HB 2337 “Regarding open educational resources in K-12 education” passed the Senate (47 to 1) and is on its way back to the House for final concurrence. It already passed the House 88 to 7 before moving to the Senate.

The bill directs the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to support the 295 WA K-12 school districts in learning about and adopting existing open educational resources (OER) aligned with WA and common core curricular standards (e.g., CK-12 textbooks & Curriki). The bill also directs OSPI to “provide professional development programs that offer support, guidance, and instruction regarding the creation, use, and continuous improvement of open courseware.”

The opening section of the bill reads:

• “The legislature finds the state’s recent adoption of common core K-12 standards provides an opportunity to develop high-quality, openly licensed K-12 courseware that is aligned with these standards. By developing this library of openly licensed courseware and making it available to school districts free of charge, the state and school districts will be able to provide students with curricula and texts while substantially reducing the expenses that districts would otherwise incur in purchasing these materials. In addition, this library of openly licensed courseware will provide districts and students with a broader selection of materials, and materials that are more up-to-date.”

While focus of this bill is to help school districts identify existing high-quality, free, openly licensed, common core state standards aligned resources available for local adoption; any content built with public funds, must be licensed under “an attribution license.”

Representative Reuven Carlyle has been a leader working on open education (including the Open Course Library) in WA for years and has blogged about it: here, here, here and here.

Representative Carlyle introducing HB2337 in the House:

Creative Commons’ Director of Global Learning, Cable Green, testifying about the impact of the bill on elementary education in the Senate:

WA is poised to follow the good work of Utah, Brazil, and so many others who have gone before.

This legislature has declared that the status quo — $130M / year for expensive, paper-only textbooks that are, on average, 7-11 years out of date — is unacceptable. WA policy makers instead decided their 1 million+ elementary students deserve better and they have acted.

Congratulations Washington State!

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In case you missed this week’s Creative Commons Salon in San Francisco, you can now view it online thanks to our media sponsor, VidSF, who filmed and broadcast the event.

We heard from four stellar individuals involved in transforming the education landscape through the power of the internet and digital tools, such as open educational resources (OER). The presenters talked about their and other innovative projects rethinking what a textbook is, what a classroom can be, and how a person should learn. Especially enriching was the panel portion of the evening, when all four presenters came together for a thought-provoking discussion about the roadblocks to implementing a more open approach to education, from a policy perspective as well as in terms of practice, including the important issue of how to get teachers, already over-burdened, more involved in helping to build this pool of shared educational knowledge.

Watch the video now!

Thanks to pariSoma as always for the use of their wonderful space, and thanks to the evening’s presenters for their insight and expertise:

• Brian Bridges, Director of the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN)
• Amee Godwin, Director, Strategic Initiatives, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME)
• Murugan Pal, co-Founder and President of CK-12 Foundation
• Carolina Rossini, Berkman Fellow, Advocate for OER in Brazil, and Peer2Peer University community member

Can’t make it to tonight’s Creative Commons Salon in San Francisco? No problem! You’ll be able to tune in virtually thanks to the talented and generous folks at VidSF, our media sponsors for the event.

Watch the salon live at http://parisoma.com from 7-9pm PDT.

Use Identi.ca or Twitter to join the conversation with hashtag #ccsalon.

On the evening’s agenda:
Presentations from 7:15-8pm

• Brian Bridges, Director of the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN)
• Murugan Pal, co-Founder and President of CK-12 Foundation
• Carolina Rossini, Berkman Fellow, Advocate for OER in Brazil, and Peer2Peer University community member

Panel and discussion from 8:15-9pm:

• Brian Bridges, Director of the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN)
• Amee Godwin, Director, Strategic Initiatives, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME)
• Murugan Pal, co-Founder and President of CK-12 Foundation
• Carolina Rossini, Berkman Fellow, Advocate for OER in Brazil, and Peer2Peer University community member

When: Monday, May 3, 7-9pm
Location: PariSoMa, 1436 Howard St. (map and directions). Plenty of street parking available. (Please note, the space is located up two steep flights of stairs, and unfortunately does not currently have elevator access.)

Light refreshments will be provided, and since we rely on the generosity of our community to keep us afloat, we’ll be accepting donations for CC at the door.

Check out the event posting on Facebook and Upcoming.

Join us at what’s sure to be a stellar Creative Commons Salon next Monday, on the power of open education. Bring a friend, come meet CC staff, and enjoy a refreshment as we explore the challenges facing the future of learning and how to harness the power of the internet and digital technologies as forces for good in education.

On the evening’s agenda:
Presentations from 7:15-8pm

• Brian Bridges, Director of the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN)
• Murugan Pal, co-Founder and President of CK-12 Foundation
• Carolina Rossini, Berkman Fellow, Advocate for OER in Brazil, and Peer2Peer University community member

Panel and discussion from 8:15-9pm:

• Brian Bridges, Director of the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN)
• Amee Godwin, Director, Strategic Initiatives, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME)
• Murugan Pal, co-Founder and President of CK-12 Foundation
• Carolina Rossini, Berkman Fellow, Advocate for OER in Brazil, and Peer2Peer University community member

When: Monday, May 3, 7-9pm
Location: PariSoMa, 1436 Howard St. (map and directions). Plenty of street parking available. (Please note, the space is located up two steep flights of stairs, and unfortunately does not currently have elevator access.)

Light refreshments will be provided, and since we rely on the generosity of our community to keep us afloat, we’ll be accepting donations for CC at the door.

Check out the event posting on Facebook and Upcoming.

CC Salons are global events, and anyone can start one, no matter where you live. We encourage you to check out our resources for starting your own salon in your area.

If you’re in the SF Bay Area, we hope to see you at our next Creative Commons Salon on the power of open education, featuring:

Brian Bridges, Director of the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN)
Murugan Pal, co-Founder and President of CK-12 Foundation
Carolina Rossini, Berkman Fellow, Advocate for OER in Brazil, and Peer2Peer University community member

The Internet and digital technologies have transformed how people learn. Educational resources are no longer static and scarce, but adaptable and widely available, allowing educational institutions, teachers, and learners to actively participate in a global exchange of knowledge via Open Educational Resources (OER). At next month’s salon, we’ll be gathering together three preeminent individuals involved in shaping the future of education and harnessing the power of the internet and digital technologies as forces for good in this field. Each participant will give a brief presentation on their respective projects, followed by an informal panel/discussion period where we’ll explore more in depth the issues, challenges, and opportunities emerging in the field of education.

This is a great chance to meet CC staff, learn more about Creative Commons, and connect with Bay Area creators and innovators. Hope to see you there!

When: Monday, May 3, 7-9pm
Location: PariSoMa, 1436 Howard St. (map and directions). Plenty of street parking available. (Please note, the space is located up two steep flights of stairs, and unfortunately does not currently have elevator access.)

Light refreshments will be provided, and since we rely on the generosity of our community to keep us afloat, we’ll be accepting donations for CC at the door.

Check out the event posting on Facebook. We hope to see you there!

CC Salons are global events, and anyone can start one, no matter where you live. We encourage you to check out our resources for starting your own salon in your area.

In addition to individuals, the CK-12 Foundation, Curriki, and Connexions submitted open textbooks on subjects like Algebra, Calculus, Biology, Chemistry, Geometry, Trigonometry, and various other -ometries. You can check out the full textbook list and standards reviews at the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN).

Now, the Governor and his constituents are launching Phase 2 of the Initiative, calling this time for “content developers to submit high school history-social science and higher-level math course textbooks for review against California’s academic content standards.” From the press release,

“Resources like digital textbooks play a critical role in our 21st century educational landscape, and expanding my first-in-the-nation initiative will provide local school districts additional high-quality free resources to help prepare California’s students to compete in the global marketplace,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. “I urge content developers to jump on board this second phase and submit social science and advanced math material to help ensure California’s shift to a more advanced and cost-effective education system continues.”

Phase 2 is accepting submissions on a rolling basis, so if you (or your project) have an open textbook completed or in the works, make sure the CC license info is marked up correctly and submit it to the CLRN website. For more on licensing, visit creativecommons.org/about/licenses.

CC BY-SA by the CK12 Foundation

Below, we get to the bottom of the origins of CK-12, Neeru’s own personal tie to the cause, and some insights into what may lie ahead for both the foundation and ccLearn.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? You are widely known as the founder of CK-12; what is your official role and how did you come to found this nonprofit?

First of all, I just want to set the record straight, I am one of the co-founders along with Murugan Pal, who is the other co-founder of CK-12.  I serve as the Executive Director and Murugan as the President.

I am the mother of four children; I have a master’s degree in molecular biology and a degree in education.   After my degree I worked for a year and a half at Stanford at the Children’s Hospital working on Insulin-like Growth Factors that were being implicated in cancer.  It was at that point that I got pregnant with my first child and decided not to be around radioactive elements.   As I continued raising my children I asked myself the question – other than a safe and loving home, what can I give my children that will be of value to them and society for the rest of their lives? Perhaps all the sacrifices that my parents made so that their kids could have a good education had definitely proved that point.

When I found the school, The Nueva School, I knew that they were on the right track – focusing on learning, critical thinking, emotional intelligence as well as learning to learn in this day of information.  I soon became involved with the organization through my involvement with their board and becoming the Head of the Education Committee.  When my children started going to high school and college I knew I had to find something for myself to do and decided to go back to school and did another masters at Stanford in Education.  It was here that I realized that most children did not have the same experience as I thought they should have.  This is the United States of America!  I knew that I had to bring access to information at the same level for all students in K-12 in the USA.  The idea came out when my husband asked me to look at the “Textbook issues”.

What about open education appeals to you? Can you say a few words about what you think truly open education is, or should be?

I see open education as education that is supported by open educational resources.  These resources make it possible to have content that is not just the voice of an individual but is the result of the community involvement, i.e. wisdom of many.  In fact, open resources are not driven by any artificial or self-serving motives such as profits, sales, marketing, etc.   Fundamentally, education cannot be “open” in the same sense as open software.  In fact, if you look at history we used to pass our collective knowledge as stories.  With the advancement of technologies, paper, print media, digital media and personal computing, that passage of stories has taken on other formats – primarily textbooks for education.   Unfortunately, these books have become the ownership of a select few rather than the effort of many.  We have lost the dialogue that can enhance the quality. Additionally, K-12 education is more controlled and contextualized, particularly public education.  The following three tenets have to have the following characteristics:

1. Content
   a. Content is free to all to use
   b. Content is created by many people – voice of many over ownership of a few
2. Access is provided to all equally
   a. Providing the ability to access, hence multiple ways to providing education – text,
online, multimedia, and other media for all students
   b. Cost of access is covered for all students
3. Commitment to quality even though it is free

I believe that education should be free to all students, particularly in the USA.  How can we even try to educate students if they don’t have access to information?  Younger students particularly need material from which they can take off for learning.  They have to be provided scaffolding for learning – a Vygotskian Concept (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky).  There is a focus on the wrong notion that only higher education needs to be free and open hence more effort is being put into that area.  However, the problem becomes crucial to elementary students as lack of content availability erodes these young students’ ability to learn, as they are not able to have a strong base of knowledge to rely on.

Open education is one way that we can provide access – the “rip, mix, and burn” metaphor allows for the ability to customize content as needed by each student.  At this point schools are provided with information that is delivered in a very old format – a textbook.  Textbooks, especially their physical nature, are hard for students at that age – weight, monolithic nature, arising from 50 states having different requirements, hard to change the content of the book, etc.

CK-12′s mission is very clear on its site—”to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the US and worldwide, but also to empower teacher practitioners by generating or adapting content relevant to their local context.” How is CK-12 currently carrying out this mission?

We are carrying out this mission by providing textbooks, particularly for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) books.  These books have been produced the way that publishers produce their books.  There is no charge from CK-12 for using these books online through our online reader, downloading, or customizing them to your own needs.  As we like to say, “Rip, mix and burn”.  The cost of the printing is the only cost that users have to carry.  This cost will go to your own choice of printing company or for better you can print them using  your home printer.

CK-12 and the Commonwealth of Virginia just released the beta version of the first Physics FlexBook to be aligned with state standards. Can you say a few words about this project and how it came to fruition?

The Commonwealth of Virginia did a study with NASA. This two-year study pointed out that the curriculum as well as the textbook that the Commonwealth was using was outdated and did not have any of the contemporary topics in physics such as LCD, LED, Nanotechnology, Biomedical Imaging, String Theory etc.  Their textbooks stopped at Cathode ray tubes.  That technology was really outdated resulting in no time left for the schools to teach other concepts if they continued to teach these outdated concepts.  The report also pointed out that the Commonwealth should look into open educational resources.

When the Commonwealth talked to the publishers the answer was not satisfactory both from financial and time to market perspectives.  At the same time the CTO of the Governor found out about CK-12 from the web and approached us.  The rest is history!  Governor Tim Kaine sent out a RFP (Request for Proposal) and we had 13 people comprised of scientists, teachers, and professors – volunteering to write the book with CK-12 supporting them.  In addition, CK-12 redrew all the diagrams to make them higher resolution.  We also provide all our diagrams in a repository so that others can use these diagrams, keeping in line with the philosophy of open content. We wrote that book in 2½ months with another two weeks for quality assurance.

Do you see CK-12′s goals evolving as more and more institutions and persons use CK-12′s open textbook technologies (specifically the Flexbook)? For instance, could you see expanding the scope of your mission to encompass more than open textbooks?

At this point we do not see our mission moving from OER books.  The overall goals of the project have not changed.  We are constantly being asked whether we are going to be catering other domains.  Wherever I am going, people ask what about history, economics, or…..  I think, that at some point we will have to answer that question.  Perhaps that will be the only thing we will have to add to our goals.  We are also asked by higher ed people if they can use our tools.  The good thing about that is we don’t have to tell people what they can do or cannot do.  The power of the system is that it is useable under any condition.  All you have to do is use it.

We are finding that we have to focus on more feature sets.  As my cofounder Murugan said to me, that software is a bottomless pit.

What do you see as the future of the textbook? Does the current economy affect this vision at all?

If we are to move to Textbook 2.0 or even 3.0, we have to think about the textbook aligning with other capabilities that are provided by eLearning such as multimedia and other kinds of interactive abilities.  Textbooks have to move from a static format to an interactive format.  This is where our tools will really be useful.  I think this is going to be a very exciting development in general in education.

Sure the current economy will affect the vision mostly positively.  Districts are now going to have to think more creatively about how to provide good content to their students yet at the same time be able to operate with same budgets.  No matter how you look at it, $600 MM is a lot of money to spend for California alone, especially if you can avail better options and cut the spending down.  If we provide quality content we should be able to attract users.

Your Flexbooks are licensed BY-SA. What is the importance of open licensing in the textbook’s future? Why did CK-12 choose the BY-SA license, specifically?

Content has been a closed entity forever.  All the scientific and mathematical advancements were built upon improving an already existing work (standing upon the giant’s shoulders) thus leading to better achievements in an open fashion.  It is now time to provide educational materials under a different model.  A model where people can use it the way they want and need to use it.  We have seen that one-size-does-not-fit-all in education.  Once we move to that model we will see progress.  Even though we have protective clauses such as the Williams Act for providing textbooks for all students we still are not able to provide content that every student has access to.  Even though students have books you can see the difference in rich districts vs. poorer districts.  Charter Schools or Home schooled students have problems with accessing good content.  It costs too much.

When we started this project we went to India and told them about saving cost – their laughter was kind of piercing because their books only cost pennies compared to ours and the Government owns their national curriculum.  The textbook industry needs course correction.  One of the biggest problems is lack of rigorous universal standards for 50 states.  So, if we can provide FlexBooks such that states can adapt the content to their own requirements, that will help a lot with course correction.

The reason we chose to go with CC-BY-SA was because we wanted to make a statement about openness.  We believe that the Creative Commons spirit is about openness.  However, we are also thinking about donations from teachers and writers who have done a tremendous amount of work in producing or writing lesson plans or textbooks.  When we approached these teachers or writers their concern was, how would they protect their work if a publisher takes their work with only attribution?  They wanted to see the improvements made to their original contribution “back in the commons”.  This is when we realized that we had to respect this genuine perspective and make them feel comfortable.  Hence the choice of license!  One thing we have continued to advise and educate our Author Donors is to stay out of the Non-Commercial clause.  This is in the spirit that the non-commercial clause makes the content stale and obsolete over a period of time.

CK-12 and ccLearn have been in informal contact for some time. How do you see us working together in the future?

ccLearn can help organizations such as CK-12 to work together in a “federated” fashion.  It is high time we need mutual understanding and agreements for licensing policies, canonical representation format, and interchangeable metadata across OER organizations.  We have been partnering with ccLearn and Creative Commons in general in promoting these common agendas.

Is there a specific issue you would like us to tackle? Or another organization you would love to see us partnering with?

It will be good for ccLearn to host a summit for all OER sites to understand the importance of common standards to federate our contents across.  For example, my co-founder Murugan Pal has been working with Wikipedia, WikiEducator, OLPC etc. to forge these common standards.

Finally, what is in CK-12′s own future? What other partnerships or plans do you have in the pipeline? What are you most excited about?

We are very excited about the opportunity that the OER community has in this financially stressed out time.  To quote Paul Romer, “Crisis is a terrible thing to waste”; this is the time for us to bring OER into the main stream.  We typically don’t talk about our future plans; as we believe in getting it done, rather than talk about it.Our Virginia FlexBook project is the first stepping-stone, and we are working with various governmental agencies both in Federal and different State levels to make our mission successful.

“It is that time of year where our nations school children are preparing their back packs ready to head back to start their new academic year. The contents of these bags has definitely evolved over years, considering now the average student’s back pack will contain more tech

nology than NASA had to take Apollo to the moon.

But one thing that has stayed constant is the good old fashioned text book. While it requires no batteries or boot up time, it still is the heaviest and most inflexible item in there.

Take for example, the current academic debate going on in the astromony world regarding the number of planets our solar system has. Is it 9, or is it 8?

“People in the know” decided that we actually have only 8 planets, based on the assumption that Pluto is too small to be a planet. Oh dear. Now we have all these text books that has the wrong information, and to make matters worse, depending on the State, it could take anywhere from 1 year to 6 to get it corrected. So not only are our children carry

ing around these heavy tombs, it turns out, the information inside of them is out of date!

The problem doesn’t end there, the same “people in the know” are being challenged by other “people in the know” and the Pluto debate is far from over.

But thats life. We live in an ever evolving world, where new discoveries are being made, old thinking rechallenged, as we increase our awareness and knowledge of the world and universe we inhabit. How is the humble back pack meant to cope?

The problem with our textbooks is that their granularity is simply too large. It only takes one paragraph to be wrong, for the whole book to have to be reprinted. So imagine when a whole discipline changes, in our Pluto example. They simply can’t take this level of change.

But here we are, asking our new students to carry around these tombs of outdated information in and out of school every day.

There has to be a better way no?”

It turns out there is a better way! The

The CK-12 Foundation‘s solution to the age-old problem of uneven shoulders. The Flexbook is a free and open source textbook platform where one can build and edit collaborative textbooks. This is the textbook of the next generation: “CK-12 allows one to customize and produce content by re-purposing to suit what needs to be taught, using different modules that may suit a learner’s learning style, region, language, or level of skill, while adhering to the local education standards. Flexibility + Textbook = Flexbook.”

All CK-12 content will be licensed CC BY-SA. We have been working with the CK-12 foundation for a while now and look forward to continuing collaboration. In related news, the Commonwealth of Virginia have also announced their partnership with the foundation to build an open physics flexbook for all of Virginia. Here is an excerpt from their press release:

“The Virginia Physics “Flexbook” project is a collaborative effort of the Secretaries of Education and Technology and the Department of Education that seeks to elevate the quality of physics instruction across the Commonwealth. Participating educators will create and compile supplemental materials relating to 21st century physics in an open–source format that can be used to strengthen existing physics content. The Commonwealth is partnering with CK–12 (www.ck12.org) on this initiative as they will provide the free, open–source technology platform to facilitate the publication of the newly developed content as a “Flexbook” — defined simply as an adaptive, web–based set of instructional materials.”

The resulting Virginia Physics Flexbook will also be available under CC BY-SA.

(Logos are © CK-12 Foundation.)