Many of you know that I have gotten very involved in the area of open educational resources (OER) as a tool for differentiating instruction.
If you aren’t familiar, OER are materials used for teaching and learning that are free from copyright restrictions or are publicly licensed for anyone to use, adapt, and redistribute. One example of an open license is Creative Commons.
I got interested in this area because of the need to be able to modify and “remix” materials in order to differentiate instruction, using tools like netbooks….and also out of a disillusionment with how much money is spent on textbooks that often aren’t even used.
I am working on a new project now to look at the feasibility of producing a core curriculum offering that is open-licensed. It could be distributed in a variety of formats, including print and electronic. Initially, we are looking at middle school math as a content area.
As a part of this, we are gathering ideas from teachers and administrators on what they’d like to see in a product like this. We want to talk with administrators and teachers to get their ideas to make sure that this new OER product meets their needs.
If you are interested, email me at Karen AT k12opened DOT com. Thank you.