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US Education Department Encourages Schools To #GoOpen With Educational Resources
from the !proprietary dept.
Editorial Projects in Education reports [edweek.org]
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 [edweek.org], and adaptive-learning company Knewton recently launched a new platform to bring its technology to the open-content marketplace [edweek.org]. 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 [edweek.org].
The Alexandria (Virginia) News has more names and more specifics [alexandrianews.org].
