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Open Academic Continuity Resources

eCampusOntario Tools

The Open Library and Open Publishing Infrastructure are made available at zero cost to Ontario educators.

OPEN LIBRARY

The eCampusOntario Open Library has over 350 openly licensed educational resources that can be customized or adopted for your teaching and learning.

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H5P STUDIO

eCampusOntario H5P Studio allows educators to discover, create, and share over 40 types of interactive modular content for formative assessment.

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Pressbooks

Pressbooks EDU accounts are available to educators to create or adapt open textbooks or other text-based open educational resources.

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Educational Technologies 

With the quick transition to remote teaching and learning, it might feel like you are at capacity to learn as many new EdTech tools as possible; however, The Ontario Extend Toolkit can make teaching with new tools easier to organize and make sense of as we have selected some of the best technologies for you!  Help us curate more tech tools!  You are encouraged to add your tech tools suggestions to the Toolkit through the prompts when you visit the Toolkit website.  

The table below outlines numerous, mostly free, EdTech tools referred to also in the Extend Toolkit. The suggestion is not to try them all in one sitting, but to experiment with one at a time to see which tool has the greatest impact on your students’ learning. 

EdTech Tools for Educators  

Technology Ed-Tech Overview 
Video Tools 
Screencast-O-Matic   Screencast-O-Matic is a great video capturing tool for screencasting and webcasts that can be used for numerous purposes.  What do you need videos for? To record presentations, instructions, lectures, welcome videos?     
Flipgrid 
Getting Started   		Flipgrid is an excellent platform for creating collaborative video discussions, video presentations, video interviews, or video whiteboards. Reflect on what new assignments you could spin together with Flipgrid.   
Adobe Spark   Adobe Spark is a first-rate video and graphics tool for quickly generating creative well-polished content without the need of a true graphic designer on hand.  Rethink how you might deliver a complicated concept — could you simplify it with a ‘Spark’ of colour or a dash of video?   
Quiz and Survey Tools 
Socrative   Socrative is an attractive set of digital flashcards that can be customized to your students’ needs. No need for paper here – students can turn their phones into flashcards!   
MS Forms   MS Forms is the most straightforward data collection software to transform that old paper questionnaire into an easy to manage digital version.  Review online or convert results to an Excel spreadsheet for simple analysis. And, if you need to create a quick quiz instead of a form, it has you covered!   
Poll Everywhere   Looking for an option to embed a poll, a word cloud, an open-ended question, or a clickable image into your PowerPoint during a lecture, a meeting, or an online asynchronous class?  Consider how you might use Poll Everywhere to seamlessly grab the attention of your audience with embedded content, while providing ever-changing formative feedback to strengthen student development.   
Mind Mapping Tools 
Miro   If you’re missing the simplicity of the chalk board, or the squeaky satisfaction of dry erase markers, Miro may be for you!  Envision a chance to give your students an open door to collaborate with you and with each other in any delivery mode through their free digital whiteboard.   
MindMup   Brainstorm solo or together with this mind mapping tool.  As an educator, think about process over product – how does being creative and mind mapping ideas fit into any assignment process, how do you start most assignments?   
MindMeister   Can you get anywhere without a map? Some of us can, but most of appreciate a set of directions.  MindMeister is another excellent mind mapping too for educators who favour alternate paths to the same old destination.  Reflect on ways you might adapt your assignment (path) to reach the same learning outcomes. 
Design Tools 
H5P   Getting Started with eCampusOntario H5P Studio   What can you do with H5P? Almost anything!  Create interactive videos, drag and drops, image hotspots, flash cards, timelines, word searches… yes, I said word searches.  Keep in mind there is a learning curve to all options, but most are simple ways to create and share interactive content with students.  What type of engagement are your students needing?   
Canva   Some faculty like graphic design, but feel like they need some general guidance to get themselves started.  Canva does this for you with multiple templates for infographics, posters, presentations, and more.  How might you reimagine an old PowerPoint presentation in Canva?   
Sutori   Sutori is a web design platform that gives you a chance to integrate videos, presentations, images, text, etc., in an interactive manner.  Check out Sutori’s website for the visual and ‘interactive’ example.     
Google Workspace   Google Workspace, formally Google Suite, is home to numerous Google ed-tech tools.  From Google slides, to Google Jamboard (an online collaborative white board), among many others, it is worth exploring these simple to use programs that can seamlessly fit into your teaching practice   

Open Resources

In addition to the eCampusOntario tools and resources, the following tools and resources are a great place to find or create openly licensed content. 

Textbooks
  • OASIS: Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 97 different sources.
Images and Videos
  • WikiMedia Commons: Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language.
  • Smithsonian Open Access: Millions of 2D and 3D digital items of museum objects, archives, and library materials, including images, audio, video, and blog posts
    • Subject(s): All
    • Language(s): English
  • NC State Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Teaching Laboratories – S.M.A.R.T. Lab Videos: A series of short, Student-Made Audiovisuals Reinforcing Techniques
    • Language(s): English
  • Public Health Image Library:Created by a Working Group at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the PHIL offers an organized, universal electronic gateway to CDC’s pictures.
  • Cell Image Library: This Image Library is a repository for images and movies of cells from a variety of organisms. It demonstrates cellular architecture and functions with high quality images, videos, and animations.
  • Jamie Mulholland’s Math Videos: A series of videos created by Jamie Mulholland of Simon Fraser University, focused on Calculus.
  • Art Images for College Teaching: The University of Michigan Library provides access to this collection of Art for educational and research purposes
    • Subject(s): Art
    • Language(s): English
Courses
  • MIT Open CourseWare: MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity. There are currently over 2400 courses with content available.
  • My Open Math: MyOpenMath provides pre-built courses based on popular math open textbooks. Some of these course include online homework, while others include videos, handouts, and instructor resources.
Simulations
  • PhET Sims: PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations.
  • NC State VR Organic Chemistry Labs: Virtual reality experiences for organic chemistry laboratories created in partnership between the Department of Chemistry, North Carolina State University and Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications (DELTA). Can be viewed on a mobile device or through a web browser.
  • Virtual Simulation Community of Learning Resources: A series of virtual simulations created by Ontario nursing educators
Tools
  • GeoGebra: GeoGebra is an interactive geometry, algebra, statistics and calculus application, intended for learning and teaching mathematics and science from primary school to university level.
  • Open Author: Open Author by OER Commons is a rich-text editor that allows the easy creation of new content or remix of content from OER Commons or Google Drive.

Free Resources

The following resources are available on the open web without an open license. 

Images and Videos
  • LinkedIn Learning: A collection of courses and instructional videos made available to Ontario educators and students through eCampusOntario.
Courses
  • Khan Academy: Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard in math, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, and more.
Simulations
  • PraxiLabs: 3D Simulations in the sciences.
Tools
  • EdPuzzle: Integrates with Youtube so that you can insert questions into videos.