The first annual Open Education Week will take place next week from March 5-10, both online and in locally hosted events around the world. Open Education Week is organized by the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which is a community of more than 250 universities and organizations worldwide. Creative Commons, one of the major supporters of OER week, is the organization behind the free copyleft license that helps make Wikipedia a truly free and shareable project.
The purpose of Open Education Week is to raise awareness of the open education movement, which is dedicated to sharing, reducing barriers, and increasing access to education, through free and open access to educational platforms, tools and resources. As OCWC Executive Director Mary Lou Forward said in a press release, “the vision of the open education movement is to create a world in which the desire to learn is fully met by the opportunity to do so.”
As the largest free educational resource on the Internet, Wikipedia in its hundreds of language variants and its sister projects like Wikibooks and Wikiversity, play a central role in the growth and expansion of open education. This week we also salute the thousands of volunteers who have invested enormous amounts of time and energy in the creation of free teaching resources on the Internet.
Events include more than 40 webinars on open education topics, as well as offline events such as local workshops. Throughout the week, there will also be an ongoing discussion via blog posts, tweets, and postings. Anyone can participate in Open Education Week events free of cost. Visit www.openeducationweek.org for more information and event schedules.
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
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