As states and districts transition to college- and career-ready standards and aligned assessments, the need for high-quality instructional materials is clear. Open Educational Resources (OER) offer a low-cost solution with high potential to assist teachers nationwide in helping students meet the demands of higher standards. More and more developers are choosing to publish their instructional materials as OER as an alternative to publishing with a traditional, all rights reserved copyright. In addition to this advantage, OER support the ability of educators to share and modify instructional materials for classroom use. With the advent of common, college- and career-ready standards in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), educators can seek out, customize or develop high-quality instructional materials and can share those materials with their peers across districts and state borders. The modern classroom incorporates modular instructional materials from myriad sources.

Keywords

alignment (education) · career readiness · college readiness · instructional materials · Open Source technology · shared resources and services · state policy · state standards · textbooks