC

My purpose in writing this book is to give readers a view into the work of managing information technology in schools. IT professionals will notice differences (some nuanced and some significant) between the needs and expectations of IT users in business and IT in school. With the more complete and more accurate concept the nature of the computing environment necessary for successful schooling, which I intend to provide through this book, IT professionals will be better prepared to meet those needs. Educators will also benefit from this book by clarifying the nature of their IT needs and how these may be different from those that are familiar to IT professionals who are hired to work in your school.

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Opening Eyes onto Inclusion and Diversity

Contributors: Carter, Abawi, and Lawrence

Publisher: University of Southern Queensland

License: CC BY-NC

Susan Carter; Professor Lindy-Anne Abawi; Professor Jill Lawrence; Associate Professor Charlotte Brownlow; Renee Desmarchelier; Melissa Fanshawe; Kathryn Gilbey; Michelle Turner; and Jillian Guy

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The Asynchronous Cookbook

Publisher: Office of Digital Learning & Inquiry, Middlebury College

License: CC BY-NC-SA

Whether you're teaching mostly in person but looking for some regular, asynchronous activities to add to your course, or teaching a fully online course, this resource is for you. The activities in this cookbook draw on research and good practice in online course design to provide recipes - concise and specific instructions and examples - for adding asynchronous activities to a course. Meaningful interaction between students and instructors is a key ingredient in all of these recipes.

(3 reviews)

Mathematics Methods for Early Childhood

Contributor: Stramel

Publisher: Fort Hays State University

License: CC BY

Welcome to Early Childhood Mathematics! This course satisfies the Early Childhood Unified requirements in the state of Kansas for a teaching license Birth to Grade 3.

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Teaching Early and Elementary STEM

Contributors: Lange, Robertson, Price, and Craven

Publisher: East Tennessee State University

License: CC BY-NC

This Open Access Educational textbook, "Teaching Early and Elementary STEM", was written to support pre-service early childhood and elementary teachers in their journey to become facilitators of science, technology, engineering, and math, or “STEM,” and "integrated STEM" in their future classrooms. Students who read and use this text will deepen their understanding of “STEM” and “integrated STEM,” learn what early childhood and elementary students need to know and be able to do in relation to STEM, and understand ways to create activity plans and implement current research-based approaches to teaching and pedagogy. This text arose out of our Early/Elementary STEM Collaboration project, which started in 2017 with the intention of increasing the quality of teacher preparation in STEM across early childhood and elementary education. The team is composed of math and science education professors, classroom in-service teachers, and pre-service teachers in pre-school through fifth grade. We are driven by the values of collaboration, strengths-based approaches to teaching and learning, constructivist philosophy of teaching and learning, and applied STEM experiences to increase access and equity. Our model of preparing pre-service teachers has been published elsewhere in more detail (Robertson, Nivens, & Lange, 2019). We built this open access product to include the following: 1) completely new content that includes input from our team as well as examples of integrated STEM learning experiences; 2) adaptations of existing resources, and; 3) compilations of existing free resources (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards).

(1 review)

Making and Being

Contributors: Jahoda and Woolard

Publisher: Pioneer Works Press

License: CC BY-SA

Making and Being offers a framework for teaching art that emphasizes contemplation, collaboration, and political economy. Authors Susan Jahoda and Caroline Woolard, two visual arts educators and members of the collective BFAMFAPhD*, share ideas and teaching strategies that they have adapted to spaces of learning which range widely, from self-organized workshops for professional artists to Foundations BFA and MFA thesis classes. This hands-on guide includes activities, worksheets, and assignments and is a critical resource for artists and art educators today. Making and Being is a book, a series of videos, a deck of cards, and an interactive website with freely downloadable content (click on links below to download worksheets, activities, and chapters as PDFs and editable Google Docs).

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Learning in the Digital Age

Contributors: Asino, Bayeck, Brown, Francis, Kolski, Essmiller, Green, Lewis, McCabe, Shikongo, Wise, and Fulgencio

Publisher: Oklahoma State University

License: CC BY

This book is designed to serve as a textbook for classes exploring the nature of learning in the digital age. The genesis of this book is a desire to use OERs in all my teachings, coupled with the realization that the resources that I was looking for were not available and as such I needed to contribute in creating them. It is thus a small attempt to contribute to the vast repository of Open Educational Resources. When discussing learning in the digital age, most focus on the technology first. However, the emphasis made in this book is that it’s about the learner not just the technology. One of the things that is easy to lose track of when talking about learning in the digital age is the learner. Technology is important and it has significant impact but it is still about the person who is using the technology. Many people conflate learning in the digital age with technology in today’s age. This important misconception is common and results from our failure to examine our understanding of what “learning” really is. Of course, Most of this depends on a person’s epistemology. There are numerous definitions of what learning is and often they come to how a person sees the world. Some argue that learning is about a change in behavior due to experiences, others state simply that learning is being able to do something new that you were not able to do before. Regardless of what side you choose, to understand what learning in the digital age is, one has to understand what learning itself is. I am immensely thankful to the authors for sharing their ideas freely and for the reviewers who volunteered their time to give feedback.

(3 reviews)