The open content movement turns ten years old in 2008. Since 1998 we've seen the emergence of incredible collections of open content like Wikipedia, open course materials like MIT OCW, open e-learning like Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative, open record labels like Magnatune, open access journals like the Public Library of Science, and the list goes on. Since 2002 we have referred to open content designed to support learning as "open educational resources."

Why OERs? What are we trying to achieve? The simplest possible formulation I can give is "To provide resources that increase the quantity and quality of informal and formal learning opportunities worldwide."