The #GoOpen Blog is an opportunity for members to highlight the work of #GoOpen states and districts, so that we can learn from one another.

The following information is provided to help you craft your post. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to info@goopen.us with any questions.
Checklist:
Please include the following with your blog post submission:

Blog Title
Word Count – 400-600 words (but if you go shorter or longer, that’s fine!)
Photo, Caption, Attribution & Alt-Text – We’d like you to include a photo that aligns with the content of your post – this can be a photo that you’ve taken, or an openly licensed photo. Please provide a caption for the photo, the proper attribution (See https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution best practices for attribution), and alt-text that describes your photo for someone who may be using a screen reader (See https://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/#context best practices for writing alt-text.
Brief Author Bio – Provide a 1-2 sentence bio to let others know who you are and where you are from.

Additional Guidelines

Endorsements:As best practice, GoOpen.us posts and engagement should avoid endorsements of specific companies or products that are meant to promote commercial organizations or businesses. In some cases, mention of commercial entities may be acceptable if the purpose is not to sell products or services but is illustrate an example, further the learning of the group, or document the experience of a #GoOpen Network member and is relevant to the goals of the #GoOpen Initiative.
PII: Any and all personally identifiable information should be removed from the post.
Use: In addition to publishing your post on the #GoOpen Network blog, we will share your post via the #GoOpen Newsletter and social media and encourage you to do the same!

Submission

Email your blog post to info@goopen.us and cc:mailto:sara.trettin@ed.gov
We will review your post and offer suggested edits for clarity or conciseness.
Once you’ve reviewed our suggested edits and accepted any changes, we will schedule your post and let you know when it will be published!

Types of Posts
Not sure where to start? Consider one of these types of posts!

Informational Posts

What’s new in your state or district? Is there a new strategy or approach you are piloting? A topic you are exploring in-depth? An opportunity to collaborate with other states or districts? Informational posts are all about sharing your work with the community!

Reflective Posts

What’s your state or district learning? Has your district team been reflecting on your approach? What have you learned? How are you tweaking your implementation approach? Are you diving into the literature on a particular topic? Reflective posts provide an opportunity to take a step back and share what you are learning with the community!

List Posts

What tips, best practices, lessons learned, or key takeaways can you share that might be helpful for others in the community? These could focus on any aspect of your state or district OER work, for example, three key takeaways from the latest summit or five tips for communicating about your work to parents.

How-to Posts

Have you figured out the perfect approach for some aspect of OER implementation? Consider sharing a step-by-step how-to post that details your approach and any implementation resources so others can follow your lead!

Interview Posts

Have a rockstar teacher, librarian, admin or other OER champion in your state or district? Consider highlighting their work through a brief Q&A post.

The Educator & Staff Professional Learning Plan is one component of the K-12 Voices for Open OER - DEIA Action Planning Guide.  This plan, and the entire guide, is intended as a strategic planning tool for district leaders wishing to promote the already pedagogically and financially compelling practice of creating or adapting open educational resources (OER) to help achieve district goals in serving all students through diversity, equity, inclusion, or accessibility (DEIA) lens.  The guide provides step-by-step planning tools, including examples, templates, and resources to help district leaders articulate and establish action plans for what we refer to as "OER-DEIA."  The entire guide is an open educational resource itself, free and openly licensed for reuse, remixing, and resharing.

Open access has been identified as a way to support diversity, equity and inclusion in new publishing models, compared to inequities in traditional publishing models.Despite the open movement being decades old, there is still a gap in research on Black, Indigenous, and faculty of color (BIPOC) in the context of open access. Understanding the motivations for and barriers against Open Access (OA) publishing (and the relationships between them) among BIPOC faculty helps LIS practitioners and Open advocates design incentives to increase participation and decrease lack of knowledge and stigma around OA.

In 2020, Camille Thomas served as co-PI on a research team that designed an original qualitative study (Perceptions of Open Access Publishing among Black, Indigenous, and people of color Faculty, forthcoming College & Research Libraries) that uncovers ways in which pre-tenure and tenured BIPOC perceive attitudes towards the legitimacy of open access publishing, especially as it relates to their own tenure and promotion processes. This study illuminates how their perceptions motivate or diminish their own interest in and adoption of open access as well as their level of advocacy for open access in their field, campus, and department, et al.

To foster practical application of outreach needs based on responses from the study, this resource includes:
- Readings
- Discussion questions
- Sample Scenarios, Events and Initiatives
- Assignments

Assignments were specifically created for developing strategic initiatives and outreach to support marginalized scholars. While these materials do not seek to solve systemic issues in academic research, they will encourage building equitable open infrastructure and an inclusive culture when discussing open access at institutions. This resource provides hands-on assignments to integrate inclusive practices in outreach and technical work. It will prepare students for practical experience with open advocacy and encourage deliberate outreach planning, execution and assessment as scholarly communication continues to evolve.

Learning Objectives
To understand diverse needs of researchers and scholars based on their positionality and intersectionality (student, post-doc, research topics, discipline and departmental culture, identities)
To identify when encouraging open may harm researchers or communities
To develop messaging that highlights social justice through open access’ benefits of transparency, access and non-traditional formats
To develop strategic initiatives that address the unique needs of an institution and its surrounding community
To develop advocacy, leadership and management skills by planning, executing and assessing strategic initiatives

This guide is intended as a strategic planning tool for district leaders wishing to promote the already pedagogically and financially compelling practice of creating or adapting open educational resources (OER) to help achieve district goals in serving all students through diversity, equity, inclusion, or accessibility (DEIA) lens.  The guide provides step-by-step planning tools, including examples, templates, and resources to help district leaders articulate and establish action plans for what we refer to as "OER-DEIA."  The entire guide is an open educational resource itself, free and openly licensed for reuse, remixing, and resharing.

Presentation for school leaders, including superintendents and principals, that covers the possible fiscal, student learning and teaching impacts of using OER in the classroom. It has examples from Liberty Public School, MO - one of the first #GoOpen Ambassador school districts in the US. Links to resources and research (from 2015-2018) is included on the presentation.

A workbook for administrators looking to have a coordinated OER implementation in their district, building, or target group; includes questions to answer and activities to help guide the work. This is a remix of 11 other OER resources, along with original work.

Slide deck for use with K12 School Administrators at Calhoun ISD. Includes sections on: OER in Michigan, OER Basics, Common OER Myths, and activities tied to the OER for Administrators Playbook.

OERigin Stories is an oral history of six women of color, leaders in the Open Education Movement. Each shares her story and thoughts on Open Education and higher education. The six women interviewed for OERigin Stories range from librarians, to policy makers, to nonprofit leaders, to instructors. Each woman was asked the following questions: 1) Please tell me about yourself and how you came to be involved with Open; 2) How do you see your unique identities intersecting with Open? If at all; 3) Please tell me about an Open Education project, textbook, or group that you have been part of?; 4) How do you see your role in the future of Open Education?; 5) What do you think is the biggest benefit of Open Education and what do you think is missing?; and 6) What questions are you grappling with?

The links within this resource are designed to provide educators with background context regarding the development of the K-12 Voices for Open OER-DEIA Action Plan for K-12 District Implementation.  Presented as a poster session at the 2022 OpenEd Conference, the slides explain the purpose of the Guide, as well as the development process.This guide is intendend as a strategic planning tool for district leaders wishing to promote the already pedagogically and financially compelling practice of creating or adapting open educational resources (OER) to help achieve district goals in serving all students through diversity, equity, inclusion, or accessibility (DEIA) lens.  The guide provides step-by-step planning tools, including examples, templates, and resources to help district leaders articulate and establish action plans for what we refer to as "OER-DEIA."  The entire guide is an open educational resource itself, free and openly licensed for reuse, remixing, and resharing.

This poster helps to explain the development process of the OER-DEIA Guide developed by K-12 Voices for Open, which can also be found on OER Commons.

Rock the Boat is an open-access multimedia resource designed to provoke dialogue about graduate supervision relationships within universities, and their impact on student and faculty wellbeing. Drawing upon the tradition of Research-based Theatre, Rock the Boat draws attention to graduate supervision as a vital form of pedagogy, and as rife with challenges — especially relating to equity, inclusion and diversity.

This template is part of the K-12 Voices for Open OER-DEIA Action Plan for K-12 District Implementation.  The template, and the entire guide, is intendend as a strategic planning tool for district leaders wishing to promote the already pedagogically and financially compelling practice of creating or adapting open educational resources (OER) to help achieve district goals in serving all students through diversity, equity, inclusion, or accessibility (DEIA) lens.  The guide provides step-by-step planning tools, including examples, templates, and resources to help district leaders articulate and establish action plans for what we refer to as "OER-DEIA."  The entire guide is an open educational resource itself, free and openly licensed for reuse, remixing, and resharing.

This template is part of the K-12 Voices for Open OER-DEIA Action Plan for K-12 District Implementation.  The template, and the entire guide, is intendend as a strategic planning tool for district leaders wishing to promote the already pedagogically and financially compelling practice of creating or adapting open educational resources (OER) to help achieve district goals in serving all students through diversity, equity, inclusion, or accessibility (DEIA) lens.  The guide provides step-by-step planning tools, including examples, templates, and resources to help district leaders articulate and establish action plans for what we refer to as "OER-DEIA."  The entire guide is an open educational resource itself, free and openly licensed for reuse, remixing, and resharing.

This template is part of the K-12 Voices for Open OER-DEIA Action Plan for K-12 District Implementation.  The template, and the entire guide, is intendend as a strategic planning tool for district leaders wishing to promote the already pedagogically and financially compelling practice of creating or adapting open educational resources (OER) to help achieve district goals in serving all students through diversity, equity, inclusion, or accessibility (DEIA) lens.  The guide provides step-by-step planning tools, including examples, templates, and resources to help district leaders articulate and establish action plans for what we refer to as "OER-DEIA."  The entire guide is an open educational resource itself, free and openly licensed for reuse, remixing, and resharing.

Kelly Hammond, Open Educational Resources (OER) and Instructional Technology Adjust at CUNY School of Professional Studies, talks about the importance of developing a strategic introduction to the OER-DEIA Action Plan for K-12 District Implementation that provides users with critical information that gives them a solid foundation when beginning their OER-DEIA journey.  As she developed this section of the guide she reflected on her own OER journey and asked herself the guiding question, "What would I have needed to know in order to get there faster and more comfortably?"

Tracy Rains, Virtual Learning Specialist at Appalachia Intermediate Unit, talks about developing two key components of the OER-DEIA Action Plan for K-12 District Implementation:  The Collaboration Plan and the Educator and Staff Professional Learning Plan.  She provides insight into why both of these sections are critical to the success of any OER-DEIA initiative.

This video provides an overview of the K-12 Voices for Open OER-DEIA Action Plan for K-12 District Implementation.  Amee Evans Godwin of ISKME and Rebecca M. Henderson of the Westmoreland Intermediate Unit provide you with an overview of the work being done by K-12 Voices for Open, the purpose of this guide, and the process of developing the guide.  Finally, they walk you through the nine sections of the K-12 Voices for Open OER-DEIA Action Plan for K-12 District Implementation, and explain the ways in which the sections can be used by districts.