legislation

Rethinking Instructional Materials

Posted by on February 8, 2010 in Uncategorized

Late last year, the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), an organization that helps support state board leaders and provides education on a variety of issues, convened a forum of state board of education members and other state and national education leaders to discuss the role of the states in the adoption of instructional materials and what new opportunities exist, particularly with respect to open-licensed curriculum. This is particularly relevant in the context of state budget challenges, the common standards push, increased focus on technology, and copyright innovations like open licenses.

As a result of that forum, NASBE published the policy update “Rethinking the State Role in Instructional Materials Adoption: Opportunities for Innovation and Cost Savings.”

This report provides a good overview of the opportunities for OER in K-12, as well as summaries of what states like Indiana, California, and Texas are doing in this area. It is a valuable piece to share with policymakers, public officials, school administrators, educators, and others who could benefit from knowledge about OER in K-12 education.

The conclusions and recommendations in this report are insightful. Leadership attention to them bodes well for the potential of OER to bring real innovation to our schools.

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Education already has a “public option”

Posted by on October 7, 2009 in Uncategorized

Recently, there has been a lot of fed policy activity on open ed, including the introductions of the Durbin open textbook bill and the Foster Open Source Textbook act [sic...open source applies to software, not OER, but we'll leave that aside for now], as well as talk about an “Online Skills Laboratory” for open online courses.

These efforts have been called “misguided” by some and have received more criticism than one might expect. I mean, who can argue with initiatives to bring free, open educational resources to the masses? Many, apparently.

One of the big arguments seems to be that this is some effort to enact a government-takeover of the commercial publishing industry. I suppose this argument is to be expected with the publishers having an extremely well-funded and active lobbying effort (which is being quoted frequently in these discussions). Comparing the OER movement to the health care “public option” seems a bit absurd to me though. Didn’t most of us get into (public) education precisely because, in the U.S., education is public, free, and available to all? (See previous post on the equity agenda.)

An important sidenote is that these proposed initiatives do not aim to subsume commercial initiatives. Many, in fact, just try to assure that public funds, such as federal grants, that are already directed at materials development result in publicly-accessible materials. Public funds for the public good seems like good sense to me. And no one is forced to apply for these funds or to open license materials developed on their own dime.

Some have also claimed that it’s not clear what problem these initiatives are trying to solve, given that there are a plethora of high-quality, commercially-produced educational resources already out there. These folks are missing the most significant driver behind OER: The pedagogical demand for open resources comes from the need to differentiate instruction. Remixing content has become a vital way to reach and empower learners of all levels; however, remixing most commercially-published content is prohibited. The publishers are very invested in preserving this status quo, time and time again refusing schools’ requests to give them this ability.

Open-licensed content gives educators and students the ability to remix and redistribute educational content in the way that is best for each learner’s particular learning style. This kind of differentiation is a fundamental part of ensuring every learner’s success.

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