If you are looking for a list of locations to locate open course materials check out this post. After discussing Massive Online Open Course (as in MOOC) they post turns to Top Universities and Program - sharing some of the leading platforms today as well as partnerships with other universities and colleges.
It then goes on to share sources for open content:
* Libraries and Archives
* Databases and Search Engines
* Podcasts and Lectures
* Subscription Services
Chances are you may find a link or two (or more) to some open course materials you have not seen in the past.
Unfortunately (and not addressed in this post) a number of sites have posted that Flat World Knowledge will not be offering free textbooks beginning in January 2013. They were one of the first sites to offer open education resources. It appears that venture capital has come into play and may be a reason for this shift.
Many students are not aware that there is an "invisible web" that may be searched, one that is not quite so easy to find but has more information than Google provides (which tends to look at the "Surface Web"). According to this post Google has indexed "roughly 200 terabytes" while the size of the Internet is estimated at "5 million terabytes" of information.
The post provides a look at what is not found through Google (or other common search engines) and then shares:
* A list of Open Access Journal Databases (with over 10 databases with descriptions)
* A list of Invisible Search Engines. Quoting from the post "The search engines that deliver results from the invisible web are distinctly different. Narrower in scope, these deep web engines tend to access only a single type of data…deep web searches tend to be more thoughtful in their initial query requirements." Ten search engines are listed and there is a short description for each.
* A list of subject-specific databases in the following areas
- Art & Design
- Business
- Legal & Social Services
- Science & Technology
- Healthcare
Although this post is geared to students in college there are resources that may be used by students in middle or high school provided, and as teachers it is important for us to learn more about this "invisible web" and to share it with our students.