K12 Open Ed

APRIL 25, 2016

It’s time for education to move past standardization and textbooks. Several conversations lately have made me ponder the importance of community understanding and support for various new initiatives like open learning and OER adoption. In particular, I was at a meeting with the mayor and city manager of a local community last week. The topic of the meeting wasn’t really education per se, but the conversation quickly moved there as we talked about various challenges the community face

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K12 Open Ed

JULY 20, 2015

Credit: Karen Fasimpaur; CC BY. In the first post of this series , I mentioned that most OER publishers rely on philanthropy to fund initial product development and that I had questions about how sustainable this model is. First, if more K-12 OER doesn’t achieve higher adoption and use rates, I wonder how long funders will continue to fund it.

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K12 Open Ed

JULY 20, 2015

Credit: SteFou!, CC BY. I am a believer in open peer learning. We are social beings and learn best through sharing with others. Whether it is through my education related experiences like those at Peer 2 Peer University and CLMOOC, or through more informal interactions like our seed library , I have seen the benefits of this kind of learning. Peer learning often implies a decentralized, learner-driven approach.

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K12 Open Ed

JULY 23, 2015

Creative Commons is currently engaged in a project to look at open business models. They’ve put forth this template and have this community to share these ideas. Since I have been thinking about this as it relates to core curriculum for K-12, I have tried to synthesize some ideas here. As always, I’d love your input and ideas. (This concludes this series on business models for OER K-12 core curriculum.).

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K12 Open Ed

SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

Credit: Kayla Galway. As I’ve mentioned, I’m in the midst of a series of interviews with states and districts to explore how they adopt core curriculum and what factors might be especially relevant to those looking to have OER adopted as core curriculum. I’ve now talked to several state curriculum and instruction leaders, as well as a few districts.

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K12 Open Ed

OCTOBER 20, 2015

Credit: J. Albert Bowden II. So I was working on a (non education-related) project with a bright young woman today. It involved putting together a short video about her professional work. At the end, she asked me to talk her name off the title because she “tries to keep a low Internet profile.” Wow, that threw me for a loop. Without revealing her identity, I can say that this woman is most likely in her late 20-early 30s, has several postgraduate degrees and a very impressive career.

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K12 Open Ed

OCTOBER 22, 2015

Much of my research to date on the adoption and implementation of K-12 OER core curriculum in ELA and math has led me to the realization that, to schools, price is not a significant factor in adoption. In fact, most don’t even look at price until the adoption decision has been made. At the same time, OER developers and publishers face the challenge that to complete in state and district adoptions, they need to include many components that add significant cost.

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K12 Open Ed

OCTOBER 29, 2015

I’m taking part in another open collaborative learning event in November: DigiWriMo. In talking about this with a group of folks last night , someone asked “ As a college student working on my elementary major, how could I use this writing piece in my future classroom?” and I immediately thought of the Make Bank. (For those who aren’t familiar, the Make Bank was a tool we set up as a part of CLMOOC to archive a variety of “makes” or activities, as well as to p

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K12 Open Ed

DECEMBER 10, 2015

As many of you know, I’ve spent much of this year working on a project to explore the adoption and implementation of K-12 core instructional materials and to explore business models for the successful and sustainable publishing of such open educational resource (OER) materials. I’ve written about some of this work as it’s progressed, and now the final report on this is available.

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K12 Open Ed

FEBRUARY 12, 2016

I have written before about the connections between OER and open practice and why I think open practice should be the goal, not merely the adoption of OER. While I hope and believe that OER can pave the way for open practice, it is not at all obvious that the use of OER is a necessary condition. In fact, some of the most vibrant classroom exemplars of open practice in action that I’ve seen have not involved OER.

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K12 Open Ed

APRIL 18, 2016

In a chat on Twitter, this weekend, Kevin said that our little postcard project was one of the “most connected/enjoyable” CLMOOC activities. That got me thinking back to the meaning of connected learning and whether this project qualifies. Here’s my mapping of the CL principles and values to this project. Interest-powered — Yes, we are all doing this because it is of interest to us.

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K12 Open Ed

JUNE 9, 2015

The K-12 OER Collaborative has taken a great step forward as Karl Nelson has agreed to join the organization full-time as of later this month. Karl has been the Director of Digital Learning for Washington state’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for five years and prior to that worked with Puget Sound ESD. He is a creative thinker about digital learning and a skilled manager.

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K12 Open Ed

MAY 27, 2015

Credit: viZZZual.com , CC BY. In marketing most things, including educational materials, positioning is important. Whether it is the short one sentence tag line or the elevator pitch description, how you describe something affects how people view it. I would even argue that coming to consensus on positioning within an organization affects the product or service itself.

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K12 Open Ed

APRIL 27, 2015

[Disclosure: I am part of an advisory group for this project.]. Last week, the K-12 OER Collaborative entered the next phase of their project, awarding contracts for rapid prototypes to the following developers: edCount LLC. Expeditionary Learning. Illustrative Mathematics. Learn Zillion. Literary Design Collaborative. Mathematics Vision Project. Odell Education.

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K12 Open Ed

MARCH 9, 2015

'Today, on the first day of Open Education Week , I am happy to say that OER has gained traction in K-12 over the last year. More and more people are talking about OER. States and funders are putting serious efforts into OER as core curriculum. More high quality OER content is becoming available, and most importantly, more K-12 schools are using and remixing OER.

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K12 Open Ed

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

'Credit: opensource.com. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about open learning and with Open Education Week coming up, thought it would be a good time to explore this in more detail. To be clear, I am not talking about open educational resources (OER), but rather open learning practices. (Is there a common term people are using for this? Open learning?

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K12 Open Ed

NOVEMBER 24, 2014

'A few us have been pondering the question “ How can we best advance the adoption of OER in K-12? ” both online in this document and f2f at the Open Ed 14 conference. As I’ve thought about this, a few conclusions I’ve come to are: The demand problem is more significant than the supply problem. There is currently a good amount of high quality, standards-aligned OER in K-12 with lots more coming online.

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K12 Open Ed

FEBRUARY 10, 2015

'It’s that time of year — Open Education Week ! Open Education Week is a celebration of the global Open Education Movement. Its purpose is to raise awareness about the movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Participation in all events and use of all resources are free and open to everyone. You can submit your own events to the Open Education Week calendar here.

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