The Department of Education’s October launch of its #GoOpen campaign is an attempt to get more schools throughout the country taking advantage of free, open educational resources available on the Internet.

Since launching, states, districts and organizations have come out in support of the campaign. Initially, the campaign launched with 10 school districts taking the campaign’s pledge to replace at least one textbook with an open educational resource.

Now, “[a]t a special #GoOpen Exchange event Feb. 26 in Washington, DC, the Education Department announced that 21 additional school districts have taken the #GoOpen pledge, and three more districts have become OER ambassadors — bringing the total number of actively involved districts to 40 in less than four months,” said THEJournal.com.

"What's more, 13 states — Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin — are launching statewide #GoOpen initiatives designed to support school districts as they expand their use of high-quality openly licensed materials.”

Various tech organizations are also getting involved in the campaign.

Supporting organizations include big names like Amazon Education, Edmodo and Microsoft.

The Obama administration has made it a priority to dedicate time and resources to expanding access to free, online resources in order to act as an equalizer in education.

In addition to the #GoOpen campaign, the White House announced last week the launch of the Open eBooks app, which has over $250 million worth of books available through it.

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Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

2/29/2016