Delaware’s Department of Education announced Monday it’s launching a statewide initiative focused on using more open educational resources.
These are teaching materials in the public domain and free to use, distribute and repurpose. They’re typically in a digital form and include full courses, textbooks, software or any other teaching tools and techniques.
“You know a lot of time you can find free resources on the internet, but they still have some type of copyright associated with them. You can’t freely use them and remix them," said Wayne Hartschuh, executive director of the Delaware Center for Educational Technology.
Open educational resources, however, are free to use, remix and redistribute. This allows teachers and school districts to share resources and information with their counterparts in states across the nation.
Hartschuh said the Go Open initiative will be the difference between teaching from a single textbook and having an online repository of thousands of vetted teaching resources.
A repository is a key component of the state’s Go Open initiative. It will be a state-maintained site where all of these resources can be shared.
The state plans to implement open educational resources in the classroom by the time the new school year starts next fall.