It was nearly impossible to say which was hotter: the passion in the room for open access, compatible licensing, and peer production, or, the wilting temperatures recorded at the recent iCommons Summit 2007 held Dubrovnik, Croatia in June.

ISKME showcased OER Commons in the Open Education Track's participatory sessions, where traditional panel presentations and passive viewing were banished. Researchers, administrators, legal experts, and educators from many countries held heated discussions on the issues involved in creating, localizing, and sharing content across borders and legal challenges that accompany the internet freedom movement and information sharing generally.

In a pre-conference one-day workshop, Lisa Petrides and Amee Godwin of ISKME, and Joanne Boulle of Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) facilitated an interactive discussion around the importance of open educational projects assessing their current practices and sharing what they’ve learned within and across project boundaries. Specifically, we heard from Joanne Boulle about challenges and successes in the collaborative process of creating free, open-licensed math and science textbooks especially for high schools in South Africa.

During the other exciting three days of the iCommons Summit Education Track, break-out groups brainstormed about training teachers with OER, bringing students into authoring, and using learners to improve learning content. The activities culminated in next-step visioning for facilitating "next-generation" learning, to remove barriers from learning what you want, when you want it.

Find iSummit-related articles on OER Commons

Foothill-De Anza Community College District Chancellor Martha Kanter and the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources are taking steps toward the development and adoption of low-cost, open textbooks, courseware, and other resources for community colleges. With its Board of Trustees, the college is spearheading legislation in the California State Senate aimed at supporting OER for community colleges.

A quote from the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) website:

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is encouraging the creation of free, high-quality content for community college courses to replace commonly used textbooks. By promoting OER, community colleges can create sustainable academic resources for students and provide professional development opportunities for faculty.

Learn more about CCCOER

Just released, a new application on Facebook, called OER Daily. Facebook users can add OER Daily to your profile to be served up a new featured item from our site each day. View and save favorites to a Portfolio on OER Commons. Start your keyword search for learning resources from Facebook. This new release is part of the OER Commons effort to provide OER-related services on other sites and for other interested communities.

Facebook users may find the application at: http://apps.facebook.com/oercdaily/
Click at the bottom on "Page built by OER Daily" to see the application and add it to your profile.

Speaking of favorites, we'd like to feature an example of an innovative lesson plan accompanied by activities, assignments, teaching strategies, and assessments for the Secondary Grade Level: An Ad for An Element: A lesson plan for Grades 9–12 Chemistry and Physical Science from LEARN NC. Students prepare an ad for an element, including properties and uses, in an attention getting format such as that used in the advertising business.

Comments from the author:"My students really showed creativity and enthusiasm in doing this activity. I have had every form of ad turned in from video commercials to pamphlets to movie posters."

OER Commons now features over 1200 K-12 lesson plans from LEARN NC, licensed under Creative Commons, in this case, the Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike License. Terms specifiy that you may use, share, distribute, and modify these materials for your non-commercial purposes by crediting the creator and sharing your derivative works in a like manner.

See LEARN NC items on OER Commons