To promote wider use of open educational resources by states and schools, the U.S. Department of Education last week proposed a new regulation that would require any new intellectual property developed with grant funds from the department to be openly licensed.
That would make such materials available for free use, revision, and sharing by anyone. It would also represent a big, federally supported step away from the textbook-publishing industry, long a backbone of K-12 education.
A group of 10 districts in California, Delaware, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin, as well as Department of Defense schools, are pledging to replace at least one textbook with openly licensed educational resources within the next year.
