Germany’s Ministry of Education and Research has earmarkes EUR 1.2 million to finance the creation, over the next two years, of a portal to aggregate open educational resources, the ministry announced this week. The OER portal is to support schools and universities, and will be managed by the country’s Bildungsserver (Education Server).
The OER was announced by the ministry on Wednesday. “This is a major step towards a pedagogically meaningful and copyrighted use of open educational resources in all fields of education", Cornelia Quennet-Thielen, Secretary of State is quoted as saying.
OER material is protected by copyright, but the nature of the license may allow the material to be modified and passed on to others, the Ministry explained.
Open educational resources are freely available on the Internet, can be shared and changed on a legally secure basis, and open up new didactic and educational possibilities, Deutsche Bildungsserver adds. The organisation explains that in Germany, OER material is fragmented, and focuses on particular areas of education. OER material is available on separate - uninteroperable - ICT systems.
The new portal will aggregate the OER material, overcome barriers to sharing and reuse and make the material widely available.
Work on the OER portal started on Tuesday. “In the course of the next few months, the range of information on the platform will grow. The observatory will take care of information transfer, and networking to open educational resources”, the portal explains in its introduction. The project team expects to officially launch the portal in March or April.
More information:
Announcement by Deutscher Bildungsserver (in German)
Announcement by the Ministry of Education (in German)