http://www.k12opened.com/blog A blog for reflecting on the opportunities and challenges in open education Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:34:48 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've been involved in some conversations lately to examine how OER might be leveraged as core curriculum resources (read: replacements for textooks, for those who still use such things) in K-12. At some point in these conversations, the question of the role of traditional publishers arises. For the most part, publishers ... http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/277 After searching for an open-licensed quick start guide for Moodle formatted for print and not really finding one, I adapted the info on Moodle.org to create one. I'm posting it here in case it's useful to anyone. Feel free to distribute, edit, and/or send me suggestions of other things that ... http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/324 I have been thinking about all the ways that Moodle can be used to differentiate instruction. The possibilities are almost limitless. Below is a preliminary list of ideas. What are your ideas for this? Share your thoughts and add comment. Ways to Use Moodle to Differentiate Instruction Resources Include a wide variety of resources ... http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/321 Moodle glossaries are great, and there are so many ways to use them. Content can include everything from vocabulary to FAQs to fact-of-the-day to picture story starters. You can build them yourself as a teacher or  have students build them. Glossaries can be displayed as a regular glossary type list, ... http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/305 Late last year, the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), an organization that helps support state board leaders and provides education on a variety of issues, convened a forum of state board of education members and other state and national education leaders to discuss the role of the ... http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/281 A King County Superior Court judge has ruled in favor of parent plaintiffs, ordering the Seattle School Board to take another look at their math textbook choice. This is another episode in the infamous "math wars," which have pitted the traditional approach, which views math as a body of facts and ... http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/302 Over my career, I have worked in commercial textbook publishing, managed a joint venture for a for-profit software publisher, worked with state DOEs, and run my own small (but profitable) business. I also have an MBA (though I try not to let that slow me down). Recently, I have become a ... http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/285 This is the last in a three-part series on the potential cost savings of OER. In part 1, I established that the cost of print was not a very significant cost savings. (A bit more on that below.) In part 2, I looked at the development costs of multiple publishers and ... http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/241 This is a continuation of the discussion of the potential cost savings of OER and an assertion that Texas might save a significant amount of money, possibly as much as $200 million, by adopting "open textbooks." In the last post, we established that the printing costs of a program like this ... http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/265 Texas has issued an Request for Offer (RFO) for "state-developed open-source textbooks" for literature and ESOL. They say, "The purpose of this offer is to identify and acquire state-developed/state owned open-source textbooks that are available for downloading from the internet at no charge to a student and without requiring the purchase ... http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/255