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OpenStax Provides High-Quality OER for Texas Schools

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

Why OER?

OpenStax was created out of a desire to break down the most common barriers to education, offering free access to high-quality learning materials that are kept always up-to-date. We’re a nonprofit based at Rice University that got our start in 1999 as the Connexions project, offering an online platform where anyone could publish and share content under an open license that allows others to reuse and remix the content. Fast forward to 2012: the modern-day OpenStax was born when we published the first of what is now 29 openly licensed college textbooks on OpenStax.org.

Our goal was to offer peer-reviewed, scope-and sequence-aligned college textbooks online to students for free, focusing on the highest-enrolled introductory college courses to maximize our impact. Today, OpenStax books are used by a myriad of readers, including college students at Stanford University and at Maricopa community colleges, high school students at South Houston High School and at St. Augustine’s College Preparatory School in New Jersey, EMS trainees for the State of Alaska, members of NASA’s Solar System Ambassadors program, and schools on every continent but Antartica. Our library spans disciplines in math, science, social science, and humanities – and we’re not done.

Moving OER into K-12

OEROpenStax began creating textbooks with college students in mind. But along the way, we saw that high schools were adopting the textbooks for use in Advanced Placement classes. Taking our cues from the needs of these teachers, we created a line of books for AP courses as a first foray into K-12 content, working with AP consultants and high school curriculum experts to re-purpose our content to prepare high school students for the AP test. Our library of Advanced Placement books on OpenStax.org currently includes Biology for AP® Courses, Principles of Macroeconomics for AP® Courses 2e, Principles of Microeconomics for AP® Courses 2e, and College Physics for AP® Courses.

Partnership with TEA

Last year, we got an opportunity to further expand into K-12 content through our partnership with the Texas Education Agency (TEA). We received a grant to develop seven TEKS-aligned high school textbooks specifically for Texas classrooms, available for free through the TEA-maintained Texas Gateway as of last fall. (The AP books are also aligned with AP frameworks.) We worked with Texas teachers to ensure that the content was aligned with the structures and standards of Texas classrooms and included appropriate level and variety. We also developed TEKS-aligned ancillary materials to accompany the books. Texas teachers can use any of these books in their classrooms at any time, completely free.

OEROur TEA Statistics, AP® Macroeconomics, AP® Microeconomics, Physics, AP® Physics 1: Algebra-Based, AP® Physics 2: Algebra-Based, and AP® Biology books are all currently available in the Texas Gateway. You can see the entire listing here. Each book includes interactives and videos within the content. Any teacher can use these books by accessing the direct links or by visiting www.TexasGateway.org, searching the term “OpenStax” from the homepage, and selecting the OpenStax resources. Once you find your subject, you can start using the content immediately. Some teachers choose to use the entire book; others elect to assign certain chapters along with other content they have selected for their course. Some teachers use parts of the books as supplementary material for courses in other subjects — for example, using sections of the High School Physics book for an astronomy class. The content is available to be used in whatever way best fits the needs of teachers’ respective classes. It’s that simple.

Shifting $$ Elsewhere

In higher ed, we’re focused on relieving students of the need to spend hundreds of dollars per year on required textbooks. In K-12, the focus shifts to making sure district budgets are not a barrier for teachers to have access to up-to-date content for their classes. OERRather than being held hostage to an individual provider’s resource, educators have the opportunity to adapt our content or pull it into different digital platforms and tools to make it perfect for their particular class or school. And now, districts have the opportunity to reallocate funds they had for textbooks and use them on other essential educational tools like lab equipment and professional development.

The Future

OpenStax is working towards further developments in content and technology to improve not only access, but learning, including the development of an easy-to-use personalized learning courseware. We see a future in which developments in technology, offered with open and adaptable content, offer increasing opportunities for students to have the information and learning support they need to help them succeed in school, career, and beyond. We won’t stop working to make that happen.

OERAs managing director of OpenStax, Daniel Williamson guides the organization in saving students across the country millions of dollars. He has dedicated the past ten years of his life to developing education startups from conception to culmination, with specialties in open education, content development, ed tech, consumer intelligence, management, and quality assurance.

Advanced Placement® and AP® are trademarks registered and/or owned by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse, this content.

Photo credits: OpenStax, Jemel Agulto, and Texas Education Agency

 

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OER
CTO/CIOEducational TrendsFunding

Finding Quality OER Made Easy

by Jennifer Bergland
written by Jennifer Bergland

*Updated 01/02/2020: Added ClipSafari as a resource.

When a teacher, school, or district makes the decision to begin creating and using Open Educational Resources (OER), they must decide if they are going to create their own materials, use materials already created, or adapt existing OER to meet the instructional goals of their students.

My advice is to adapt existing materials. There are so many resources available now that it makes sense to curate existing resources and tweak or remix them as necessary. That’s the beauty of OER. Because the resources are tagged as open, they were designed to be adapted. You just need to be sure you know what Creative Commons license governs the use of the OER. Still confused about Creative Commons licenses?  See Miguel Guhlin’s blog post on the subject.

The question becomes then where to start. With all the resources available, you may be asking yourself “How do I find what I need?” Let’s see if I can help answer those questions. I’ve done a little curating myself to assist you in finding what you need. We’ll start by looking at using common search practices and wikis, then drill down to specific types of media, and end by looking at some specific sites for education.

General Searching for OER

  • Google: The most obvious place to start is to use the advanced Google search. Type in your search term; then, after you search for that term, click on Settings and select Advanced Search. 

OER

Then click on the Usage Rights menu and select the one that best fits  your need.

OER

  • CC Search: This sites allows you to search for items that have been tagged with a Creative Commons license over a variety of websites. But you need to note they don’t verify the results will actually be a Creative Commons licensed material. Also, it’s not a search engine, but rather they use various search engines. You select which search engine you want to use depending on the type of media you are looking for.

Wikis

Each of the Wikis included in the Wikimedia Foundation have a Creative Commons license for each wiki entry.

  • Wikibooks: This wiki has a collection of books that are openly licensed. I searched for U.S. History and found an online book of U.S. History. A district could take this content and add to and/or adapt the material to create a text on U.S. History. The wiki even includes photos that could be used. If you like it as it is, you can even create a PDF of the content.
  • Wikiversity: This is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. You can find learning resources for the arts, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, science, and technology.
  • Wiktionary: This wiki is a dictionary that offers permission to use their definitions in your OER. It includes the etymology of the word and even different translations of the word in other languages.
  • Wikisource:This wiki has items that are in the public domain, including government documents.
  • Wikipedia: This is the original open wiki. Since it has a Creative Commons license, the information can be used in an OER as long as you follow the license.

OER Images 

There are several really good sites that you can use to find photos or clip art for your OER.

  • Pixabay: Pixabay photos are public domain, but they also have some images for sale.
  • Unsplash: This is one of my new favorite sites to find free photos. The photos are beautiful, easy to identify and collect, and you are given the right to use, remix, and adapt for both non-commercial and commercial purposes. You are not required to give attribution for the photos you use. However, they make it really easy to give attribution, so I usually try to do so.OER
  • ClipSafari: This is a repository of high quality clip art images. All the images are available as PNG and SVG files. They are all licensed under the CO0 license, which is a public domain license, giving you permission to use copy, modify, and distribute as you like.
  • Wikimedia Commons: This is part of the Wikimedia family.

OER Videos

  • Use the CC Search tool to find YouTube videos that have a Creative Commons License, or when you are searching for a video within YouTube, put a comma after the search term and type  ‘creativecommons’. For example: ‘abraham lincoln,creativecommons’.
  • Vimeo: To find Vimeo videos that have a Creative Commons license, insert a search term on the main page and click enter. Then click on the Filter menu located on the left side of the page and click on one of the types of CC licenses you would like to use.
  • Internet Archive : This site has free movies, films, and videos. I found a 1955 TV show based on the characters in Huck Finn and another video titled “Mark Twain’s Mississippi.”  It focuses on the literary character of Huckleberry Finn to examine the Mississippi River’s influence on Mark Twain and his writing.

OER Audio Music

Education-Related OER

  • OER Commons:  This is a digital library of open educational resources. It also has the Open Author tool that helps you create your own resources, lessons, or modules. The advanced search tool allows you to drill down to find what you need. There is also a section for groups to work together on resources. These groups can be public or private. This is a national site, so most of the materials will be aligned to the Common Core standards. Teachers in Texas will need to realign them to the Texas TEKS.
  • Amazon Inspire: All materials in the Amazon Inspire have a Creative Commons license. The materials are either downloadable or links to pages. This site is still in a beta format.
  • Open-Up Resources: This is a non-profit that has open instructional materials for both math and ELA. Check out this blog post on their math curriculum.
  • The Texas Education Agency has partnered with Rice University’s OpenStax and Study Edge to develop some math OER specifically created for Texas schools.
  • The Orange Grove: This is Florida’s OER Repository.
  • cK12.org The CK-12 Foundation offers OER that can be adapted to suit the needs of a school, district, or student. El Paso ISD is using the CK-12 materials to build their own OER.
  • Kahn Academy : These are short tutorial videos on a wide variety of subjects and topics. Pre-assessment questions are included, as well as practice quizzes a student can take as she views the videos. The videos are actually stored in YouTube, so they may be embedded in an LMS, a website, or can be used on the Kahn Academy site.

Hopefully you are getting the idea that there are many places you and your team can find good quality OER. I have just scratched the surface. If you are coming to the 2018 TCEA convention (and if you aren’t, why not??), join Tom Murray and myself as we delve more into the topic of OER. Our session is on Wednesday, from 12:00 to 1:30. I hope to see you there. I’ll post the session resources here after the convention.

We Create photo by “My Life Through A Lens” on Unsplash and Passion Led Us Here photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

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open
CTO/CIOEducational Trends

Why and How El Paso ISD Went Open

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

Four years ago, my very first meeting with my new superintendent went something like this. Having never met him, I nervously walked into his office. After some introductions and minor chit-chat with a group of people around the table, we all sat down and he asked me this question: “Why do we buy textbooks?”

I struggled for a response and finally delivered the absolute worst answer that a superintendent hired to bring innovation to a school district could hear: “Because…we have always bought textbooks?”

Luckily, I believe that was the answer he was expecting to hear because no one else had offered a better answer. He looked at me and the other people in the room and asked rhetorically “Why do we pay for information that is already out there for free?”

It Starts by Asking Why

His question cuts to the heart of Open Educational Resources (OER) as learning tools. Why do we have to pay for information that is freely available? When you think about it, who owns the periodic table of elements? Who owns the water cycle? The list of prepositional phrases? Right triangles? The answer of course, is no one. That knowledge is in the public domain for everyone to learn and use. What we pay for is how that information is packaged and merchandised.  

OEROur district’s journey into OER had begun. During that meeting, I was tasked with finding out how our district could save money by creating our own textbooks using as many OER materials as possible. The district had just gone through the adoption process for science instructional materials and had estimated it would cost close to $2 million for 18,000 students. What if we could use that textbook money in another way? Perhaps to purchase technology for students?

Investigating Options

I remembered meeting a young lady at the 2012 TCEA Convention who worked with an organization called OERck12.org.  Being a nerd, I recorded an interview with her and posted it online. Revisiting that video, I soon contacted the folks at ck12.org.  They had textbooks in science and math through a system in which districts or schools could adopt and modify the texts to meet their instructional needs. This could enable us to add and subtract whatever we wanted (as long as the material was not copyrighted) and call them our own. The only caveat was that we had to share whatever we had created with the larger community.

Starting with Science

Within six months, EPISD had created, with the help of Ck12, four science textbooks: Integrated Physics and Chemistry, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. All were matched to our scope and sequences, as well as to the Texas standards. All were curated by our own teachers who knew our students’ needs better than any anonymous publisher in New York.

In the ensuing years, we have created more science, math, and social studies textbooks. All have been curated by EPISD teachers using OER collected from a wide variety of freely-available sources, such as Rice University’s “OpenStax” project.

Going Open Is a Process

Creating and adopting your own texts from OER material is not without headaches and risks. Teachers balked at first at our “free” textbooks, thinking something must be wrong with them. “Why are you using a free book?” was an often-heard question.   

OER

Finding open resources for some courses is problematic, but with the U.S. Department’s  #GoOPEN movement, of which EPISD is a proud founding member, more and more content is becoming available daily.

Have we achieved 100 percent OER nirvana? Not yet. There is still a lot of work to do, and we are iterating our processes as we go. But by starting down this path, we have begun a process that can only lead to more OER content being used. This in turn can have powerful benefits for our budget and ability to supply more technology resources in our schools. 

You have to start somewhere. Which, now that I think about it, probably would have been a good answer way back in that first meeting.

This is a guest blog by Tim Holt. Holt is a 32-year educator with experience in classrooms, research, and instructional technology. He is a past president of TEC-SIG and recipient of the ISTE “Make it Happen” award. His blog, Holtthink was named one of the top 50 most influential ed tech blogs in 2014 and 2015. He lives in Canutillo, Texas and is the Director of Technology Pilots and Innovation for El Paso ISD.

 

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OER
Educational Trends

Geo Goes OER

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

Open Educational Resources (OER) are a “part of the global open content movement, are shared teaching, learning, and research resources available under legally recognized open licenses — free for people to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute.” (Edutopia) The Texas Legislature has recently sent strong signals that Texas districts should take advantage of these resources.  Why are high quality OER resources important?

  • They save teachers time and effort.
  • They can help to fuel collaboration.
  • They encourage the improvement of available materials.
  • They aid in the dissemination of best practices.

OpenA perfect exemplar of OER activities created for English, math, science, and social studies are GeoInquiries; they enhance key content concepts using the free ArcGIS Online geographic mapping website. These content collections, created by teachers for teachers, contain 15 free activities that correspond to and extend map-based concepts in leading textbooks. The activities use a standard inquiry-based instructional model, require only 15 minutes for a teacher to deliver, and are device agnostic. The activities harmonize with the standards for each content area. Current collections include:

Earth Systems Science AP Human Geography
Mathematics U.S. History
American Literature Elementary
World History Environmental Science

 

openGeoInquiries can be used out of the box or customized, and since they are in the Creative Commons, they make a great starting point to meet the needs of a changing classroom. Thanks to the new “Hacking GeoInquiries” wiki, teachers now have a guide with suggestions for going further and customizing the data or instructional activities included in the GeoInquiries to better meet student needs.

ESRI, the software company who created ArcGIS Online, contracted with teachers who have been teaching for years with the geographic mapping web interface to teach content to students. These teacher developers created 120 activities and maps using over 750 data sets, creating limitless content connections and combinations. As a testament to the quality of the materials, there has been a steady increase in downloads of the activities, topping 70,000 a month.  States like Virginia, Arkansas, and New Hampshire have the heaviest use with special interest in U.S. History and AP Human Geography.

In addition to the creation of the national standards-based GeoInquiries, there are state initiatives in Texas, Georgia, and Minnesota to create state curriculum-driven GeoInquiry OERs. For example, in Texas, the education focus group requested middle school Texas state history GeoInquiries, and a teacher group is currently developing those.

These resources are shared using the Creative Commons B/NC/SA license. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially and commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This means you can adapt the lessons to meet the needs of your students and to align with your state’s standards. Check out these resources to see how they can be used with your students.

This post was written by Tom Baker and Anita Palmer. Tom is an education outreach manager for ESRI. He specializes in curriculum development, teacher education, and research. Anita Palmer of GISetc, is a past technology teacher who specializes in teacher professional development and curriculum design and development.

Photo Credit: Compass by  Calsidyrose 

 

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Open Education Resources
AdvocacyEducational Trends

Texas Going Open, Thanks to Legislation

by Jennifer Bergland
written by Jennifer Bergland

Last October, I wrote a blog post on Open Education Resources (OER). While doing the research, I realized that the state of Texas needed to do a better job of embracing and promoting these resources. This led to the drafting and eventually passing of several bills that will make it easier for teachers and districts to access and utilize high-quality open education resources. SB 810 defined OER as:

Resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that allows for free use,
reuse, modification, and sharing with others

What That Means

The key phrases in the definition are “free,” “reuse,” and “modify.” In order for a resource to be considered an open resource, it has to not only be free, but the user must also have the rights to reuse all or part of it for his own purpose. Let’s take, for example, a high school English literature teacher preparing to teach a unit on Shakespeare who finds the play As You Like It, on the OER Commons website. In order for this resource to truly be an openly-licensed material, the entity that is hosting this resource would grant the teacher the rights to use and adapt all or part of the play. You will notice that the license allows you to remix and share the resource so it qualifies as an OER.

The legal definition of open educational resources, as defined by SB 810, also identifies these resources as full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, or any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. As an example, Pearson has a sixth grade math course available which a district could use as is or adapt to meet the district’s specific learning goals. This course could easily be inserted into a district learning management system and be reworked and adjusted to meet the district’s curriculum design.

Texas Use of OER

The ability to take a resource and adapt it to meet a district’s scope and sequence and learning objectives is one of the reasons Texas districts have begun investigating and using open education resources. According to the most recent SpeakUp Survey, 42% of Texas administrators have implemented some form of OER within their district, and an additional 12% are considering it. 44% of the technology leaders in Texas consider OER to be one of the high growth digital initiatives.

SpeakUp Survey

These numbers will increase as some as the elements of SB 810 are implemented. TEA is required to have an OER repository that will be used by educators as a place to share materials created by districts, teachers, or the state. The new law also will create an instructional materials review service that will compare materials based on price, technical requirements, TEKS alignment, and editorial reviews. This service will help provide the quality control that has been missing for free materials.

Openstax LogoIn addition, the state budget for the next two years includes $20 million for the state to arrange for an outside entity to produce open educational resources for the state’s use.  It is expected that TEA will begin with instructional materials that meet the specifications for the English Language Arts adoption that will be implemented in the 2019-2020 school year. This would give districts the ability to use high-quality OER materials for this adoption, which has the potential to save them money. TEA recently announced the availability of some OER that were acquired by TEA for district use. 

 

Open Educational Resources Blog Series

To help facilitate the exploration of open educational resources, I will write a monthly blog post that will hopefully answer the questions you may have. Some of the things I hope to address in the blog series are:

  • What districts in Texas are using open education resources and with what results
  • What resources are already available, both within and outside of Texas
  • Updates on the implementation of the OER bills that were  recently passed
  • How to create your own OER
  • How to give attribution for open education resources and what the different licenses mean  
  • The best practices in implementing OER.

These are just a few of the topics we will explore. Please use the comment section below to give me feedback or ask the burning questions you may have.  See you next month!

 

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#GoOpen
AdvocacyEducational TrendsFunding

It’s Time: #GoOpen

by Jennifer Bergland
written by Jennifer Bergland

Many districts across the country are beginning to write or adapt existing educational materials in order to ensure the resources they place in front of their students closely align with their learning objectives. The #GoOpen initiative by the U.S. Department of Education is designed to help facilitate this movement. #GoOpen is the slogan for the DOE’s campaign that encourages states, school districts, and educators to use openly-licensed educational materials to transform teaching and learning. These materials are also known as OER (Open Educational Resources).

You might be asking, what are open education resources? Great question. Openly-licensed educational resources Pillars of OER
are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with others. Not all OER materials are digital, but the #GoOpen movement is primarily focusing on those that are.

It’s important to note the difference between the terms “free” and “open.” A resource may be free, but you may not have the owner’s permission to reuse or modify the resource. To qualify as open, it must be free and provide users permission to modify and reuse the materials.

Why would a district want to create or modify instructional materials? Some districts claim that openly-licensed educational resources can drive equity by providing all students access to high-quality learning materials, no matter the size of the district’s budget. They also allow districts to update the learning materials whenever necessary either to support new state standards or to update the content.

Also, districts are seeing that the process of developing the materials energizes their teachers as they adapt and customize the learning materials to the needs of the students in their district. In addition to all of these great reasons, there also can be significant cost savings, which can translate into more funds for high-speed technical infrastructure and digital devices that can be used to access the new materials.

open-stickiesHow does a district get started? In order to support districts who are interested in developing some openly licensed educational resources, the #GoOpen campaign has developed a network of states and districts to serve as models and provide support and assistance. A great place to start is by downloading the GoOpen District Launch Packet. It has step-by-step instructions on how to approach the process. It tells you who should be involved, what types of questions you need to consider, and where to begin.

It also might be helpful to look at what some other districts are doing. The #GoOpen site has a list of districts grouped by their expertise and willingness to mentor other districts. They divide the districts up into two lists: #GoOpen Launch Districts and #GoOpen Ambassador Districts.

#GoOpen Launch Districts Will:

  • Identify a district #GoOpen team who will work to develop a strategy for the implementation of openly-licensed educational materials.
  • Commit to replace at least one textbook with openly-licensed educational materials in the next year.
  • Document and share their implementation process.

#GoOpen Ambassador Districts Will:

  • Mentor #GoOpen Launch Districts as they design and implement their strategy for transitioning to openly-licensed educational resources.
  • Share the openly-licensed materials they’ve created.

Districts Leading the Way

Broken Arrow Public Schools in Oklahoma is a #GoOpen Ambassador district. They have created several courses which are organized in Google Docs. You can access their materials and add them to your Google Drive. Remember, the hallmark of the term open is that they must be willing to share the materials and allow others to adapt and modify them.

Mark Officer, Executive Director of Secondary Administration at Broken Arrow Public Schools, attributes their success to the #GoOpendedication of the instructional staff who have led the process throughout. He noted that the teaching staff has been empowered by the curation process and that the students have positively responded to the change. So far, there have been around 100 teachers involved in the curation process, and he expects that number to grow to more than 200 by the end of this year. He feels that what these teachers have created is a better product than what they could purchase. Their initiative started at the secondary level and, because of their success, the elementary instructional staff is beginning to curate open educational resources as well.

#GoOpenEl Paso ISD is a #GoOpen Launch district. They have partnered with CK-12 to develop Flexbooks. El Paso has created quite a collection of Flexbooks in all four core subject areas. At the launch of their CK-12 partnership, Tim Holt, Executive Director of Blended Learning, in explaining one of the reasons they are moving to open materials, said, “Instead of us matching our curriculum to a pre-made textbook, we’ve done it the other way. We’ve made the textbook to match our curriculum.”

Teacher-created materials are not new. Teachers have created their own content since they were etching their lessons on the cave wall. How this movement differs is that, with the use of technology, teachers can share their work with a much larger audience and other educators can take their work and adapt it easily to suit their particular academic and instructional goals.

If you are interested in learning more, check out the resources below. If your school or district is already creating educational resources and you are willing to let others modify and reuse them, consider joining the #GoOpen movement by contacting the Department of Education at tech@ed.gov.

Resources for OER

 

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