OPEN SOURCE AND OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES FOR TEFL

It goes without saying that Internet has revolutionized the way we think, act and learn. It has created a global platform, access to an unbelievable quantity and variety of educational resources available to all the web users. Taking this into account, it is not surprising that Brown and Adler ("Minds on Fire", Educause) record a shift from the view of the knowledge as a substance, and pedagogy referring to the best way to transfer it. Nowadays, the social view of learning dominates. It shifts the focus of our attention from content to the learning activities and human interactions around which that content is situated. The traditional approach might have worked in the slowly changing world in which careers lasted a lifetime. But now it is different. The world is changing at a "head spinning" rate. We can have several careers throughout our life. Thus, the change of the approach was inevitable. 

The Open Educational Resources Movement was an adequate reaction to these changes. Open online free courses, materials.... and such a variety of them that you sometimes get lost during browsing. 

After making open content available online, the demand for the next step arises- how OER can provide scaffolding, interactivity, comprehension checks (see Conference session from Educause 2011). Most of the resources are pure content.

Another issue is raising the quality of open educational courses and resources. As discussed in the Educause 2011 conference session, it is really a challenge as we need metrics of quality, applicability of content. It also has to do with a large amount of financial investment. One solution that is suggested is openly licensed content, that is having a legal right to make changes in the content. Anyway, the discussions have to continue yet to reach an optimal solution.

Anyway, we are going towards Learning 2.0. It entails supporting communities of learners in integrating others' knowledge into their knowledge through collaboration between newcomers and professional practitioners. 

open resources and courses have really been revolutionary and their full potential has yet to be realized. I'm really enthusiastic about waking up tomorrow and finding something new in this increasingly changing world of technology.

Check out for the following open resources and open courses:

• http://english.merlot.org/ 
• http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
• http://www.coerll.utexas.edu/coerll/
• https://www.coursera.org/
• https://www.udacity.com/
• https://www.udemy.com/
• https://iversity.org/
• https://www.edx.org/
• https://novoed.com/
• http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/forstudents/freecourses
• http://www.ocwconsortium.org/en/courses