THERE IS A looming discontent in the education world. Karen has dropped out of community college because her textbook costs exceeded her tuition bill. Eric, a third grader, must share his math textbook with his classmate because there aren’t enough textbooks for all of the students. Juan’s parents can’t help him with his homework because they don’t read English. Kelly, a science teacher, wonders whether Pluto will be reinstated as a planet by the time it is removed from her school’s science textbooks. Rashid, a master teacher, is examining some of the 109,263 errors recently found in textbooks under review by the Texas State Board of Education. Patrick, a premedical student, is struggling to understand Newton’s laws of motion from the text, formulas, and pictures in his textbook. Carla, an elementary school teacher, must purchase music materials out-of-pocket for her fourth-grade class due to a reduced school budget. And John, a university professor, is astonished to learn that the book he published three years ago is already out of print.
The buzz surrounding the high cost, limited access, static nature, and often low quality of the world’s textbooks has reached a crescendo lately, with many claiming a serious threat to the future of the next generation, the training of work forces worldwide, and the democratic process in society. The current predicament lowers the quality of education in the developed world; even worse, it puts
education out of reach for many in the developing world.
Imagine another world that has forestalled this crisis. A world where textbooks and other learning materials are free for all on the Web, available in low-cost printed versions, adapted to many backgrounds and learning styles, interactive and immersive, translated into myriad languages, continually up to date and corrected, and never out of print. Imagine virtual labs that can be used any hour of the day (or night). While this world was just a dream a decade ago, the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement that aims to create it has begun to coalesce and gather momentum.
enter open educational Resources The OER movement is based on a set of intuitions shared by a wide range of academics: knowledge should be free
and open to use and reuse; collaboration should be easier, not more difficult; people should receive credit and kudos for contributing to education and research; and concepts and ideas are linked in unusual and surprising ways, not necessarily the simple linear forms that today’s textbooks present. OERs promise to fundamentally change the way authors, instructors, and students interact worldwide. 1, 3, 4
The OER movement takes the inspiration of the open source software movement, mixes in the powerful communication and visualization abilities of the Internet and the Web, and applies the result to teaching and learning materials like course notes, curricula, labs, and textbooks. OERs include text, images, audio, video, interactive simulations, problems and answers, and games that are free to use and reuse in new ways by
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