On April 4, 2023, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee sent a letter to the Education Community seeking input on policies that the Committee should consider during the reauthorization of the Education Sciences Reform Act, including the Educational Technical Assistance Act and the National Assessment of Education Progress Authorization Act, from early learning through postsecondary education.To inform the Committee's work, they invited input on several specific questions.  In response, the #GoOpen National Network composed and submitted this letter in an effort to help the Committee recognize the pivotal role that Open Educational Resources can and should play in promoting and supporting student success.  The letter also highlights four specific ways that ESRA can support the use of high-quality OER by students, families, and educators.

#GoOpen Launch Packet: Phase 1

#GoOpen Districts that choose to implement openly licensed educational resources when existing resources are due for renewal start by putting together a team of people at the district level to review and evaluate the resources and what is needed. The team decides which content areas and grade levels might be appropriate candidates for replacement by openly licensed educational resources. The team then decides whether to curate existing resources, create new ones, or implement a combination of the two. It also decides how they will organize and incorporate the new resources into the district’s digital learning infrastructures.

#GoOpen Launch Packet, Phase 2: In selecting and organizing an implementation team, #GoOpen Districts identify key stakeholders from across the district to play important roles in creating, curating, and leading the transition to openly licensed educational resources. Once selected, the #GoOpen team works together to determine the appropriate roles and responsibilities for each member of the team and to organize its work.

#GoOpen Launch Packet, Phase 3: #GoOpen Districts that implement openly licensed educational resources at scale need a robust and comprehensive infrastructure for learning that supports high-speed access to resources and devices for both students and teachers in school and at home. In determining their district’s digital readiness, #GoOpen teams take infrastructure into consideration in the early stages of planning to ensure that the infrastructure is reliable and secure, and that every student has equitable access to the resources.

This Launch Packet is designed for districts that have decided to implement a systematic approach to incorporating openly licensed educational resources into their curriculum by becoming a #GoOpen District. This is Phase 4 of the systematic approach.

#GoOpen Launch Packet, Phase 5: Professional learning opportunities ensure sustainability and scalability of openly licensed educational resources. Going open allows for tremendous flexibility in teaching approaches for your educators. Many current #GoOpen Districts implement professional learning that focuses on personalized and blended learning paradigms even before considering openly licensed educational resources. This planning makes the transition to openly licensed educational resources a logical next step. As your teachers become more confident in these approaches and in creating, curating, and sharing openly licensed educational resources, you will reap the full benefits of this transition.

This is a guide to good practices for college and university open-access (OA) policies. It's based on the type of rights-retention OA policy first adopted at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and the University of Kansas. Policies of this kind have since been adopted at a wide variety of institutions in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, for example, at public and private institutions, large and small institutions, affluent and indigent institutions, research universities and liberal arts colleges, and at whole universities, schools within universities, and departments within schools.

A rubric designed by the Grossmont Unified High School District to be used when assessing the quality of resources.

Open Education Week is an ideal time to hear from our community members who are leading open education initiatives on their campuses and across their states to reduce costs for students and empower faculty to enhance learning in their classrooms. We will hear from two OER librarians and a faculty member who are successfully growing awareness and adoption of open educational resources. They will share the successes and challenges of coordinating statewide efforts and influencing their colleagues to adopt OER in their courses.

A handbook for faculty interested in practicing open pedagogy by involving students in the making of open textbooks, ancillary materials, or other Open Educational Resources.

ISTE and GM have partnered to create Hands-On AI Projects for the Classroom guides to provide educators with a variety of activities to teach students about AI across various grade levels and subject areas. Each guide includes background information for teachers and student-driven project ideas that relate to subject-area standards. The hands-on activities in the guides range from “unplugged” projects to explore the basic concepts of how AI works to creating chatbots and simple video games with AI, allowing students to work directly with innovative AI technologies and demonstrate their learning. 

ISTE and GM have partnered to create Hands-On AI Projects for the Classroom guides to provide educators with a variety of activities to teach students about AI across various grade levels and subject areas. Each guide includes background information for teachers and student-driven project ideas that relate to subject-area standards. The hands-on activities in the guides range from “unplugged” projects to explore the basic concepts of how AI works to creating chatbots and simple video games with AI, allowing students to work directly with innovative AI technologies and demonstrate their learning. 

ISTE and GM have partnered to create Hands-On AI Projects for the Classroom guides to provide educators with a variety of activities to teach students about AI across various grade levels and subject areas. Each guide includes background information for teachers and student-driven project ideas that relate to subject-area standards. The hands-on activities in the guides range from “unplugged” projects to explore the basic concepts of how AI works to creating chatbots and simple video games with AI, allowing students to work directly with innovative AI technologies and demonstrate their learning. 

ISTE and GM have partnered to create Hands-On AI Projects for the Classroom guides to provide educators with a variety of activities to teach students about AI across various grade levels and subject areas. Each guide includes background information for teachers and student-driven project ideas that relate to subject-area standards. The hands-on activities in the guides range from “unplugged” projects to explore the basic concepts of how AI works to creating chatbots and simple video games with AI, allowing students to work directly with innovative AI technologies and demonstrate their learning. 

ISTE and GM have partnered to create Hands-On AI Projects for the Classroom guides to provide educators with a variety of activities to teach students about AI across various grade levels and subject areas. Each guide includes background information for teachers and student-driven project ideas that relate to subject-area standards. The hands-on activities in the guides range from “unplugged” projects to explore the basic concepts of how AI works to creating chatbots and simple video games with AI, allowing students to work directly with innovative AI technologies and demonstrate their learning. 

On Thursday, January 26, 2023, #GoOpen held a public webinar titled, “How Open Educational Resources Can Support Digital Equity in Your State”.  The session dove into the benefits of OER for digital equity, including hearing the perspective of a state that has invested in OER to promote equity. Featuring Connecticut education leader Doug Casey, the session provided specific examples of how participants might take action in their states to craft Digital Equity Plans that can leverage OER to support equity and capitalize on improved digital infrastructure.

Brief video describing where and how to find Open Educational Resources, including specific repositories and licences to look for.

Open educational resources (OER) are high-quality learning materials that are published under an open license, making them free for educators to use, repurpose, and share. Digital OER can range from full curricula and textbooks to individual videos and images, which can be regularly updated to ensure that materials continue to be relevant and engaging for students.

The Floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook is a free Open Educational Resource (OER) designed to assist teachers, content creators, Web developers, and others in creating adaptable and personalizable educational resources that can accommodate a diversity of learning preferences and individual needs.

This document provides an overview of the Innovation Lab Network (ILN) vision and the Logic Model and provides examples of how state chiefs are using the Logic Model to put their vision into action.