New UNESCO report on OER in Poland
New country report on Open Educational Resources in Poland has been published by Institute of Information Technologies in Education UNESCO (IITE). Open Educational Resources in Poland: Challenges and Opportunities ( PDF) is a review of projects and policies of public institutions and non-governmental organisations. Report written by Karolina Grodecka ( e -Learning Center of AGH University of Science and Technology) and Kamil Śliwowski (Digital Center) covers public (top down) ICT and OER initiatives in public education and non-governmental (bottom-up) OER projects and initiatives like promotion and lobbing actions.
Publication focuses a lot on story of Polish Coalition of Open Education and Digital School, first nationwide and complete for all school levels and subjects program creating open school textbooks. Both projects are characteristic of the Polish OER field and aroused international interest over last years. Especially Digital School program which consists of three components and open textbooks was the smallest but the most controversial and difficult one. Two years long, both closed and public consultations did not close the critique from commercial publishers who mostly boycotted the program. But what this report also covers, even independent OER projects (besides the biggest like Polish Wikipedia or very popular public domain digital library wolnelektury.pl) struggle for outreach to teachers. Lack of public, systematic support for teachers and NGO projects on how to implement and sustain creation and dissemination of resources is one of most important barriers for wide OER implementation.
Report (PDF), published as part of series form Institute of Information Technologies in Education UNESCO about Brazil, China, Lithuania and Russia was created in co-operation with authors affiliate institutions (AGH University of Science and Technology and Digital Center) and Polish Coalition for Open Education.