Open Educational Resources in Primary Education in Developing and Developed Countries: Current and Emerging Trends

Since the early 2000’s, various OERs have become increasingly common—and increasingly complex—components of higher education teaching and learning materials throughout the developed world and in many parts of the... [ view full abstract ]

Since the early 2000’s, various OERs have become increasingly common—and increasingly complex—components of higher education teaching and learning materials throughout the developed world and in many parts of the developing world. In more recent years, the potential of OER has also been recognized within primary and secondary education, and it has been deployed at these lower grades in interesting ways in the hopes of improving learning outcomes for fundamental curricular subjects such as reading and mathematics. This paper will review OER technologies and platforms that are being used to teach reading and mathematics at primary and secondary levels within developing countries. The paper will also raise for discussion the challenges and opportunities embodied by the use of information and communications technologies (ICT) and OERs to improve literacy and numeracy instruction and learning in the early grades within resource-challenged environments. Several case studies will be reviewed, analyzing the range of open license types applied in primary education contexts and the challenges documented in existing research around the processes and difficulties educators face when trying to leverage ICTs to modify or repurpose OERs for the benefit of their students. Finally, the paper will introduce a specific open resource technology that is being developed to support both education and health initiatives in developing countries that has potential for moving into developed countries as well.