Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open Educational Resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.
Open Educational Resources have been available online for the more than a decade. In recent years, several foundations have made significant financial investments to produce new high-quality Open Educational Resources that can be used in both formal and informal learning environments. Here are some links to get you started. khan academy, cnx, flat world knowledge, curriki, wikipedia, saylor, mit, p2pu, ck12, siyavula, oer commons
Open educational resources are inextricably bound up with intellectual property issues, as most educational content is protected under conventional copyright terms that must be honored. Creative Commons, an organisation that provides ready-made licensing agreements that are less restrictive than the "all rights reserved" terms of standard international copyright, is a "critical infrastructure service for the OER movement."