In the TEDxNYED Video with David Wiley, he talks about the importance of open education. He begins by defining openness in education as being synonymous with being generous. He goes on to say that openness in education is the only way to do education. I completely agree with this statement. Since STEAM does not have Common Core or state standards yet, I rely a lot on the lesson ideas of other teachers. I am very thankful that teachers who have developed their own lessons have been willing to share them for free. Starting out as a young, new teacher, paying for resources does not usually fit into my budget. Going off of being a new teacher struggling to pay for bills let alone resources, it is hard to share my resources for free. Websites like Teachers Pay Teachers, make it easy to sell and share resources. I am guilty of only choosing the free resources that are provided on this site. So this makes me wonder whether the TPT site is a great way to share resources or is it creating even more of the "anti-share" or "mine" mentality. Comment below or tweet me about your thoughts, because I really don't know how I feel about it anymore.
I can understand the "anti-share" mentality. We feel that since we have worked so hard on our lessons, sharing with anyone else lets others take credit for our work. We also feel over-worked and under-paid at times that we feel that we deserve a monetary supplement for our resources. As mentioned above, I'm not sure how I feel about this idea anymore. After watching the video of David Wiley, I have begun to realize that sharing your ideas doesn't make you lose your credibility or ownership of a lesson, it provides a plethora of ideas given by other educators to improve your teaching. It can also open the door to communication between educators in your field, in return giving you resources that they can provide. Isn't learning what we are here for? We want it to happen in our classroom with our students, so why shouldn't it happen among teachers as well? Even though we may feel that by sharing we are losing ourselves or our work for nothing, we can walk into a generous amount of tested resources. What are your views on Open Education Resources and Sharing? Let me know below.
You can expect me to talk more about this topic in the near future. I am looking forward to hearing your responses as this has been a rather grey area for me.
Talk soon!
Was not even sure what STEAM was! So I looked it up and now I know! Not sure how I would incorporate in Spanish classes, any suggestions? Great post, ¡Gracias!
ReplyDeleteI would love for us to come up with lessons that would incorporate STEAM with Spanish. I use a lot of art involving numbers and words so if the words and numbers were in Spanish instead, maybe we could make a connection that way? What grade level(s) do you teach?
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