K-12 school districts can spend large sums of money for the purchase of textbooks. These can become outdated, can wear out, abused, and even lost by students. Also, they add significant weight to a student's backpack. An alternative is using Open Educational Resources (OER) as a replacement for textbooks. Each student would need a laptop or tablet and an internet connection to make this plan workable.
OERs have many advantages over traditional textbooks:
1. Are free of cost.
2. Are immediately available for downloading onto student devices.
3. Can be edited and updated to meet the needs of each class.
4. Can be shared with other classes, schools, or districts.
5. Being stored in the cloud, are always available to students 24/7, from any location.
Faculty would have to screen OER resources before adoption to make certain curriculum goals are supported.
