Peer Review

Amazon Inspire

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Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: Amazon Inspire is a service that provides educators a place to discover, manage, rate, review, and share open educational resources. Teachers, schools, districts, and third-party publishers contribute to the Amazon Inspire Library of instructional resources across the country. Amazon Inspire will help educators discover digital resources, benefit and learn from the work of their peers, and help improve the quality of education across the country. Amazon Inspire Library supports usuage of Creative Commons licensed Open Educational Resources and welcomes your feedback and support.
Type of Material:: Collection
Recommended Uses:: Teachers can use the provided index to search for material that they can use.They can also upload their lessons for others to use. The materials can be used for individual, team, and self-paced exercises in class and in homework.
Technical Requirements:: some downloads might require plugins
Identify Major Learning Goals:: This resource allows teachers to post lesson plans that can be shared as a Open Access resource. It is a collection service that helps educators find Open Access material for their classes.
Target Student Population:: in-service and pre-service teachers and teacher educators
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: Must be able to search and download material.

Rating:
Strengths:: The content quality is rich in variety and purpose. When we searched on the key word Hamlet we found exercises on "Armour in Hamlet" and "To Be or Not to Be- The Evolution of Hamlet's Personality" and other lessons that allow teachers to broaden the range of the normal assignments. Many of our searches revealed as many as 15+ suggestions. There is a wide range of subject areas.
Concerns:: None.

Rating:
Strengths:: Materials reviewed addressed specific content applications for use. The materials are wide ranging and organized by discipline.
Concerns:: Educators who use the site must log in. It appears that it is up to the individual author to monitor the quality of the material, so users should be aware of this. The Amazon Inspire site lists qualities that are expected in the resources, but there does not appear to be any monitoring of uploads.

Rating:
Strengths:: Search results give extended information about the source. Results show who submitted the material. Site review ratings can give users some idea of the quality of the material.
Concerns:: None.

Other Issues and Comments:: This is another option for educators searching for Open Educational Resources. Sources are indicated and teachers are able to review materials.
Creative Commons: