Ck-12 and MERLOT OER Review

I have never explored Open Education Resources (OER) before and I am wondering why these resources have not been better advertised to new teachers. There are many great resources that have been kindly shared for free by other educators. Thinking about Teachers Pay Teachers: there are many great resources on the site, however at a cost; and the free resources are often minimal and lacking. Colton Lund has a great discussion about TPT if you have time! Many new teachers spend hundreds of dollars on TPT, even though there are fantastic resources for free on OER sites.

I looked at MERLOT (because wine not?) and Ck-12. Both sites have potential, and personally, I preferred Ck-12 for a few reasons. One, the site is somewhat easy to navigate once you get your head wrapped around the site’s platform. Secondly, you can add resources to your own library to find resources later. I found MERLOT gives good suggestions but lacks practical, hands-on consumables. Many links or “Materials” that I clicked on just took me to academic websites or university pages. Ck-12 provided clearer lesson plans and worksheets to use.

I looked up Plant and Animal Cells on Ck-12 and MERLOT for comparison. I was able to get useful videos and plans from Ck-12 but found that MERLOT just took me to university websites and did not provide concrete resources.

I read a few people’s comments, (Victoria for one comes to mind) and it sounds like the general consensus is that it was difficult to switch from student to teacher view of CK-12, however, I did not have any issues. CK-12 focuses more on STEM concepts, but as a math and science teacher, the majority of the content I am looking for falls within the STEM contextual framework.

Overall, the two platforms are relatively easy to use, the content is desireable and beneficial to educators, and using the save to library feature in CK-12, teachers can easily re-locate their findings if necessary. I can definitely appreciate how the navigation may be challenging in some aspects for both MERLOT and CK-12, however, given that they are a free resource site (asking for donations) it is understandable that their functions may not be at such a high standard as some other paid websites. The OER applications are going to be getting a workout from me in the coming months to revamp a few units in Math and Science.

Thanks for reading!