Preparing the resources for teaching a class can often feel like a daunting task. However, teachers do not need to create everything they will use from scratch, as it is common practice among teachers to share resources freely. Open Educational Resources (or OER) are collections of educational materials that have been made freely available to anyone online. These resources are openly licensed so anyone can use them for any purpose. This allows teachers to access tools such as worksheets and lesson plans that other teachers made. This makes planning lessons much easier and facilitates the sharing of ideas among educators.
These resources are made free and accessible by licensing them under the Creative Commons (CC). This does not automatically put the work in the public domain, the creator still owns the material, but it allows people to freely access and distribute the work with citations.
Some notable sources for these resources are:
BC Open Collection by BCcampus
Pexels
Unsplash
The Greats
OER Commons
CK-12 Foundation
Smithsonian Learning Lab
Wikimedia