Here is an important update on the Open Educational Resources Commons (OER Commons) –

http://bit.ly/eDXl3

If you have been tracking my long-term activities, you know I’ve advocated open educational content for more than a decade. It has not been easy… just a lot of fun. There are vast entrenched interests.

Anyway, here is an update of an important effort. Great example of the value networks mindset and deliberate community activism achieving favorable outcomes.

“Generally, an open textbook has a license allowing it to be used, shared, modified, and printed without charge to the user. Covering a wide range of disciplines, open textbooks can be available to download and print in various file formats from the content provider or an OER repository. Open textbooks include public domain books, existing textbooks with alternative licensing, and new textbooks created specifically as OER. Offered for free online, they can also include easy ways to print low-cost and customizable sections or entire copies of the book.”

See:

http://bit.ly/sJqfV

Get involved!

• Tag, rate, or review an open textbook on a site like OER Commons.
• Consider contributing material you've created to an open textbook.
• Use open textbooks in your teaching and learning and discuss your experiences with colleagues and in discussions online.
• Encourage your institution to adopt open textbooks.

Background:

“ISKME (www.iskme.org) is an independent, nonprofit institute that helps schools, colleges, universities, and the organizations that support them expand their capacity to collect and share information, apply it to well-defined problems, and create human-centered, knowledge-driven environments focused on learning and success. ISKME achieves this goal by conducting social science research and evaluation, developing innovation, and facilitating field building.

Since its founding in 2002, ISKME has been at the forefront of knowledge innovations in education. For example: ISKME published the first monograph on knowledge management in education, called Knowledge Management in Education: Defining the Field, which has been downloaded by thousands of people in over 80 countries; and ISKME has helped to formulate and advance a research agenda for education focusing on continuous improvement, open educational resources, the use of student achievement data, the development of cultures of inquiry, and the use of knowledge for decision-making -- issues that have now become common goals if not yet common practices in education.

ISKME's OER initiatives transform how educators and learners engage with each other in participatory improvement of teaching and learning. With its expertise in building innovations, infrastructure and partnerships to facilitate knowledge sharing, ISKME assists in catalyzing teachers and learners to shift from a consumer culture for educational resources, to one in which they have the leadership and support to adapt and develop resources for their own needs, and then share those resources with others. This is a model in which open source technologies and open content truly make it possible to blend the role of teacher and learner.”

Knowledge Management in Education: Defining the Field

http://bit.ly/16Z6yR

Please share this update broadly.