Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger put out an appeal last week in the Journal of Higher Education to donate money to create textbooks online that would be free to children in grades K-12 worldwide. While that is a great idea, the appeal should be re-worded to say "support existing efforts to create open educational materials for students worldwide."
A large open education movement already exists primarily supported by the Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, CA. Of course, Hewlett Foundation could use more support in terms of dollars and volunteers since this a global movement, but the movement does not need another group doing the same thing.
One area where Open Educational Resources (OER) needs support is search; the movement needs to find a way to find these OER materials on the web. At the moment they are very hard to locate. Even people working in the same field don't know about other people working in the field. Since I work as a consultant in the OER field, every day I hear about a new site or a new group duplicating the efforts of already existing groups
Here are some of the important websites in the OER field and I would bet that most people reading this blog never heard of these websites, but if you have kids, you and your kids might find it helpful to learn about these websites.
One of the richest repositories of OER for grades K-12 can be found at www.oercommons.org founded by Dr. Lisa Petrides in Half Moon Bay, California. Other groups targeting the K12 area include Currki; Hotchalk, and the well-known elementary book site Scholastic.. Home schoolers should learn about all of these sites. Other excellent resources at the college level include MIT Open Courseware, UC Berkeley Open Courses and Yale University Open Courses.
In fact, there are hundreds of universities that are planning to put their courses online in the next few years and many that already do. Open Courseware Consortium lists all the universities with online courses. Here is a video about them. Monterey Institute for Technology and Education has wonderful courses available to high school students and Rice University has a great site called Connexions.
At the preschool level, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center founded by Joan Ganz Cooney, one of the founders of Sesame Street, is working to make preschool and early education materials available on the web. In Europe, the EuropeanSchoolNet is providing a gateway to educational resources for all the European countries that can be used worldwide. In China, there is CORE, which is open education in Chinese and English. Perhaps, the earliest group in this field of OER is Merlot that has about 60,000 members and a website that is well organized and easy to use. However, finding it can be a challenge. Searches for Merlot usually bring up wine, not education.
At Stanford University, Neeru Khosla, wife of Vinod Khosla, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, has an online group called CK12 dedicated to providing low-cost or free textbooks to students worldwide. It is a great idea and she has excellent tools, but one of the issues in the U.S. is control of educational materials by school boards. Most school boards are reluctant to change and teachers are in no position to grab unapproved textbooks from the web to use in their classrooms. So this is another major issue that needs to be resolved.
Creative Commons, a group devoted to devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to legally build upon and share, created a sub-group last year called ccLearn.
ccLearn is trying to solve search problem by using Google Custom Search Engine to facilitate searching for Open Educational Resources (OER). This project is underway, but there are so many materials out there that it might need more than a Custom Search Engine.
This movement needs more cooperation between all the amazing people each trying to help the world's children. It also needs a better way to index or locate OER materials by subject, grade level, language, and licensing (open or protected) so that OER can really make a difference to teachers and children all over the world
I applaud Larry Sanger for his appeal but I encourage philanthropists to support groups already established in the OER movement rather than start another one. Children everywhere will be the beneficiaries.
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Correction - Standard University should read - Stanford University.
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Hi Esther, thanks for the mention. As long as the idea gets out there, it doesn't matter if you get my name wrong. ;-) Why not link to http://www.citizendium.org/ , my new, improved ;-) wiki encyclopedia project?
A Chronicle blogger wrote about my appeal. I made my appeal in this petition (please sign!): http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/liberate-educational-content
There you'll see that I'm supporting educational content generally. I soon hope to announce a new educational project, funded by a retired millionaire...but not a textbook or database project... My petition focuses on K-12 content, although, of course, I am strongly in favor of support for free educational content for higher education.
I know that there are many supported open content educational resources. But what I am specifically encouraging is not primarily a database of free stuff, but rather the educational content ITSELF. This could be hosted or made searchable anywhere; I'm not proposing a new organization. My proposal is to create the highest-quality content, the level of quality you usually have to pay for. And I'm suggesting that philanthropists start paying for it, then releasing it for free.
Oops, sorry, Larry, for the incorrect first name, I am happy to see that you are supporting educational content generally and not just textbooks. Also happy that you have a petition supporting this. Here is what the petitions says:
We (the undersigned) have a simple, deeply powerful suggestion: philanthropists should "liberate" the best educational content. Buy or commission truly excellent content, aimed at school children (K-12), then post it online for free. Let children reap the rewards of your generosity forever. Just think: top-grade textbooks about everything, free to everyone online; free, in-depth, expert-designed educational software; free, high-quality educational videos.
It is a great idea, but it needs to be aimed at teachers & parents of school children not just the kids. Why? Many U.S. schools today are blocking the Internet in class because of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). Another block that needs to be removed to "liberate" the content is the copyright protection block. Creative Commons is spearheading that movement, but has a long way to go.
A number of years ago, a friend asked me to help tutor her daughter who might end up failing
trigonometry. I worked with her bit, but on looking at her textbook, was utterly appalled, the
authors barely understood their materials, or how they would be used in the real world. I'm a
consultant in electronic engineering and regularly use elements of trig in my work. This was
in California, which at the time was the fifth largest economy in the world, and had one of the
finest university systems, until Reagan began to screw them over. What I perceived was a
failure on many levels, first was the state school board that adopted these texts, secondly was
the idiot publishers who would print or promote them, and lastly how no one seemed to be
aware of the problem. I can understand second rate teachers, they are really underpaid, but
it would seem that we could at least provide people with outstanding textbooks, so there is
at least some possibility of their learning on their own. P.S. I did it gratis and she passed.
Unfortunately, your experience with poor quality textbooks is not isolated. As a teacher for the past 25 years, I have seen many textbooks come through the system that were poor. Today, there are some open textbooks on the web, but again most of them are also poor. Larry is right in that we need an effort to provide excellent free open materials including textbooks for teachers and parents to support what is being taught in the classroom. Support is the key word here. Getting school boards to adopt an open textbook from the web will take a significant paradigm shift on the part of school board members which I don't see happening any time soon.
I very much appreciated your post, and hope you were not offended by my
mention of second rate teachers, as I feel most are very dedicated to the
communication of ideas. I was really trying to emphasize the importance
of first rate texts, that give students a reference point and a fall back option
when their understanding is not solid.
Like you I was appalled by my daughter's sixth grade math book. Every page was a cacophony of colors and ideas none of them organized to make any sense at all. I too studied math, electrical engineering, and had some sense of how math should be taught. This wasn't it. I pulled her from her public school and signed her up in Oak Meadows, it amounts to a correspondence school and tutored her through the sixth grade. We finished in about half of a school year. She's back in school now in the seventh and doing fine.
I left out a key point, if the online texts are pathetic, having them available on computer is not
going to help much. As an electronics engineer, who relies on data books for engineering
information I've seen a steady decline in the command of the English language, to where I
often have to go back to the factory designers, to find out what they really meant to say.
Er, that's LARRY Sanger, currently of http://www.citizendium.org. The post incorrectly calls him JAMES Sanger.
I am a proponent and advocate of any effort that will enable all children and youths to be educated. Whoopi Goldberg has a great idea, but I am not certain anyone is hearing it. Amazon has a product called Kindle, that allows entire books to be downloaded into it and she believes that would be a perfect way to supply students with books no matter where they are -- in the rural areas or inner city. Think of it, all children having complete access to all textbooks and literature. All children enabled to study without carrying home 20 pounds of paper. The green effect of not having to print all the text books. The stigma of being a nerd; you can become a closet nerd without anyone knowing that you took your books home to study. Those with reading problems can take home extra support and learn how to read without anyone knowing. The applications are endless; who will make this happen?
There is a small problem with free text books. A few authors & publishers [about 100%] write & publish texts to earn money. Who will pay them? How do we get new & better text books sans profits for editors & publishers? How would free texts be edited to conform to the prejudices of states & individual school boards without violating copyright laws plus provide a profit for writers & publishers? Please use simple language al USA TODAY to explain your answers.
larry lynch
I agree that there is a significant problem with free textbooks. Who is going to write and publish them for free? Perhaps that is why Larry Sanger is suggesting that philanthropists chip in to pay for it. The textbooks could only be for math, science, English language skills and perhaps economics. They could not be history or social sciences since these books might have biases and prejudices that would not conform to local viewpoints. Right now there are some open textbooks out there, but they are not excellent and have few users.
When I was going to school, I always wondered why I had to pay $75 bucks for a physics book, and then the next semester it would be "revised" so as to force new students to buy the "new" edition. The laws of physics hadn't changed in these few months, nor had the law of trying to wring a few more dollars out of the students. This seems to me to be a racket, and a waste for many subjects.
I'm all for everybody making a living and this includes writers and publishers, but I'm also all for students being able to afford school. In the K-12 grades, I've heard that it's not uncommon for the teachers to take money out of pocket to buy school supplies. Perhaps if there was less money spent on text books, based on this proposed model, there would be more money in the budget for stuff like pencils, paper and other materials.
A number of years ago, a friend of mine and I, who is a consultant in battery
systems, were in a card shop looking for the perfect card for his niece, who had
just graduated from high school, and I think was planning on going on to the
University of Florida. Luckily I found it, and he agreed it was perfect, it said "For
your graduation, I was going to take you to the most expensive place in town,
but the college book store was closed". P.S I told this little story, to a lady from
McGraw-Hill, a major publisher of technical books, and she came unglued.
you can't buy a well used physics text book for $75 now!
Larry278...
Part of the money now spent by schools, colleges, universities, for text books, which must be in the hundreds if millions, could be put into funding for on-line book authors----it would cost much less than hard copy books! As for publishers----they are an endangered specie and their share of the print market is rapidly shrinking.
Blackspeare, give me the roach of what you were smoking when you wrote your comment. This is 'Murica. Have you ever seen an educational administrator at a meeting when they are trying to justify their existance? Have you ever watched a school board selecting texts to meet the unique needs of their pupils? If you seriously think that a college or university will release any funds they control to a fund controlled by others, send me your roaches for a year. You're an idealist. Idealists are very dangerous. That is why idealists are exterminated. Publishers of books have adapted new technologies & are thriving on their ill gotten gains. Education is a great racket.
larry lynch
It also needs a better way to index or locate OER materials by subject, grade level, language, and licensing (open or protected) so that OER can really make a difference to teachers and children all over the world
You need a database, on line, that the OER creators can update, and consumers can search.
As for the readers, Sony produce a nice "eBook Reader" for about $299, or the cost of 5 textbooks.
You statement "index or locate OER materials by subject, grade level, language, and licensing" is a great index definition.
Probably take a mont or two for a web based system for someone with Perl & MySQL skils.
There is one major technological problem that needs to be overcome. People read computer text
at 1/2 to 1/3 the speed of high quality paper print. You basically need high quality monitors at low
cost, with a resolution of 3600x2400, pixels to be able to read at the same speed as print.
I thought I world throw in a little advice to anyone in general, develop a command of
the English language, to where you can clearly express you ideas and thoughts. It's
becoming a rarer talent, and a much more important one, and this is from someone
whose clearest expression of his art is an electronic schematic. I often feel that the
engineering data that I have to work with have been translated inadequately, through
a half dozen languages, before arriving in incomprehensible form on my desk.
There's a typo in the link to oercommons.org.
There's an extra comma: http://www.oercommons.org,/
Takes you to a non-existent defunct page...
Certainly, this area is going to be about innovation in business as much as about "free" materials, and you correctly identify the primary issue regarding search. It is not about free it is about value. I disagree that the area should be left to the established players, and the publishers. As I have worked with them for nearly fifteen years creating the products they sell, I must say that there is opportunity to innovate from a business perspective while serving the constituencies.
My approach will be to look at search and content. A standards based program requires income, which will not be possible until states and local systems are able to purchase computers or mobile technologies for all students. The OLPC is a fine start, but something which replaces a $60 text book needs to be similarly priced. Networks are the other issue.
In the ten years I have been looking at this area waiting for the stars to align, I can finally say that we are nearly there. But, I do differ in my opinion on the solution to the problem. A combination of open and closed is necessary, as well as the inclusion of current players. The publishers market was bound to change, but I will admit that this is the first time that I"ve heard somebody state the real issue.
Think Morningstar¦
Life is filled with little mysteries such as why does the rich and powerful California Department of Education spend so much of its money on textbooks even as it lays off teachers and overcrowds its classrooms.
Why can"t the University of California use its post graduate students to create on-line material for California"s K-12 students? I"d be willing to bet they"d create that material just for having their student loans paid and the real learning experience of writing their first textbook.
One recent advancement in technology has been the development of e-readers. With these books can be downloaded to the device and read just like any book. Sony sells its readers for $300 each but if they were bought in bulk the price would be reduced. Parents could purchase them from their school districts for the lesser price.
You mention MIT"s on-line course ware. I had a difficult time watching the lectures because any time material is used in the course that is copyrighted, the screen is blanked out. These courses cry out for the full development of course material by the school using it.
]
The big advancement will happen when all of the course material is available on-line so that some students can complete their educations at home using their computer and internet access.
I have long recommended internet-available education, K through grad school. Home schoolers should be very supportive even if they wouldn't use these directly, they could serve as planning materials.
Why can"t the University of California use its post graduate students to create on-line material for California"s K-12 students?
The University of California already has an initiative (UC College Prep Online) that offers free AP courses online, see www.ucopenaccess.org. In the Psychology course, post graduate students have been heavily involved, so the concept has been used.
As you might be able to notice, the wonderful courses offered by Monterey Institute for Technology and Education are copyrighted by the University of California Regents, and are actually the same courses offered through a different platform.
The problem is, I cannot agree more with Esther, that Open Educational Resources (OER) are very hard to locate. Search would be a great help, especially in sorting out the *great* Resources from the mediocre ones.
Let me thank you Esther for highlighting our efforts here at ck12.org .
I agree completely with your analysis regarding collaboration as oppose
to fragmentation; we have to work together. Yet, I do believe that there is danger of losing different voices if there is only one person/organization backing the effort.
We are producing textbooks in Math and Sciences that are free and open
for all in the K-12 level. We have followed a process that is very
similar to the publisher - writing to standards and frameworks, followed
by review process that involves domain experts as well as practitioner
teachers. I do believe that this is what Larry has called for.
Incidentally, we are not a Standard University project, and while we do
have some of their faculty members helping us out, we welcome
contributions from all education establishments.
If anyone wants to help out in whatever capacity, or want to know about our project, please contact me. neeru@ck12.org
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Posted April 1, 2008 | 10:02 AM (EST)