By Kim Jones, Curriki CEO

Open Educational Resources are important enablers in support of Common Core standards. An article in Education Week entitled “Common Core Drives Interest in Open Education Resources” can be found here: http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/17/01open.h06.html

The article notes that Common Core standards are driving increased interest in open digital resources. For example, the state of Utah in the U.S. is creating textbooks made entirely from OER materials, and in the state of South Dakota educators have built a repository of OER content in support of the Common Core. The pilot projects for open textbooks in Utah were highly successful, so the open textbook project was expanded to be statewide during this current school year.

I was interviewed by Katie Ash, who wrote in the article:

“Such projects are exactly what the common core can now make possible”, says Kim Jones, the chairman and chief executive officer of Curriki, a nonprofit K-12 repository for open education resources based in Cupertino, Calif.
“We’re seeing a lot of teachers starting to contribute OER materials that are aligned to common-core standards,” says Jones. “We’re very excited about that and think it’s going to make a huge difference in allowing people across the U.S. to leverage what teachers are doing in other places.”

The article also noted Curriki’s work with the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative, which is working to categorize and tag OERs to make them more accessible and easier to search. Also mentioned was Curriki’s launch during 2012 of a free Algebra 1 course aligned to Common Core standards.

“It’s an exciting time for education, between OER really crossing the chasm and common-core standards coming out, and just the work that’s going on around technology,” says Jones, from Curriki. “It’s all coming together at a great time, and it’s really going to have a positive impact on education going forward.”

For more information on how OER supports Common Core standards implementation, we encourage you to read the full article at: http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/17/01open.h06.html