 We often stumble upon freely available online materials readily using them for learning and we use all of this material for completely educational purposes both as educators and facilitators. We never give it much thought either about the copyright issues, whether I have to pay money for it, how it is available on the web and all these things right. And most importantly these are educational materials. So as teachers and or students can we use all these materials available freely for educational purposes? We are just learning, isn't it? So here is a thought for you, imagine this scenario where you are tasked with creating a presentation on a tight deadline maybe like tomorrow. What are you going to do now? Some of you would have already thought of using already available presentation decks from the internet. Some of you would have already thought of contacting a colleague whom you are sure will give you a slight presentation right. Another set of people the honest people would be thinking of ok let me do some overwork and prepare a one right. So searching and searching the internet, downloading relevant slides, mixing and matching, rephrasing the words everything to complete the presentation topic. So all these options are perfectly valid I mean that is how we react right. There is a lot of content available in the internet and it is always a good option to curate from an existing set of content and customize it to the needs of our learners. But a question that you have to ask is are they truly free in the sense that can you completely take it? Is it open? Can you reuse it? Can you share it? Can you improve upon as in can you rephrase and improve upon the existing content? The answer is no, not all the content available on the internet is open to access freely. The content being freely available does not mean that the content can be used by everybody. Only when the content creator gives permission to use the content with an appropriate license will it become in open access and can be used with proper attribution fulfilling the conditions for usage. Open education resources offer a powerful alternative for finding high quality curated content that you can customize and personalize for your audience all with proper attributions and under the terms of an open license. So the next question is what exactly are these open access or open education resources or OERs? You can watch this video which explains what OERs are. So what is an open educational resource? Let's break it down. Open means these resources do not have the added constraints of license or royalty fees for educational purposes. Educational resources refers to items that teachers or students find valuable to use in their classes. Essentially they can be anything, videos, journal articles, images, even entire textbooks. But wait, isn't there already free content online? Is there a significant difference between free and open access content? While freely available content might exist, it often lacks the clear licensing terms that define how you can use it. Can you modify it? Share it with others? What derivative works? Open educational resources addresses these by adhering to open licenses like creative commons which explicitly grant these rights. Think of it this way. Free content is like borrowing a book from a friend. You can read it but making copies or sharing it widely might not be allowed. Open access content, on the other hand, is like buying a book with share with your classmates sticker. You have the freedom to use it in various ways, potentially even improving it for others. Now you might be thinking, isn't all free content the same? Well, not quite. While free content might be accessible, it does not necessarily grant you the same freedoms as OERs. Here is the key difference. Free content, you can access it but you might not be able to share, modify or redistribute it. This can limit your ability to adapt it to your needs or contribute to its improvement. Whereas, if it is an open access content, it is already a subset of free content but with these added permissions. Thus, you can share, modify and even build upon it fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation. Here is another reflection spot. Think about your own educational journey. Have you ever faced challenges accessing learning materials due to either convenience or cost? How do you think OERs could benefit student, educators and communities? Pause this video and write down all your thoughts. When done, resume this video. Think back to the all-nighters, cramming, making notes, etc. from blurry photocopies or struggling to afford pricey textbooks that you had when you were a learner. Did you ever wish learning in a classroom or teaching in it wasn't such a hazard? Textbooks costing a fortune, study guides locked behind subscriptions and low quality PDFs coming to the rescue but with the feeling of guilt of using this material not so legally. Knowledge shouldn't be a luxury. So what if there was a way to access high quality educational resources completely free and legal? What if there was access to key industry experts, certifications to skill related courses and multi-dimensional conditions like dropouts, lining non-tution costs and opportunity costs such as jobs? OERs are not just about cost savings. You have to understand that they encourage collaboration, innovation and customization of learning experiences. They are powerful tools for democratizing education and fostering a more open collaborative learning environment. Remember knowledge should be accessible to all and OERs are making way for a brighter more inclusive future of education. So explore the vast world of OERs and join us to understand how you can make open access content, how you can identify and use open access content available online. So if open educational resources aren't always textbooks, aren't always online and aren't always free, let's look at a couple of examples to illuminate these three points a little bit. OpenStacks is a very popular creator of OER textbooks. They definitely are textbooks and they're available online and in print. This is a picture of the founder of OpenStacks with several printed textbooks here. Now these definitely are textbooks but they are definitely not online and they're definitely not free because ink and paper and shipping cost money. But we would still call these textbooks OER because their content is openly licensed. Another example, OER in adaptive courseware. Is this a textbook? No. Is it online? Yes. But is it free? No. However, we would still refer to it as OER because all of the content in the adaptive courseware is openly licensed. And a final example, interactive simulations. Are these textbooks? Definitely not. Are they online though? Yes, they are online and they're also free. But we would still call them OER because their content is openly licensed. As you have seen from the past few minutes, open access content is a powerful tool for learning and innovation. But responsible use is crucial. By understanding the various way to use it, respecting the restrictions and appreciating its unique characteristics, you can unlock its full potential. Remember, knowledge is meant to be shared. So let's embrace the open access movement and learn together.