Emerging Technology - Open Education

In today’s world, technology is advancing at an incredible pace.  As such, education seeks to take advantage of the leaps in technology for the purpose of remaining relevant and forward thinking.  While it is not always advantageous to try and include every new piece of technology into the classroom, there are some that we can pick and choose that just make sense to assimilate.  One of those technologies is open education.

Open education is a platform of education where all people have access to high quality content that is free from charge.  In open education, the cost of content is not the limiting factor for learners.  Also, the content is far more likely to be up to date because people who are at the leading edge of their fields are collaborating and improving the source.

One of the greatest aspects of open education for me is that I can utilize the quality resources being produced from any school I teach at anywhere around the world!  Another great component to open education is that it provides learners with the opportunity to be the people critiquing the materials and identify whether it is worth using!  What better way to learn than being critical of other’s work?

Some great sources for open education materials include:
edX - edX is a consortium of universities providing tuition free classes.
KhanAcademy - Do I need to explain this one? ;-)
Coursera - Coursera is also a partnership between universities and organizations that provides numerous courses for free.

Curriki - Curriki is for learners of all ages.  This site is also great for educating people about what open education resources (OERs) are.