Open textbooks and wikibooks for K-12 schools
Posted by karen on July 3, 2009 in Uncategorized
I’ve been talking a lot to folks lately about the idea of open textbooks beginning to replace conventional textbooks, allowing both for more differentiation and for vast sums of money to be redirected toward more useful things (like professional development and customization).
People have asked me how they can start getting involved in open textbooks. Here are a couple ideas. First, go explore Wikibooks and especially Wikijunior. There are tons of open textbooks here that you can use, edit, contribute to, customize, or even create your own.
If you’re looking for a project to get your students involved in, look at the international collaboration In Our World: Portraits of Communities across the Globe. This text will be written by students around the globe with each class creating a chapter to tell about their community. What a great way to facilitate students writing for a genuine audience, while collaborating with other classes around the world. This project begins in August. If you’d like to participate, you can contact the coordinators at Old Dominion University by emailing jkidd AT odu DOT edu for more information.
Another bigger way to get involved in open textbooks is to talk to your district curriculum and instruction folks about open education and the potential of open textbooks. As our curriculum leaders begin to see the advantages, this movement will really start to gain steam.
[Textbook photo credit: caryatidxx / Emilie from Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/dearlydeparted/3657275396/]
Tags: textbooks | open | wikibooksPicasa adds CC search
Posted by karen on June 18, 2009 in Uncategorized
Like Flickr, Picasa allows users to assign a Creative Commons license to their photos. Until recently, you couldn’t search for CC licensed photos, but now that has been added!
When you do a seach, just click Show options on the left side. Then click Creative Commons in the options and you can choose which type of license to filter by.
(To apply a CC license to photos you upload, click the edit button under Photo reuse to the right of your photo. To set CC as your default, to go your Settings and click the Privacy and Permissions tab.)
Thanks go Picasa and Google for adding this!
Open photos and model releases
Posted by karen on June 11, 2009 in Uncategorized
I’ve been thinking about open licensed photos and model releases. True, licensing and model releases are separate issues, but the discussion is relevant if you want to use open licensed photos that have people in them.
Some open photo repositories don’t deal with this at all (e.g. Flickr and Wikimedia Commons only sort of, while others (e.g. OpenPhoto.net) don’t include pictures with people.
I tweeted a question about this and Creative Commons pointed me to Joi Ito’s Free Souls Model Release. Great resource. And, of course, this is CC licensed so we can adapt as needed. Thanks, Joi!
Tags: creative commons | photos | model releases
OER at NECC
Posted by karen on June 8, 2009 in Uncategorized
I am really excited about two hands-on sessions I’m facilitating at NECC in DC this year. They both concern OERs, a topic that I am very passionate about, both for the opportunity to differentiate instruction and the potential to replace expensive and inaccessible textbooks.
In these sessions, we’ll be exploring open licensed photos, clip art and music; looking at open wiki-based textbooks; using an an open licensed kids dictionary; and creating and improving other OERs. Here are the times:
Open-Licensed Content: The Missing Piece
[Formal Session: Open Source Lab]
Monday, 6/29/2009, 8:30am–9:30am WWCC 152 B
Open Educational Resources: Share, Remix, Learn
[Formal Session: BYOL]
Tuesday, 6/30/2009, 12:30pm–1:30pm WWCC 151 B
I’ll also be in the 21st Century Media Center Playground on Mon. from 12-2 showing mobile technology tools that can be used to differentiate instruction and in the Open Source Playground (Mon. from 2-4 and Tues. from 2-4) showing open content and talking about how you can use this free resource in your school.
Hope to see you in DC!
Tags: necc | necc2009 | oer
A great leap forward…and another nail
Posted by karen on June 3, 2009 in Uncategorized
Forty-six states have signed on to an agreement to create common academic standards.
This is long overdue and could be a tremendous leap forward. It’s also almost inconceivable. Kudos to The Council of Chief State School Officers,The National Governors Association, Arne Duncan, Achieve, and other forces behind this.
In the curriculum development world, 50 sets of state standards has long been a challenge, to put it mildly. Having different standards for every state has doubtless added many hundreds of millions of dollars to textbook costs. (Texas, one of the few holdouts, estimates it will cost them $3 billion to change gears. How much will it save them in the long run though? Much more than that.)
And in an era of accountability and “leaving no child behind,” do 50 sets of standards make any sense?
Having common standards could be a real boon for the open textbook movement as well. Being able to develop textbooks around common standards that could then be adopted in one version by all states is a much more reasonable proposition.
The commercial textbook model is already badly broken. Most textbooks do not meet the needs of students. They are not accessible due to the input of overly large, special interest-driven committees who can’t say no to anything. Worst of all, they are expensive and state-mandated, taking funding away from other more effective instructional tools.
But textbook publishers have somewhat of a lock on the market due to complex legacy state approval and purchasing processes. Common state standards could be the beginning of an end to this travesty.
It’s encouraging to think that such substantive and substantial change is possible in the educational bureaucracy.
Tags: textbooks | standards
Stimulus funding for open curriculum
Posted by karen on May 28, 2009 in Uncategorized
There is a flood of stimulus money coming into education this summer, including a substantial amount for ed tech. This is one-time funding that is to be spent quickly, but in a way that yields significant, long-term gains.
I can think of no better way to use such funding than to develop high-quality, open-licensed curriculum resources that would be available for free use worldwide.
A more detailed concept paper of this idea is available here.
If you are with a school district that would be interested in a collaboration on such a project, please contact me at karen at k12opened dot com.
Another nail in the coffin…
Posted by karen on May 18, 2009 in Uncategorized
California is considering more legislation that would allow schools to shift funding from textbooks to electronic instructional materials.
Combined with (state-approved) open textooks, this could pave the way for more effective learning experiences.
Now we just need to find some visionary school leaders willing to be pioneers!
Tags: textbooks | California
CA launches open textbook initiative
Posted by karen on May 7, 2009 in Uncategorized
Calilfornia has launched an initiative for free, open textbooks for high school math and science.
Very nice to see such a high profile announcment. A little hard to see how CDE could pull this off by fall, 2009 with as much difficulty as they seem to have with other things, though.
On a related note, I’m working on a concept paper for open educational resources development for upper elementary and middle school (suitable for an EETT grant). Stay tuned for more details. Contact me if you’re interested in a collaboration on this.
Tags: oer | textbooks | EETT | grants
PD as the “most open” and Flickr
Posted by karen on May 5, 2009 in Uncategorized
Scott Leslie tweeted about something I’ve thought about myself many times… Flickr’s lack of a public domain license option.
I wrote this message to the Flickr team. If you share the desire to have a PD license option, drop them a note.
Tags: flickr | public domain | photos“I love Flickr. And I love open licensing.
I am very happy that Flickr offers users an option to CC license photos.This has provided the world with over 100 million open-licensed photos, which is a beautiful thing.
I’m wondering, though, for those of us who are willing to share even more, would you consider adding a public domain license option?
Thanks, and keep up the great work!”
Open ed materials dev as service learning
Posted by karen on April 27, 2009 in Uncategorized
What a great idea! DeAnza College has a community service learning project that involves developing open educational resources. They suggest several projects that students can contribute to.
What a phenomenal way to teach about OER while contributing something to the world at large.
I really like that the projects they’ve selected are all ones that can easily be contributed to by an average person. More courses should do something like this (like the open dictionary). I think it’s an incredibly valuable way to get immersed quickly in OER (and more immediately valuable than designing yet another new OER project — there are plenty already out there that need our help!)
Thank you do DeAnza for this brilliant model we can all follow.
Tags: oer | mozopenedcourse
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