Microsoft to integrate OER curricula into Office 365 apps

"In a major coup for open educational resources (OER), the nonprofit publisher Open Up Resources announced this week it will begin integrating its award-winning curricula into Microsoft's OneNote and Forms, part of Office 365 for Education. Just as Open Up Resources provides access to its OER curricula at no cost, Microsoft makes Office 365 for Education free to educators and students. This collaboration will give hundreds of school districts a free, classroom-friendly digital platform for existing and planned curriculum blocks offered by Open Up Resources, and it'll give them an easy option to adopt and use OER. “This is a program platform that every school district in the United States is already licensed for,” said Larry Singer, CEO of Open Up Resources, referring to Office 365. “There’s never been a full course curriculum online. … What we like about the OneNote environment is that it’s intuitive to use.” Microsoft engineers worked with Open Up’s curriculum experts to bring the openly licensed content into the OneNote environment. “For us, this [OneNote] platform wasn’t built intentionally for education; it was hard for us to figure out how the engineering would work,” Singer said...."