A completely open high school

David Wiley announced yesterday that the Utah Board of Education approved a new charter school, the Open High School of Utah. It’ll be a publicly-funded virtual school which uses exclusively open educational resources.

There are a few reasons this is particularly exciting. This school will have a strong concentrated interest in supporting OERs — you can expect the administration to be vocal advocates for favorable policies, funding, etc. The staff will develop deep experience with OERs, which can be shared with colleagues at traditional schools — and carried with them to future jobs. The school’s existence will establish a precedent, encouraging other educators to consider how to use OERs.

In other words, this could be the acorn that starts a forest.