MENLO PARK, Calif., (March 26, 2018) — Open Up Resources, the nonprofit publisher of free, highly-rated curricula, today announced they will integrate Open Up Resources’ curricula into Microsoft’s OneNote and Forms apps, offering districts a free and classroom-friendly digital platform for accessing the acclaimed core curricula.
Open Up Resources has recently earned the top rating for its first two curricula by EdReports, the independent nonprofit that reviews K–12 curricula for standards alignment and quality and is considered ‘the Consumer Reports’ of instructional materials.
Together with Microsoft, Open Up Resources will give school districts everything they need to provide teachers and students with a sleek digital textbook experience for the curriculum, as well as a simple way to assign and grade assessments. Currently, districts can access the middle school math curriculum from Open Up Resources, and the EL Education K–5 Language Arts curriculum will become available in summer 2018, with additional curricula becoming available in 2019.
Using the custom OneNote Class Notebook with Open Up Resources curriculum:
The integration into Microsoft Forms will also allow teachers to easily pass along assessment to their students through:
This solution is free and can be used by teachers and students on any platform or device through any web browser.
“We are now combining the best curricula in K–12 with the most advanced platform for digital use of content in classrooms, all freely available to districts,” said Larry Singer, CEO of Open Up Resources. “By making this excellent option freely-available to districts, Open Up Resources and Microsoft are making important investments in US education."
“We are at a pivotal moment in education, and technology has the potential to save schools time and money and ultimately generate better learning outcomes,” said Eran Megiddo, Vice President of Microsoft Education. “We’re happy to see the positive feedback from educators who’ve been part of our initial trials with Open Up Resources and look forward to expanding our Open Up curriculum in Office 365 in the coming months.”
“Our use of the Open Up Resources 6–8 Math curriculum with OneNote Classroom is advancing student learning in mathematics in powerful ways, said Stefanie Buckner, Mathematics Curriculum Specialist in Buncombe County Schools. “The collaboration space provided in OneNote classroom has enhanced mathematical discourse as students are provided a space to record their independent thoughts, then learn interdependently through classroom talk and facilitated discourse.”
Buckner added, “Our students are building math notebooks year to year, and we are excited about this continuous access to mathematical thinking as they progress from grade to grade.”
Unveiled this weekend at the annual ASCD conference in Boston, this alignment with Microsoft is the next step for Open Up Resources in providing school districts with top-notch, standards aligned and cost-effective replacements for the expensive traditional textbooks—and fostering equity in K-12 education.
With more than $18 million in support from philanthropies including the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, Open Up Resources partners with expert content creators to make best-in-class OER curricula available to school districts everywhere.
Open Up Resources has partnered with K-12 innovator and curriculum author EL Education developing a K–5 ELA curriculum, EL Education K–5 Language Arts. That curriculum, which will soon be available to all schools as OER, recently received the highest score EdReports has ever awarded a K–5 ELA curriculum. In addition, Open Up Resources has partnered with Illustrative Mathematics in the development of a high school math curriculum for release in summer, 2019. The nonprofit will also release three more OER curricula for English Language Arts by summer, 2019.
Open Up Resources plans to integrate all of these curricula into Microsoft OneNote as they are released as Open Educational Resources.
Both OneNote and Forms are part of Office 365 for Education, free for teachers and students with a valid school email address. Open Up Resources curricula are accessible at openupresources.org.
Interested school districts can learn more at aka.ms/OpenUpResourcesASCD.
ABOUT OPEN UP RESOURCES
Open Up Resources is a nonprofit that develops the highest quality K–12 curricula available and provides them to districts for free, as open educational resources, to promote instructional equity. Formerly the K–12 OER Collaborative, Open Up Resources partners with the country’s foremost materials experts to create superb instructional materials, then equips districts with the support they need to implement with fidelity. Its mission: to provide students with equal access to rigorous, standards-aligned materials, while easing adoption by districts.