May 2009

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.

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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
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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
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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.

“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!”

Tags: flickr | public domain | photos
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