Jane Park from Creative Commons discusses their latest license.
News Organizations Continue to Discover OER
“One way for students to pursue their degree without having to spend a dime is through Open Education Resources. OERs offer free educational materials such as lesson plans, open textbooks and course work that are used under license and used repeatedly by others. The subjects available range from Humanities to Mathematics and can be used in its original form, altered form, a combination of both, or redistributed all for free.”
Affordable College Textbook Act Would Help Students, But Publishers Aren’t Hearing It, Houston Press, March 28, 2014
It’s been very interesting to see how the mainstream media is beginning to become interested in the idea of OER (although, to be precise, Houston Press is an alt-weekly).
University System of Maryland Explores OER
“Holding a whiteboard, the University of Maryland, College Park students scrawled their complaints and posed for a picture.
“My name is Justin and I spent $114 on ONE textbook,” a student wrote. “My name is Jeff and I spent $736 on textbooks,” wrote another.
The images, posted online by the Student Government Association in recent months, are designed to highlight the rapid rise in the price of college textbooks over the past decade. This semester, the University System of Maryland is exploring ways to bring that cost to zero with “open-source” electronic textbooks — the latest experiment in changing the way students in Maryland and across the nation are taught.”
New strategy would drop college textbook costs to zero, Baltimore Sun, March 22, 2014.
