In this presentation, we tell the story of Michigan's path towards a statewide strategy to develop and promote Open Educational Resources for K-12 schools.
Michigan’s OER efforts are underway. The initial work on OERs created by Michigan educators centers on social studies curriculum support materials through the MiOpen Books project. OERs that support other content areas, and will enhance the existing social studies materials, will be drawn from existing resources available around the nation and beyond.
As the OER movement continues, the state is now examining the use of a more robust platform to house existing and emerging resources and align the platform with the state education network (SEN) infrastructure and connect resources to student academic achievement data as we migrate to an integrated, personalized learning environment. A critical component of this enhanced approach will include how the meta-tagging of resources in ways that will allow educators to best personalize and integrate resources on behalf of student learning.
In February of 2016, the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) announced that it had joined the U. S. Department of Education's (USED) #GoOpen campaign. Joining #GoOpen was an important moment in solidifying the MDE's ongoing process towards embracing OER in K12.
The MI Open Book Project is a multi-year textbook development project (http://textbooks.wmisd.org/index.html) that is funded through the MDE's Technology Infrastructure Readiness Grant (TRIG). The project has developed and continues to develop versions of open textbooks aligned to Michigan's curriculum, geography, and unique history.
In 2016, the MDE is attempting to build on this work by expanding its OER focus beyond a 1-1 replacement of publisher-produced textbooks with OER textbooks. The MDE sees OER as integral to its efforts to provide dynamic and personalized curriculum to its 1.5 million-plus students.
We specifically focus on two key strategic areas in our efforts to capitalize on the flexibility provided by the 5R permissions of OER: choosing a dynamic platform for OER delivery to students and expanding on existing meta-tagging to facilitate personalized learning options for teachers and students.
