Celebrating Open Education Week with Open Educational Resources | DipNote

"March 7-11 marks Open Education Week: a perfect opportunity to celebrate the potential of open educational resources, or OER.  Open educational resources are teaching and learning materials that have intellectual property licenses allowing free use and repurposing. Today thousands of open educational resources enable instruction and learning, ranging from MIT OpenCourseWare’s full courses and OpenStax’s college textbooks to the individual lesson plans and tools available on OER Commons. While the “free use” part is exciting, I am more intrigued by the potential opportunities to edit and adapt open educational resources in new contexts. Educators anywhere can borrow open materials from their peers around the world: students in Jordan and Lebanon can use and adapt materials produced in the United States, and U.S. students can learn from materials developed in India or South Africa. The materials can spark new dialogues, creating opportunities for teachers and students everywhere to interact. Open educational resources increasingly allow us to connect, share, and engage across borders and cultures. And they will play a significant role in helping achieve United Nations Sustainability Goal #4 -- adopted by the U.S. and other General Assembly member countries in 2015 -- to 'ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote life-long learning.' In the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, we are thrilled to collaborate with government officials and civil society representatives to increase the number and availability of government-funded open educational resources ..."