#OER Adoption in K12 - slotting into technology

The recent report by the  Babson Survey Research Group, What We Teach: K-12 School District Curriculum Adoption Process, 2017 is a very useful starting point for looking at OER adoption in K12 school districts. The reported finding that "Being able to slot any new curricula materials into the district's existing technology is critical across all types and sizes of districts" was especially interesting because of the lack of specificity cited about what it means to 'slot curricula materials into the districts existing technology.'

Slotting curricula into existing technology can mean a lot of different things.  For instance, the curricula material can be:

A: presented by the teacher via a digital projector or white board  with student work collected and scored on paper;

B: presented in html and viewed with wifi devices with student work collected and scored on paper;

C: presented in OneNote and viewed with wifi devices and student work collected and scored via OneNote via the wifi devices;

D. presented in Google docs with student work collected and scored via Google docs;

E. presented in an LMS with student work collected via the tools available in the LMS.

There are other possible combinations of using technology, too. An alternative might be to use the centuries old technology of presenting the OER curricula materials on paper with student work collected on paper. It is unlikely that if the curricula material is presented on paper that student work will be collected and scored via electronic technology. Presenting the curricula materials on paper with student work collected on paper has the advantage of requiring the least amount of professional development for teachers. Paper versions are impractical, however, for revising, retaining, remixing, reusing, and redistributing the OER curricula materials. If a district is not taking advantage of the 5 Rs and buying printed copies of OER materials, they're simply buying the cheapest version of curricula materials available.

Presenting the curricula materials in an LMS and collecting student work via the tools available in the LMS is the method that affords the most flexible use of revising, retaining, remixing, reusing, and redistributing the curricula materials.  Using an LMS also enables multiple methods of collaboration and assessment that aren't available with the other methods. Of course, the issue with using an LMS is that it requires more professional development than any of the other methods. That's why we created the Stone Arch Bridge Initiative for Education Resources, SABIER. The idea is to take the money that’s currently being spent on textbooks and instead use it to pay for teachers to acquire the training and skill to make full use of the collaboration and assessment features of the LMS and to maximize the permissions of OER for revising, retaining, remixing, reusing, and redistributing. 

The Babson report's finding that there are more districts using OER than there are districts who understand the meaning of OER suggests that there's plenty of work yet to be done.