I’m working on some product plans and business models for open textbooks in K-12 and have been thinking a lot about how “textbook-like” they need to be to get broad adoption. A lot of the work in OER is reform-driven,
Education already has a “public option”
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
The equity agenda
I was at a meeting to discuss OER where a very salient point was made. As the group tried to articulate a consensus position on the important principles of using OER, Glen Thomas, the Secretary of Education for California talked
Four letters: CC BY
I was in a series of policy meetings on OER this week. One of the big discussion areas was on definitions and language. I have written already about my concern with the confusion between digital, free, and open that I
The effectiveness of textbooks
As various folks are talking about open ed and open textbooks, there are often discussions of whether textbooks are an effective instructional tools at all. To me, that isn’t really the point. The effectiveness of instruction and the degree to