The Education Law Open Courseware Project

In the United States there are something like 600 educational leadership preparation programs offering courses in education law every year. There are something like 70 law schools offering courses in educational law frequently. There are even more Colleges of Education offering educational law to undergraduate students. Every year there are probably around 10,000 students taking an educational law course. None of these courses were "open" ... until today.

We live in a country where we don't tell our teachers about the law. Every day there are millions of teachers in our nation's classrooms that have never had any formal training in, and really don't know a thing about, educational law. That's a travesty that many are trying to remedy, but in the meantime we can make this formal training public so that teachers can at least get a minimal level of competency in educational law as they teach our children.

For these reasons, I (Justin) am beginning an effort to bring more of this courseware into the public sphere. We all work better when we collaborate and openly share our resources - and we need a space to do that. At the beginning, it will probably just be my classes here at the University of Kentucky that are shared in this space. But, over time, I hope more professors will make elements of their courses open.

To that end, I am willing to provide free hosting to any professor willing to share here on the Edjurist. You can get a course page that is easily accessible and easily modified. The webhosting service I use, Squarespace, is one of the best in the world (it better be, I pay a lot of money for it). Because this site constantly has fresh content and viewers streaming in from the other activities, you can be assured your content will be viewed and appreciated. But, enough of that, if you are interested contact me and let me convince you.

Concerning usage, the default license is the Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 3.0 United States License (if you post courseware we can post it under a different license and certainly post it under your name). Thus, steal away! Really, it's fine with me. Just give me credit and if you remix it, keep it under a similar license. If you find ways to improve my content ... by all means let me know and let me steal from you (that's how this works ... we both are better off in the end). So, use as much or as little as you want. I'll try to keep new and fresh content coming and continue to improve our sharing mechanism. 

Next, everyone ... please use it - that's why I (hopefully we) put it up. We would rather you know more about educational law than not. When you find stuff you like, let us know. When you find stuff you don't like, let us know. This whole thing is constantly changing and can only get better when more people give more feedback. That's the kind of information that drives innovation, so that's really important feedback.

In summary, we are not trying to be revolutionary. We are not trying to help or hurt anyone else that teaches educational law. We're just trying to do something useful in a space that permits collaboration. So, enjoy.