[Maillist] Curriculum

[The Morleys]

The article below will help you identify an incredible resource for  
curriculum and focus you in on issues in curriculum world-wide. You  
can find Curriki at the IAAE web site under the menu item  
"Curriculum." Be sure to visit the IAAE web site for more information  
on alternative education. www.iaae.net



The Disruptive Innovation of Curriculum 2.0

In this age of rampant information sharing, why aren’t educational  
materials as ‘open’ as some other things – like some computer code?  
This is the question that Scott McNealy, who revolutionized software  
development with Sun Microsystems, asked himself about instructional  
materials while he was trying to find a way to explain electricity to  
one of his school-aged sons. As he wrestled with this question, he  
came up with an idea.  Why not apply the same collaborative spirit  
that drives the open source software world to K-12 education material?  
 From that brainstorm, Curriki http://www.curriki.org/http://www.curriki.org/ 
  burst onto the scene. Today we’re one of the largest K-12 open  
source education sites in the world with more than 85,000 registered  
members and close to 250,000 “friends of Curriki” on our mailing  
list.  Curriki is used by educators from Boston to Bangalore and in  
virtually every country around the world.  The model of sharing Open  
Educational Resources (OER) is already fundamentally changing teaching  
and learning. As technology spreads across the globe through low-cost  
laptops and even cell phones,  open content has the potential to  
bridge the education divide between those with and without access to  
high quality instructional materials.

The Curriki site itself offers educators the ability to do three main  
things:  Find free and open source educational resources; Contribute  
their own classroom-tested curriculum; and Connect with other  
educators using our group tools to collaboratively develop new content.

Community Power

Educators who are looking for classroom materials can search our  
repository of more than 30,000 free and open source resources.  The  
content comes from for-profit and non-profit publishers and from our  
large and growing community of educators. It includes full courses,  
units of instruction and individual lessons, many with simulations,  
animations and video.  Using Curriki, members can create collections  
of curricula for use in their classrooms, similar to assembling an  
iTunes playlist for use at a party or the gym.  Teachers build  
collections of resources that they find in the repository and then can  
add to them with their own best lessons and units of instruction. If  
the teacher decides that one way of explaining how to add fractions  
will be more engaging than another, he or she can simply swap one in  
for the other.  By everyone sharing their best content, all teachers  
gain access to a wealth of different approaches to all of the most  
common teaching activities.

With Curriki, the process of sharing is streamlined, so that teachers  
who want to contribute can use simple templates designed around  
popular pedagogical styles such as Understanding by Design or  
Constructivism to create content right on the site. Users can also  
upload Word, PowerPoint or virtually any other kind of file.  Some  
districts are now using the site as a tool for knowledge management so  
that when veteran teachers retire, the great content they’ve created  
over the years doesn’t have to retire with them.   Preserving and  
sharing high quality curriculum: sometimes some of the most powerful  
ways to improve teaching and learning are also the simplest.

Teacher Collaboration

Teachers who want to collaborate to build new curriculum can come  
together using the Curriki group tools. This easy-to-use set of tools  
lets members set up a group around a specific area of focus. For  
example, the Parlin School uses Curriki to share curriculum and then  
invites other schools and teachers to collaborate around their  
contributions. The group can start with content that’s found in the  
repository and then add to it with their own material, or they can  
develop everything themselves from scratch.

Quality Assurance

With any open site, “How do you make sure the content is good?” is one  
of the first questions people raise. With an equal opportunity system  
of contributing, a quality vetting process is vital and Curriki’s  
review process is therefore appropriately thorough. Any content that a  
member uploads is first reviewed for its educational relevance. Next,  
a team of experienced subject matter experts review content and  
provide both numerical scores and detailed analysis for technical  
completeness, content accuracy and appropriate pedagogy.  We also have  
a Comments feature on every resource, that allows members to post  
ratings and write comments on what worked and didn’t work in their  
classrooms. This process allows for input from a community with a lot  
of opinions – teachers.

Clearly there is an impact from these efforts both in the U. S. and  
around the world.  In just a few years, nearly 1 million lessons have  
been downloaded from our site.  In districts such as San Jose,  
California and on Long Island, New York, and in Nepal and Indonesia  
and Yemen, the feedback is that this model of sharing makes obvious  
sense. We’re just at the beginning of the Open Educational Resource  
movement, but we need continued funding to keep things rolling.  To  
grow globally, this new, altruistic model of sharing information needs  
additional supporters. To date, we’ve been generously supported by  
benefactors, ranging from committed wealthy individuals to  
foundations. As money gets tighter and tighter, we’re spending an  
increasing amount of time following up on every lead, from stimulus  
grants to wealthy high tech execs with Web 2.0 funding techniques.

David vs. Goliath

One such opportunity came from a former Google executive Paul  
Buchheit, who announced this summer that he was planning to give away  
“a lot of money” and wanted the community to tell him where to spend  
it. Groups were asked to post their ideas and then to let the  
community vote for the ideas they liked best. Through email  
newsletters and Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, Curriki organized  
our forces and reached out to our entire community – and they  
responded and continue to vote. Within a few weeks we were competing  
for the number one spot with the deep-pocketed Clinton Global  
Initiative. The Chronicle of Philanthropy wrote a story about how  
Curriki is the David challenging Goliath.

That metaphor resonates on many levels. David as the smaller  
organization – and David as the upstart new model of information  
sharing. Questions and challenges still abound. How to motivate  
teachers to contribute?  Will the philanthropic community maintain the  
necessary support? It’s not a Goliath amount of money, but the  
question of sustainability is ever-present. Perhaps a community of  
believers will click Obama-style and donate in small increments.  The  
model is being honed as it’s being invented.

This new model of leveraging the collective knowledge of the community  
is beginning to deliver on its promise of revolutionizing learning.  
The challenge is how to make it sustainable.



Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-barbara-kurshan/the-disruptive-innovation_b_291495.html
Ed Options
raymondmorl at gmail.com



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