The availability of high-quality, low-cost digital content in our schools is a priority for the President and a pillar of his
ConnectED Initiative. Fostering the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in our nation’s classrooms can help meet this goal. Open Educational Resources have the potential to provide students and teachers access to a universe of high-quality, up-to-date content that can be tailored by educators to reflect new developments and current events on the fly. OER can also reduce the cost of purchasing necessary educational resources, so that schools can redirect funds for other instructional needs. We believe this approach can foster greater collaboration between cultural institutions and schools when digital collections of openly licensed resources are tapped for classroom use. However, significant barriers remain to the efficient discovery, curation, delivery, use, and reuse of OER in classrooms that impede wide adoption and routine use of OER as an alternative to costly curriculum materials.
The Office of Educational Technology is currently developing a plan for a national initiative to fulfill the President’s vision and is seeking the DPLA community's engagement on the best ways to address barriers preventing wide-spread adoption of OER. We hope this workshop draws a diverse group of attendees interested in discussing and sharing ideas for how we can work to increase the use of existing Open Educational Resources in America's K-12 classrooms.
Notes available at
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jvFt-4wC9yRA4hwrfeFzwC7Q_KikSR6kJTDb4dMlO7E&authuser=1
