Open Educational Resources in the „Cyfrowa szkoła” (Digital School) National Program in Poland. « Creative Commons Polska

“Digital School” (program website) is the newest governmental program dealing with the use of ICT in Polish schools and raising ICT competences. The program is divided into four segments: e-school (infrastructure and equipment for schools), e-teacher (teacher trainings), e-student (ICT equipment for students) and e-resources (creating open textbooks, redesign of Scholaris, the national platform for educational resources, and production of ICT tools for school management). The program was formally adopted on the 4th of April 2012 through a resolution of the Council of Ministers of Poland. The program is officially called ‘The governmental program for the development of pupils’ and teachers’ competences with regard to the use of information-communication technologies – „Digital School”‘... In the years 2012-2013, the project is in its pilot phase, aimed for 380 primary schools in Poland. The goal of the pilot is to determine the best selection of ICT equipment and methods for raising teachers’ competences in teaching with the use of ICT... The „Cyfrowa szkoła” program differs  from similar projects conducted previously in Poland in two crucial aspects. Firstly, it will provide ICT equipment directly to students, and not just to schools... Secondly, instead of focusing solely on the provision of equipment, it is devised as a balanced set of different measures, divided into four above mentioned segments. „Cyfrowa szkoła” is also the first Polish program to fund open textbooks and the first major governmental OER program in Poland... The „e-resources” segment of the program includes the creation of three types of resources: [1] e-textbooks (which in Poland are a specific type of content that requires certification by the Ministry of Education in order to be designated as such) [2] other educational resources made available on Scholaris, a national  „knowledge  base for teachers” (http://www.scholaris.pl/) [3] educational TV programs for schools, prepared by the public broadcaster  Telewizja Polska (TVP) and made available on its educational platform Altogether, approximately 56 million Polish Złoty will be made available in this segment, with the majority of the funds (45 million Polish Złoty) assigned to the production of e-textbooks. According to the resolution of the Council of Ministers, all content funded by the program which is subject to copyright or database protection law will be: [1] made available under the Creative Commons Attribution license or another free license – one that allows use of resources and their derivatives without payments and in an unlimited, nonexclusive manner; [2] made available in at least one open format (with full specification available without technical and legal limitations); [3] in the case of Web access, made available in accordance with the current W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)... The Center for Development of Education (ORE) is responsible for the creation of the e-textbooks... Coalition  For Open Education... published in June 2012 recommendations for the program, with a focus on the resources segment. The recommendations point to challenges related to accessibility, open standards and quality management in the process of e-textbook creation, at the same time praising the program for adopting an exemplary model of content openness )... The program has been criticized by commercial educational publishers, who question the quality of publicly funded e-textbooks and point to negative effects which in their opinion the program will have on the Polish textbook market by creating a content monopoly.”