I see several advantages to this movement. The first being a tremendous financial savings. I would like to see the cost savings applied to educational technology infrastructure and devices. Another advantage is that the materials will not be limited by publishing costs and timelines driven by for profit companies. The information can be kept current and up-to-date. Lastly, it allows educators to design instruction that fits their teaching style and their students' needs. This is the biggest and most significant change we could see from OERs. It can sometimes be difficult to differentiate when using canned curriculum. If teachers have OERs available to them, they would have several options for extension and enrichment, as well as, modified resources for at risk and special ed students.
I do fear that there could be a few pitfalls to the OER movement. The first being the accuracy of the resources. Like anything else found online, you have to make sure that the information is accurate and appropriate. Another concern I have, like so many other educators, is time. The time it will take to search for and implement the resources could be extensive. It's easy to get lost in the database and lose focus. The few OERs I've looked at seem to have powerful search features and filters which will hopefully prevent a significant loss of time.
I am going to devote some time to exploring OERs to see how they might fit into my instruction. If you're interested in learning more, check out http://ioer.ilsharedlearning.org/ and https://www.oercommons.org/
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