Finding online resources: help and guidance for tutors
As well as sharing your own resources we would like you to identify other resources on the web that will be of interest to your students – whether these are OER or just useful websites. We know many of you already do this as part of your support for students; however we would very much appreciate it if you could spend a bit of time identifying additional sources, especially those which are already OER. The information below should act as a useful place to start exploring.
How do I find OER?
Visit the Open Educational Resources infoKit: https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/24836480/Home and click on ‘Finding OERs’ under ‘Overview’ on the sidebar. You will see a list of Search Engines devoted to OER. Of these perhaps the most useful for the beginner are:
· OER Commons: http://www.oercommons.org/. You can either enter search terms in the box at the top of the page or use the ‘Browse All’ option on the top left and apply filters from the options shown to narrow your search.
· Jorum: http://www.jorum.ac.uk/. The UK’s national learning and teaching repository service. Click on ‘Find’ from the top banner.
· Temoa: http://www.temoa.info/. An Open Educational Resources Portal. You can either enter search terms in the box or use the ‘View resources by subject’ option on the left and apply filters from the options on the left to narrow your search.
· University Learning = OCW+OER = Freecustom search engine: http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=009190243792682903990%3Ae40rcqv1bbo. A custom Google search. Simply type your search terms in the box.
If you are particularly interested in images try:
· Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/. Go to the Advanced Search at http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/ and choose 'Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content'.
· Google images: http://www.google.com/imghp . This has a similar option. Go to the advanced search at http://www.google.co.uk/advanced_image_search?hl=en and, under ‘usage rights’ on the bottom left hand corner, choose ‘free to use or share’.
If you are a language teacher the following sites focus on your discipline:
· Language Box: http://languagebox.ac.uk/
· Loro: http://loro.open.ac.uk/
Other useful sites include:
· Podcasts.ox.ac.uk: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk. Many resources here are open. Find the full list at: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/open or search the main site and then check for the cc logo.
· OpenLearn: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/. Open educational resources from The Open University. Free online learning materials for all to use.
· HumBox: http://humbox.ac.uk/. A humanities focussed resource.
· The Open Courseware Consortium: http://www.ocwconsortium.org/.
How do I find other resources I can link to?
Please note that while the following sites have been useful to academics we have worked with in the past, they will not necessarily provide links to openly licensed material. However if you cannot incorporate them into your teaching materials you can link to them instead.
· Intute: www.intute.ac.uk. A free online service providing access to the ‘very best’ peer reviewed web resources for education and research. Note: Sadly this is no longer being updated, but still contains a huge amount of useful content.
If you are particularly interested in audio, video and multimedia content:
· JISC Digital Media: Finding Subject-Specific Digital Media Resources: http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/crossmedia/advice/finding-subject-specific-digital-media-resources/. This covers art and architecture; news and current events; history; maps; and science, technology and medicine. There is a wealth of other information about digital resources elsewhere on the site.
· BUFVC: http://www.bufvc.ac.uk/. The British Universities Film and Video Council’s website provides access to comprehensive directories of the publicly accessible sources of material related to the history of moving images and sound in the United Kingdom. Click on the links in the grey banner across the top.
· ItunesU: http://www.apple.com/education/guidedtours/itunesu.html. Over 100,000 educational audio and video files from top universities, museums and public media organizations from around the world.
· YouTube.edu: http://www.youtube.com/edu. YouTube videos from universities and colleges.
I want more help on searching the web generally or for certain types of resources
· Virtual Training suite: http://www.vtstutorials.co.uk/.
A suite of tutorials to help you improve your web research skills and access resources tailored to the subject area that you selected for your tutorial. The suite also contains links to the following tutorials created in collaboration with JISC Digital Media:
o Internet for audio resources: http://www.vtstutorials.ac.uk/tutorial/audio/
o Internet for image searching: http://www.vtstutorials.ac.uk/tutorial/imagesearching/
o Internet for video moving images: http://www.vtstutorials.ac.uk/tutorial/video/
· JISC Digital Media: Finding Video, Audio and Images Online: http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/crossmedia/advice/finding-video-audio-and-images-online/#creative-commons. Comprehensive guidance on finding and using video, audio and images online, including those licensed as Creative Commons.
· Internet Detective: http://www.vtstutorials.ac.uk/detective/. Learn to discern the good, the bad and the ugly.
· The Continuing Education Library help pages provide a useful guide to using Oxford libraries and finding information: http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/facilities/library/libraryhelp/topicsearch.php
This work by the Sesame Project is licensed by the University of Oxford under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.
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