Open Education will no longer be a foreign term to the masses, thanks to the new annual Open Education Week announced at the 2011 Open Education Conference by Mary Lou Forward, Executive Director of the OpenCourseWare (OCW) Consortium. Here’s what Mary Lou had to say about the new event: “The vision of the OER movement is to improve teaching and learning globally through free and open sharing. OER give people access to the educational content they desire, independent of time or location. The movement encompasses producing, sharing, using and modifying content, as well as innovative models of educational delivery. Open Education Week is going to showcase projects, resources, people and ideas so more people around the world can see its potential and its benefits.” The first annual Open Education Week will take place in 2012, during the week of March 5 – 10. With this global event, the OCW Consortium aims to raise awareness about the benefits of free, open sharing in education with a focus specifically on Open Educational Resources. The week will consist of various global events, live webinars, information and presentations on the
Open Education Week website, and virtual tours of a variety of Open Education projects and organizations. The OCW Consortium is coordinating the weeklong event and is gathering representatives of various Open Education organizations (yes, including us at Saylor.org!) from around the globe to plan out the details. To ensure that the folks behind Open Education Week have ample resources to make this event and high-quality education accessible to everyone, our friends over at Education-Portal.com have pledged up to $20,000 in funding for the event. They’ve started with a baseline donation of $1,000 and are working to engage education enthusiasts for the remaining funds. Here’s how you can help raise the remaining funding and ensure a successful Open Education Week: Go to Education-Portal.com’s Facebook page and “like” it. For each like they receive from now through November 30th, they’ll add $1.00 to the initial $1,000. It’s that simple! For more information on Open Education Week, check out the event website – and be sure to stayed tuned for updates at The Saylor Journals.