Reflection #4: Open Education Resources

I’ve been circling around the idea of content recently. Every day I find myself accessing curated content based on the algorithms attached to my internet usage. If you were to scroll through my personal instagram explore page, for example, you’d find the screen flooded with puppy videos, flower art and cabins. Yet I’m realizing how little thought I have put into the licenses behind all these images, videos, reels, and ads. Especially once I began thinking about how often these are shared, duplicated, copy and pasted, and downloaded. Who truly has the rights for this ever increasing supply of digital content?

As an educator, my consumption of content may shift, however the fact remains the same: I will be seeking resources and content beyond that which I curate myself. Open Educational Resources (OER) negates a lot of the questions I have around content ownership and licensing. These resources are provided for the masses for the purpose of accessibility and shareability, in other words they are designed to be consumed and used. In that freedom, I can’t help but feel as though it’s too good to be true…access to educational resources with no strings attached?

But perhaps the increasing demand for open resources stems from a similar line of questioning as my own. Isn’t content being produced too quickly and shared too easily for it not to be accommodating to the variety of needs of its consumers? I wonder if perhaps society has become so connected, with information readily available, that resources and content also need to adhere to our desired levels of exposure.

Like I said: the concepts of content and public domains vs all rights reserved, have been circling around my mind. I still have a lot of questions, but I’m starting to believe that there has been a shift in content restraints. No longer is every resource or every piece of content owned by the few, new licensing has emerged to support the increased connectivity of the public domain.