Victory is proud to have been chosen to develop a rapid prototype for the K–12 OER Collaborative (see the press release below). We are developing high school mathematics.
Open Educational Resources (OER), Standards, and What’s Next in Education
As Jennifer Wolfe of The Learning Accelerator states, Victory and the other rapid prototype developers have significant track records in developing rigorous, standards-based educational resources.
The potential for Open Educational Resources (OER) is enormous. As we have noted in several previous blog posts, education is becoming increasingly personalized and interactive, largely due to technology.
Current standards reinforce those trends by calling upon students and teachers to create, not just to digest and regurgitate.
Some people question whether the quality and efficacy of OER can match instructional programs developed the old-fashioned way, with large investments going toward the creation of complex, copyrighted resources in response to state and large-district requests for proposals (RFPs). People voicing those concerns often point to large collections of curated materials and cite a lack of organization, consistency, and instructional flow. As for clear demonstrations of efficacy, the OER movement is relatively young, so it’s a little too soon to tell.
The K–12 OER Collaborative project is exciting because it is imposing on us the same discipline that has been associated with large-scale educational publishing programs. This project should provide not only the flexibility and easy access that OER is known for, but also the rigor and completeness of traditional basal instructional programs.
What’s next is a new world of education, or perhaps it’s better to say, what’s next is the best of all worlds.
