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The world faces two major challenges for education. One is to provide students of all ages opportunities for education. Another challenge is to recruit and train millions of teachers. UNESCO estimates teacher shortages will continue for decades if current trends continue. The world will need an additional 3.3 million elementary teachers and 5.1 million secondary teachers in classrooms by 2030 to provide all children with a basic education (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2013). Educator deciencies are a worldwide problem exacerbated by a developing number of retirement-age instructors and a record number of school-age children. Teacher recruitment of this magnitude is incomprehensible. It is not conceivable to train and prepare teachers as quickly as students need them.

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Open Education Resources and other communication tools can help improve and expand teacher training and professional developmenta huge opportunity in countries grappling with large teacher shortages and under-educated teachers (Duncan, 2013).

Open Education is designed to provide an alternative to brickand-mortar education. According to Bonk (2009), Educational organizations realize many benets from free and open source software(p. 151).! Open Education provides free access to innovative courses. Elite universities are offering their classes online by creating open learning platforms, such as edX. Bonk (2009) states, Because of these freedoms, there are no restrictions stopping people from particular elds, backgrounds, or groups from using or distributing it (pp. 146-147).! Anyone and everyone in the world can access educational opportunities at any given moment provided they have internet access.!

A challenge the open education movement faces are in regard to copyright laws and limitations. Copyright provides the publisher with exclusive rights, by law, to protect their work (McNally, 2012). Open Education raises basic philosophical issues to do

with the nature of ownership. Bonk compiled a list of the deadly dozen issues associated with Open Education Resources, which address quality, web access limitations, privacy, copyright issues, and plagiarism (2009, p. 375).! One way to address this issue is to apply Creative Commons licensing, which make materials available to the public, while the creator retains ownership.! At the point where teacher shortages are reaching critical levels across the globe, Open Education can expand access to learning for everyone, everywhere! What are the best open education resources available to train new and up and coming educators around the world?
References Bonk, C. J. (2009). The world is open: How web technology is revolutionizing education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

! Dunkan, A (2013, August 6). Education is the Only Solution. U.S. Agency for

International Development (USAID) Global Education Summit. Retrieved from https:// www.ed.gov/news/speeches/education-only-solution McNally, M. (2012). Democratizing access to knowledge: Find out what open educational resources (oer) have to offer. FIMS Presentations. Paper 13. Retrieved from http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/fimspres/13/

! UNESCO Institute for Statistics. (2013). A teacher for every child: Projecting global
teacher needs from 2015 to 2030. Retrieved from http://www.uis.unesco.org/ Education/Documents/fs27-2013-teachers projections.pdf

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