Open Space is INFOhio’s premier instructional material curation and collaboration space. Open Space enables educators and caregivers to:
Discover lesson plans, textbooks, activities, and other learning resources.
Connect with fellow educators statewide in topic-focused groups.
Curate their favorite resources into both collaborative and personal folders.
INFOhio has also built collections, endorsements, and hubs of high-quality instructional materials to help educators quickly locate the resources they need. Additionally, users can contribute new materials by sharing links to content from around the web or creating annotated lessons and guides. Take a look at the video below to see how to start searching in Open Space.
Open Space Use Cases
Why or how would educators use Open Space? Consider the following examples:
Scenario #1: Find High-Quality Instructional Materials. Educators want to supplement their established curriculum with freely accessible, high-quality materials that provide lesson extensions or differentiation, help fill gaps or fulfill student needs, or heighten learner engagement. They start on the Open Space homepage by using keywords to search for the lesson or unit topic. Next, they refine the results using filters to focus the search to their individual grade, subject, and material type, such as interactive activity or audio/video. This is the most common use of Open Space.
Scenario #2: Building a Professional Network. Teachers want to expand their professional learning network, so they join Open Space and:
Find or create a group dedicated to their subject area.
Invite colleagues to join the group.
Search Open Space for new materials and save the resources to the group for their colleagues.
Using group discussions, ask questions and seek feedback about certain topics and resources.
Contribute and respond to ideas to integrate strategies, tools, and content into the curriculum.
Scenario #3: Collaborate on Curriculum. A small district curriculum team would like a space to collaborate with each other and find and organize resources for a new curriculum. They create an invite-only group on Open Space and add folders that represent each class that is a part of the curriculum pathway. Within each class folder, they upload a curriculum alignment map so team members can find and reference outcomes. Within each class folder, they also create additional folders for each unit that the class will cover. They search Open Space to find materials that fit within each class and alignment map and save them to those unit folders. The group uses the discussions feature to post status updates and announcements, hold conversations between in-person meetings, and seek feedback from each other.
Scenario #4: Create and Share Lessons With Others. A teacher wants to share a lesson they created because it has been one of their students’ favorites on a topic where not many materials exist. They think it will help strengthen student understanding and help other educators teach the topic. The teacher clicks the Add OER button on Open Space. This allows the teacher to submit the lesson through the Submit from Web option, link to the lesson via Google Docs, and fill in additional information like description, topic, tags, and Ohio standards. After submission, INFOhio reviews and approves the lesson. Now other educators will be able to search for and use the lesson on Open Space.
