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Editorial Projects in Education reports
To promote wider use of open educational resources by states and schools, the U.S. Department of Education proposed [October 29] a new regulation that would require any new intellectual property developed with grant funds from the department to be openly licensed.
That would make such materials available for free use, revision, and sharing by anyone. It would also represent a big, federally supported step away from the textbook publishing industry, long a backbone of K-12 education in the U.S.
[...] The announcement is just one part of the department's new #GoOpen campaign. At an Open Education Symposium being hosted [October 29] in Washington by the department and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, school districts, and companies pledged to support the new drive for [Open Educational Resources] (OER).
A group of 10 districts in California, Delaware, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin, as well as Department of Defense schools, are pledging to replace at least one textbook with openly licensed educational resources within the next year. So-called "Ambassador Districts" that already use OER--including Virginia's Chesterfield County schools and Pennsylvania's Upper Perkiomen schools--also committed help other districts make similar moves.
[...] The American Association of Publishers, and the software industry association that represents education technology companies, responded to the announcement with reservations.
[...] The department's efforts are just the latest step in a growing trend toward open educational content. Efforts in the U.S. Senate to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act have included language that would encourage schools to use OER, and adaptive-learning company Knewton recently launched a new platform to bring its technology to the open-content marketplace. States such as New York have robust existing initiatives to develop and share open content, and last spring, California-based nonprofit the Learning Accelerator announced contracts with 10 companies to develop open materials for 12 states.
The Alexandria (Virginia) News has more names and more specifics.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2015, @12:47AM
Use only free software. Teaching students to use proprietary software only encourages them to be slaves for life, and that is not something schools should encourage. Schools should stand for education and independence, not subservience to corporate overlords who keep the inner workings of their software a secret.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday November 17 2015, @01:25AM
Yes! 3 thumbs up! (ermmm... 3 huh.... ermmmm....)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday November 17 2015, @07:52AM
Zaphod [wikipedia.org]? Is that you?
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2015, @05:14AM
And like knowledge, software can be copied, instantly, perfectly and at no cost.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday November 17 2015, @01:24PM
> Schools should stand for education and independence, not subservience to corporate overlords who keep the inner workings of their software a secret.
Are you sure you're using a copy of the US Approved Citizen Dictionary (c)? Mine's is the other way around.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2015, @07:11PM
"An Open Letter to All Grantmakers and Donors On Copyright And Patent Policy In a Post-Scarcity Society"
http://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html [pdfernhout.net]
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations."