OER vs. NOER – Why the new kid must go to the old school

Ok, please open your books at page 1. Open Educational Resources (OERs) are not the only way to find materials for teaching. Yes, its the best way , but its not the first choice, yet.

By dullhunk on Flickr

That accolade, at the moment, belongs to the status quo or NOER. Shrouded in  a grey cloud of semi-legal licencing and ask no questions, share-if-you-like NOER has usurped the old rigid print-era  structures and heralded a new age of digital sharing. But like all revolutions, the torch must one day be passed on to a more stable arrangement- and OER is the way.

It is with the spirit of passing the torch that my project to surface OERs will surface best of breed non-OERs too. No-one wants a search tool with one eye closed,  searchers need stuff and plenty of it; a few resources and a lot of evangelistic zeal isnt going to get a presentation ready for tomorrow. If the non-OER resource gets used it was because it was better but if the OER is comparable then the association of the two may lead the searcher to a better solution and the originators of both resources to create a yet better resource.

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