U.S. Department of Education Recognizes 13 States and 40 Districts Committing to #GoOpen with Open Educational Resources: OpenEd.com.
Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced a new cohort of statewide #GoOpen initiatives: 13 states have committed to support school districts and educators as they shift to high-quality, openly-licensed educational resources. These statewide efforts join an expanding network of #GoOpen districts and technology partners working to ensure that teachers and students can access the tools, content, and professional supports needed for connected, digital learning.
“Openly-licensed educational resources expand equity by giving every student, regardless of zip code, access to high-quality instructional materials that can be kept current and relevant,” said Acting U.S. Education Secretary John King. “The leadership and collaboration of these #GoOpen states and districts are vital to growing and sustaining this movement and to reshaping our schools for the digital age.”
State and district leaders were honored at the #GoOpen Exchange, a convening of educators, ed‑tech innovators, and nonprofit partners focused on accelerating the adoption of openly-licensed educational resources (OER). At the event, several technology providers announced new platform capabilities to integrate OER and to share resource metadata through the Department’s Learning Registry. Those integrations are intended to make openly-licensed materials discoverable no matter where educators begin their search.
“States can catalyze and scale education innovation by connecting forward-thinking educators, sharing effective practices widely, and amplifying local successes,” said Joseph South, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the Department. “By launching statewide #GoOpen initiatives, states are helping districts build an open digital ecosystem of resources that increases access and empowers teachers.”
Openly-licensed resources offer a practical way to improve access to high-quality learning materials across the country. Districts that adopt OER can reallocate funds previously spent on traditional textbooks to support technology, professional learning, and other priorities that strengthen instruction.
“Moving to openly-licensed materials allows districts to free up budget dollars once tied to static textbooks and redirect those resources toward a sustainable digital transition,” said Andrew Marcinek, Open Education Advisor at the Department.
#GoOpen Commitments:
At the Exchange, states, districts, nonprofit organizations, and companies made concrete commitments to expand access to open educational resources and support districts as they adopt and scale OER.
● Thirteen states—Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin—are launching statewide #GoOpen initiatives to help districts expand their use of high-quality, openly-licensed materials. Details about these state commitments are available here.
● Thirty-one #GoOpen Launch Districts pledged to replace at least one traditional textbook with openly-licensed resources within the next year. These launch districts will partner with ambassador districts and technology providers to develop lasting capacity for OER implementation. More information on district commitments can be found here.
● Nine #GoOpen Ambassador Districts will mentor launch districts as they design and implement their OER strategies. Ambassador districts have already begun district-wide adoption of openly-licensed materials and will share lessons learned and proven practices.
● The Center for Digital Education, together with Inquiry Schools and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), is producing a practical guide for districts making the digital conversion to OER. The guide will include checklists, strategies, and case studies drawn from #GoOpen districts to support curriculum selection and implementation.
● ASCD will provide professional learning resources for #GoOpen districts, including an interactive workbook and an online course to help educators adopt, adapt, and integrate openly-licensed materials into classroom practice. ASCD has also published case studies highlighting district-level #GoOpen work.
● Creative Commons will work with education platforms to integrate open licensing and best practices, making it easier to find and reuse openly-licensed resources. CC will also lead hands-on workshops nationwide to support districts as they scale OER use and empower teachers to create, customize, and share materials.
● Amazon Education is supporting the #GoOpen vision by providing infrastructure and developer support for the Department’s Learning Registry, which runs on AWS Cloud, for two years. This support aims to keep the Learning Registry robust and freely available to the nation’s roughly 15,000 school districts so educators can easily discover and share OER.
● Edmodo will integrate its Edmodo Spotlight resource-sharing platform into the core Edmodo experience, making it easier for millions of teachers to create and share openly-licensed content. Spotlight resources use Creative Commons licenses and will be discoverable through the Learning Registry. Edmodo will continue to be a free platform for communication, collaboration, and open content discovery.
● Microsoft announced an LTI app that brings openly-licensed resources into learning management systems and publisher platforms such as Canvas and Moodle, powered by OpenEd.com’s query API and resource effectiveness ratings. Microsoft also enhanced Docs.com to help educators create, discover, rate, and share openly-licensed materials and to support metadata and licensing for reuse.
● ISKME’s OER Commons offers a public digital library of OER with curated collections from hundreds of providers and tools for authoring, remixing, and evaluating resources. OER Commons is adding K–12 metadata to the Learning Registry and introducing new content creation and remixing tools to better support educators.
● Follett will add Learning Registry search and access to its Destiny solution beginning in fall 2016, simplifying collaboration between librarians and teachers to find and use openly-licensed resources. Destiny is used by tens of thousands of K–12 schools to provide access to educational materials.
The #GoOpen Exchange received generous support from Amazon Education.
For more information about #GoOpen commitments from states, districts, and technology partners, visit http://tech.ed.gov/open.