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 * Introduction **

The 2010 New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project identified six emerging technology trends they believe will transform how we teach and how students learn over the next one to five years. This Wiki will describe what may be one of the most important technological shifts in the history of education: a shift that will allow anyone with a connection to the internet anywhere in the world to have near equal access to the information available online. This trend is widely known as Open Content. According to Wikipedia, the largest Open Content project in the world, Open Content is defined as "Any kind of creative work, or content, published under a license that explicitly allows copying and modifying of its information by anyone, not exclusively by a closed organization, firm or individual". (1) Still others claim that Open Content refers to "All material (text, sound, images) that the general public can freely use, distribute and modify without the traditional restrictions imposed by copyright." (2)

With the rising cost of textbooks and the inequitable distribution of educational resources throughout the world, Open Content offers some potential solutions. This Wiki will examine the various facets of this controversial trend: a trend that some have referred to as nothing short of an "information revolution." (2)

Thomas Jefferson had the following ideas about sharing knowledge:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." (12)

Wiki creators, Connie Fox and Tom Fentin, are both pursuing advanced degrees in Instructional Technology and Library Information Science respectively from Wayne State University. Fox is an Application Specialist/Trainer for the Monroe Public Schools Technology Department while Fentin teaches Social Studies for the Detroit Public Schools. This Wiki will delve into the debate over Open Content, an emerging technology that experts in 2010 predicted would be widely available in one year or less. (4) In this Wiki, we will outline some of the key areas of importance within the Open Content trend including:


 * IT background
 * Current news and issues
 * Areas of impact
 * What the future will look like

Please [|click here] to visit our Delicious page for a list of sites related to this topic.

In the following 18-minute video interview by Ulrike Reinhard of we_magazine, Judy Breck discusses her basic open content concepts. (11)

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