Are you for goodness? Or badness?

Is he standing right behind me? Dang...

Once in a while someone comes up with a truly great idea. I'm not talking about salt and vinegar potato chips or Netflix; but rather great ideas that have the ability to positively affect changes in the lives of people. These can range from the individual level to the group level and even span entire populations, but rarely do the ideas have the power to stretch themselves across the broad spectrum of human influence. Open Courseware (OCW) is one of those great ideas. Curtis Bonk gets around to telling us this through his seemingly effortless ability to blend storytelling with something relevant. OCW falls under the larger umbrella of Open Educational Resources (OER) and includes not only learning content, such as courses and course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals, but also tools such as that aid in the creation, delivery, and development of open content. It can also include implementation resources such as intellectual property licenses and guided design-principles


My real point of focus is the ocwconsortium.org website, the magical portal to higher education resources as provided by such luminous institutions as MIT and Johns Hopkins. I had a really enjoyable time searching for content that I would be interested as a matter of professional development, and managed to find at least two excellent and pertinent courses through not only MIT but also NJIT (New Jersey Institute of Technology) that will probably prove to be valuable in addition to my Lehigh education and the certificate program through the University of Wisconsin.


Another great resource that I have been aware of for some time is the Virginia Open Education Foundation, who are striving to bring curriculum and open education content to students in the state of Virginia. Not only this an ambitious and forward-thinking venture, but the development and usage of the FlexBook open content text book system by VA is truly remarkable. Imagine the ability to pick and choose content (State and National standards-approved) and creat your own textbook that is tailored to your needs as an instructor. Please check out CK12.org to see it in action. Amazing and inspirational.


Here is a screenshot of my open course on the Morris Canal, conducted for 3 (angry, merciless) students recently: