One of the early goals of OpenCurriculum’s platform is to bring with it an API (application programming interface) to provide developers the access to thousands of OERs (open educational resources) we will be indexing and the community will be creating in the months to come. To that, you may ask: hold on – aren’t there already free external APIs for the massive OER repositories on the web, like on OERCommons, Curriki or Gooru?

If you are asking such a question, hats off! You already seem to know a lot about the state of this space. But what you may not know is that there actually is not a single usable OER repository API amongst there options and more. OERCommons maintains an internal API shared only with limited network partners and Curriki doesn’t not implement a third-party developer API. Gooru, on the other hand, actually implements an API, but no experienced or novice web developer may call this very usable. With manual registration of developers and lack of support for unauthenticated requests to open content, the APIs flexibility feel restricted. We believe that practices like these significantly deter and stifle innovation, and we wish to fix this.

OpenCurriculum has begun a journey of building a REAL developer API. An API that will give access to objects and native content types including true external URLs, so that developers get the opportunity to create rich applications with OERs, and innovate without bounds. But until the day we release such an API, if you are a developer, we hope you can sit tight and watch for our updates, because when we do, we will give you tremendous power.