Educator Resources & Tools

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 across the state in topic-focused groups, and 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.

Curating with Open Space

INFOhio developed Open Space to provide Ohio's PreK-12 educators a platform to curate, collaborate, create, and share high-quality teaching and learning resources. With a free Open Space account, you can save your favorite resources to your personal folder for easy access or to groups to share with others, link content to your learning management system, add new materials, start or join our wide range of groups.

For more information about finding, creating, and sharing resources on Open Space, consult the following resources:

• All submissions to Open Space must meet minimum requirements for quality and accessibility. Please read the Open Space Submission rubric before submitting content for publication in Open Space. You may find it helpful to use the Open Space Submission Form to track your submission progress.
• Finding Educational Resources with Educator Tools and Open Space summarizes Educator Tools and Open Space, offers example searches, and use cases.
• Finding and Integrating Open Educational Resources is an article that describes open resources, how to search for what you need, and ways to include them in a class.
• Creating and Sharing Open Educational Resources describes how to start curating or creating to add learning materials to Open Space.

Ohio organizations and educational agencies can partner with INFOhio to contribute their content to Open Space, making it easier for Ohio educators to find and use it. If your organization has learning materials available for PreK-12 education, please reach out to us at support.infohio.org and let us know you’re interested in sharing!

Collaborating with Open Space

Open Space groups can help support discussion collaboration among Ohio educators, enable professional learning networks, and provide virtual spaces for a wide range of groups and teams.

For more information about collaborating on Open Space, see the following resources:

• Community and Collaboration with Open Space Groups is a recorded webinar that describes the uses, features, and use cases of groups in Open Space, how to join or create a group, and ways to engage others.
• Open Space Groups for Users is a guide that documents all of the features and uses of groups in Open Space. It can also be added to new groups to help members get acclimated to the group.

Policies and Procedures

All Ohio PreK-12 educators are welcome in Open Space! Before joining, please read these Open Space procedures:

• INFOhio Open Space OER Commons Platform Privacy Procedure
• INFOhio Open Space OER Commons Intellectual Property Rights Procedure
• INFOhio Open Space OER Commons Terms of Service

• Getting Started with Open Space Video Tutorial (INFOhio on YouTube)
• INFOhio Open Space Rubric for Material Submission Review
• Learn With INFOhio Webinar: Community and Collaboration with Open Space Groups
• Monday Mini Lessons: Using INFOhio Tools to Design Learning Experiences (INFOhio on YouTube)
• Open Space Basics Class (INFOhio Learning Pathways)
• Open Space Collaboration and Creation Class (INFOhio Learning Pathways)
• Session 2: Open Space: Harnessing the Power of Open Educational Resources
• Session 3: Reimagine Your PreK–5 Classroom with Quality Materials from INFOhio
• Session 4: Reimagine Your 6–12 Classroom with Quality Materials from INFOhio