NAVIGATING THE JUNGLE: Amazon is testing a tool that it says can help teachers navigate the jungles of open educational resources (OER), reports EdWeek Market brief. Speaking at a conference organized by the School Superintendents Association, Andrew Joseph, co-founder of TenMarks and Vice President of Strategic Relations for Amazon Education, shared details around a new platform, dubbed “Amazon Inspire,” that is set to launch by May. Earlier this month, the company invited select teachers for a private beta of the platform.
Amazon plans for educators to be able to upload, manage, share, and discover resources in a way that resembles Amazon’s reviewing and purchasing systems. The platform will make the content searchable by assigning metadata tags organized by the Learning Registry, a federal effort to aggregate data around how digital resources are created and used.
Amazon Inspire is part of the company’s commitment to the #GoOpen, an initiative launched by the US Department of Education in October 2015 to spur the use of free educational resources. Joseph vows the company “will never charge” for the platform.
