As faculty, you assess textbooks against a set of criteria that reflects your long experience and knowledge of student needs. You do the same with Open Textbooks, but there are a few additional considerations.
This document might be a solid example of how carefully and collaboratively open resources may be curated by teams of educators.
I left the content in as the main example here, because the form itself is very simple. I have found that district leaders are sometimes interested early on in what it "looks like" to have teachers exert this level of agency over the resources they are curating in such an initiative. I think this can also be valuable for teachers new to the work. Knowing that their professional voice could be leveraged in such a way to create custom materials can be empowering.
Specifically, this tool used as a live form between a team of teachers co-editing a text-based resource on CK-12's platform for "flexbook" creation/curation. The work of alignment to standards and local curriculum was done in a collaborative face to face setting, and then the more fine-grained edits for specific content alignment, factual correctness, and vocabulary synchronicity were done asynchronously through forms such as this one.
Finally, it is important to note that a district curriculum and instruction expert in this area was also involved in vetting some of the edits you see suggested here.
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.
A rubric designed by the Grossmont Unified High School District to be used when assessing the quality of resources.
For each essential standard, open the unwrapped document and check off the items as your team completes the vetting process. Once all essential standards have been vetted, each team member should sign (electronically) at the bottom of the page to confirm their acceptance of the curriculum and OER.
The toolkit is made up of three elements:
1). information and resources to support your evaluation activities
2). an interactive tool to guide you through our Evaluation and Synthesis framework, providing an opportunity to submit findings, observations and links to evidence AND which feeds this back to you for inclusion in your project reporting mechanisms
3). examples of evaluation materials, instruments and reports from other UKOER projects
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.
This guide provides a primer on copyright and use permissions. It is intended to support teachers, librarians, curriculum experts and others in identifying the terms of use for digital resources, so that the resources may be appropriately (and legally) used as part of lessons and instruction. The guide also helps educators and curriculum experts in approaching the task of securing permission to use copyrighted materials in their classrooms, collections, libraries or elsewhere in new ways and with fewer restrictions than fair use potentially offers. The guide was created as part of ISKME's Primary Source Project, and is the result of collaboration with copyright holders, intellectual property experts, and educators.* "Copyright license choice" by opensource.com is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Finding and selecting OER to adopt at your college can raise questions about both the quality and accessibility of the content for your students. Join us for this webinar to hear about best practices and rubrics developed to ensure that OER content meets instructional material standards, accessibility guidelines, and open licensing policies established at your institution. These rubrics assist faculty, librarians, instructional designers and other staff to select and adapt open educational resources that meet student needs regardless of disability but are also culturally relevant and engaging for students at your institution and can be freely re-used, re-mixed, and re-distributed.