Liberty Public Schools is fortunate to be a part of an incredibly supportive community who provided funding for digital devices for every student in our district. In the process of the 1:1 transformation, precedent was set for curriculum resources acquisition to be primarily digital.

Simultaneously with the 1:1 integration, Liberty followed the traditional timeline process for resource acquisition and realized the need for targeted teacher professional development that would encourage informed choices about appropriate resources to best meet the needs of learners in this era. Consultants are hired the year ahead of the resource purchase. In 2015-2016, the content areas of focus are K-12 Social Studies and Science. Elementary decided to purchase and professionally develop teachers to instruct using a nationally renowned, inquiry-based K-5 Science Program. Local units were developed to augment the standards not addressed in the program. Officially, this was the district’s first use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) as a system.

Predicting our elementary students would quickly come to expect the inquiry learning experiences throughout our system, we hired a consulting company to work with secondary Science teachers on Problem-based learning (PBL) in the design and instruction of their curriculum units. North Kansas City School District (MO) shared with us an OER platform with the capability of creating digital flex-textbooks which they used for their Middle School Science curriculum. We knew this was a direction our teams would be able to take. In secondary Social Studies, a specialized secondary consultant was brought onboard to help that team with the process of creating and curating resources available to build their units of study. It was from our relationship with this incredible consultant that we were introduced to the #GoOpen Initiative. Our decision to commit to #GoOpen was straightforward due to the natural fit in the direction we were headed with curriculum resources acquisition. One major influence was the budget commitment needed for K-12 textbook acquisition, which was extraordinary considering the static nature of the resource. Having teachers consider OERs as a viable option was a powerful statement for our use of funds previously considered for textbooks.

The transition to using openly licensed learning materials has been exciting and unnerving to our teachers. Liberty’s district leadership graciously agreed to allow all the funding saved from textbook purchases to be utilized in the continued professional development, curriculum writing, and desired premium digital resources. We recognized immediately that teachers collaborating about what content should be included in curriculum, what best instructional practice fits the learning, and how to better personalize the student learning experience will be some of the best professional development available. Teacher teams have and will continue to work together to create, find, and curate the content that best fits their units of study. Currently, they share their information during their bi-annual “Heads of State” meetings where teachers from all buildings come together to work on curriculum.

One challenge Liberty has faced is time. Our teachers treasure their summers with their families and do not like to be out of their classrooms during the school year. We recognize and value their personal and professional time. This has been a continual challenge for us as we tackle the transition.

One piece of advice we can share with other districts starting this journey is to find several options for platforms teachers can use to “hold” their units of study, and resources. This was one of the first pieces of advice shared with us by our Dr. Phillip Hickman, Superintendent from Columbus Municipal School District (MS), our #GoOpen Ambassador district, and one that allowed us to make connections with other districts and platform vendors.