Page - 54 - in Radical Solutions and Open Science - An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education

Chapter4 AHiddenDream:OpenEducational Resources SaidaAffounehandZuheirN.Khlaif Abstract Open-sourcematerials are being used for education in a variety of con- texts, and educators can reuse them to achieve different objectives in both higher education and public education. Educators in Palestine are using open education resources for professional development to improve their performanceand learning. There are different advantages to open education resources; for example, they can reduce trainingcosts, aswell as the timeandeffort requiredbystudents andeduca- tors.Differentopenresourceshaveemerged inPalestine, suchasMOOCsandopen learningobjects forK-12. KeywordsOpeneducation resources ·MOOCs ·Professionaldevelopment 4.1 Introduction Searching for new knowledge, good practices, recent articles and upcoming con- ferences is an interesting and rich experience nowadays.With one click, you can download hundreds of pages of eBooks and tens of articles in a fewminutes. This wasnot the case in the early eighties,whereyouhad to travel formiles to libraries and bookshops in order to be able to copy an article or the cover page of a recent book. It is only possible due to the current information and technology revolution, whichhasaffectedall aspectsofhumanlife, suchaseducation,communicationand work. Myownexperienceseemsveryexciting.FromthetimeIwasachild, Iwaseager to learn. I was born into a big family with many siblings and limited resources, andwas always trying to savemoney in order to buy books to read (Saida’s own experience). That ledme to read very cheap books or any affordable magazines; many times, I read the newspapers ormymom’s novels, whichwere usually not suitableforchildren.Mypassionforreadingwasenoughtomotivatemetocontinue S.Affouneh (B) ·Z.N.Khlaif An-NajahNationalUniversity,OldBuilding,Nablus,Palestine e-mail: s.affouneh@najah.edu Z.N.Khlaif e-mail: zkhlaif@najah.edu ©TheAuthor(s)2020 D.Burgos (ed.),RadicalSolutionsandOpenScience,LectureNotes inEducationalTechnology,https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4276-3_4 57