[OLPC-SF] Fwd: [bytesforall_readers] Make textbooks freely available in the open domain

[Edward Cherlin]

I'm arranging a meeting with Ira Ruskin, to talk about the use of Free
Software and Free educational content throughout the California
education system and government. Note new acronym, OER=Open
Educational Resources.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Subbiah Arunachalam <subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 4:08 PM
Subject: [bytesforall_readers] Make textbooks freely available in the
open domain
To: sam.pitroda at c-sam.com, akolaskar at yahoo.com,
dasgupta_kalpana at hotmail.com, ard at drtc.isibang.ac.in, dbala at lvpei.org,
mv at mbu.iisc.ernet.in, pallerama_rao at yahoo.co.in, pb at mbu.iisc.ernet.in,
DK Sahu <dksahu at medknow.com>


Friends:

Here is a news story about a wonderful initiative taking place in
California. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed into law a
proposal that would make educational material - textbooks - freely
available in the open domain to faculty and students of community
colleges.

Every state in India should pass such a law and make textbooks freely
available to college students. The technical competence is already
available in India. NCERT books are already available in the open
domain. The NPTEL project in which classroom lectures by professors of
IITs and IISc are made available as open course ware (in
web-accessible format and as video and YouTube presentations) is among
the best in the world.

Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]




California to launch OER pilot program for community colleges
Jane Park, Bill Enabling Community Colleges to Establish OER Pilot
Program is signed into law, Creative Commons blog, October 6, 2008.

Last week, a bill enabling the California Community Colleges to
integrate open educational resources (OER) into its core curriculum
was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger. AB 2261 authorizes the
Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges "to establish
a pilot program to provide faculty and staff from community college
districts around the state with the information, methods, and
instructional materials to establish open education resources
centers." The program would provide a structure by which community
college faculty and staff could vet and repurpose OER in order to
create high quality course materials and textbooks for college
students. The resulting materials would themselves be openly licensed
or available in the public domain so that they could be further
adapted and repurposed for future and individual contexts. ...

This legislation is spearheaded by Assemblyman Ira Ruskin and Hal
Plotkin, President of the Foothill and De Anza Community College
District's Governing Board of Trustees. Hal writes,

This is the first legislation that puts the state of California
squarely behind those of us who are working to create free,
high-quality, vetted public domain — or "open" — educational resources
for community college students, who stand to save literally hundreds
of millions of dollars over the coming decade as a result. ...

See the news article on this here, and the latest version of the bill here. ...

Posted by Gavin Baker at 10/07/2008 03:51:00 PM.
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