Tell Us Your Curriki Story for a Chance to Win!

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

We just launched our Tell Us Your Curriki Story challenge and I’m excited to hear from you! This is a fun opportunity for you to tell us how Curriki has made a difference in your life, the life of a student or within a classroom. And it’s your chance to earn fame and fortune since we are awarding six prizes in total: a $100 and a $200 prize to two teachers; a $100 and a $200 prize to two students; and a $100 and a $200 prize to two schools (in addition to cool Curriki t-shirts you can proudly wear!).

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• How has Curriki helped you or changed the way you work?
• What’s your favorite Curriki resource and in what way does it benefit you?
• Have you saved valuable time (weekend or after-school) or money by leveraging Curriki resources?
• How do your students benefit?
• Have your students enjoyed a particular game, video or lesson plan?
• How have you shared and/or customized Curriki content to better meet your needs?

The deadline is May 4, 2012, so check out the details here to begin.

I look forward to seeing your entries!

Digital and Online Learning Big for 2012

By Kim Jones, CEO of Curriki

A very interesting blog, recently posted by Tom Vander Ark, asserts that we have reached the “Turning Point for Personal Digital Learning” and that now “anyone can learn anything anywhere”. And anytime. He notes “it just doesn’t make sense to buy a backpack full of books for kids anymore”. You can find the blog here; it’s well worth a read.

Tom sees 5 streams of technology-based learning coming together in 2012:

1. Digital learning – such as Maine’s Learning Technology Initiative
2. Online learning – growing by nearly 50% per year
3. Mobile learning – fueled by the explosion of tablets and education apps
4. Social learning – the rise of dynamic learning groups
5. Informal learning – ranging from peer-to-peer and learning games, to test prep and job training

Curriki is playing an important role in supporting each of these modalities of digital, online, mobile, social and informal learning, through the rapidly growing collection of open curricular resources at curriki.org and our support of collaboration, with hundreds of community groups available at the Curriki site.

(Tom Vander Ark is author of Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World and founder of GettingSmart.com.)

Digital Textbook Playbook

By Joshua Marks, Curriki CTO

Last week the Department of Education and the Federal Communications Commission announced the availability of the Digital Textbook Playbook. Produced by the Digital Textbook Collaborative, it is a guide to help K12 educators “advance the conversation toward building a rich digital learning experience”. The announcement is discussed in a blog at Edweek.org:
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2012/02/duncan_genachowski_unveil_digi.html

Four major guideposts are covered in the Playbook:
- making the transition
- connectivity at school
- connectivity beyond school
- device perspectives

Here’s a link to the Playbook:
http://transition.fcc.gov/files/Digital_Textbook_Playbook.pdf
It’s a nicely formatted, very readable document – take a look!

And we suggest you emphasize open source in your digital textbook usage planning to get the most out of the network and user devices.

Open Source Education – Curriki on “Class Action”

by Kim Jones, CEO of Curriki

Scott McNealy, Curriki’s founder, and I were so pleased to be interviewed by Jessica Aguirre recently on the NBC San Francisco Bay Area television program “Class Action”. We discussed what Curriki – a leading open source curricular repository – is doing to improve education in California and around the globe.

Open source curricular materials on Curriki are freely available, freely distributable, can be customized to particular requirements, and are cross-platform.  Over 40,000 open source materials are available at no cost, unlike traditional closed source educational materials, and the materials on Curriki are not confined to being used or viewed on a single platform or interface.

Take a look at the interview, it’s just a few minutes in length, and you can see it here: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/video/#!/on-air/shows/Open-Source-Education/138363864

A few highlights:
* The killer app is self-paced learning with assessment and scoring, kids are used to this from video games.
* Anyone can go to the Curriki.org web site and from the front page, search over 40,000 materials by subject, grade level, content type, media type. And the open source content is rated by users, with best content shown at the top of your search.
* Because the materials are open source, Curriki promotes personalization, so fast learners in a subject can zoom ahead and those needing help can try other methods of learning.

Thanks again to Jessica Aquirre and NBC Bay Area’s “Class Action” for hosting us and promoting Open Source Education!

Help Curriki Innovate for the Future!

By Kim Jones, CEO of Curriki

This has been a great year for Curriki and I am most grateful to you, our Curriki members, who continue to contribute or enhance resources and send us helpful suggestions for improvement.  Here is one example of how Curriki is making a difference:

“Being able to browse through Curriki has allowed me to bring effective lessons and teaching ideas into the classroom when my brain is too exhausted to develop them on my own.”

Thank you if you’ve already given to Curriki’s 2011 annual fund! There are only three days left in the calendar year! We’d appreciate if you would please take a moment to make an online donation, so that we can deliver an even better Curriki experience. Even a small donation will make a difference!

In our January newsletter (mailed Jan. 3, click here to subscribe), I share some of the enhancements to the Curriki site that we will be bringing to you shortly.

On behalf of the entire Curriki community, thank you and Happy New Year!

Regards,

Kim Jones

CEO, Curriki

Who are the 99%?

By Janet Pinto, chief academic officer, Curriki

Are your students asking “who are the 99%?” and “what are Occupy activists protesting against and why?” The Occupy movement is now a global issue and provides us with a current-events opportunity to teach our students about civics, activism, free speech and more.

Here’s a story on How One Teacher Brought Lessons from Occupy Wall Street to Class from Mind/Shift KQED

Plus, here are several resources you can use in the classroom:

• Who Are the 99%? Ways to Teach About Occupy Wall Street from The New York Times’ The Learning Network
• Should students support or oppose the “Occupy” movement? From C-Span Classroom Deliberations
• 5 Resources for Teaching About Occupy Wall Street from the Humane Connection blog
• Occupy L.A. offers a hands-on civics lesson for students, teachers from the Los Angeles Times
• Occupy needs a lesson on financing the public good blog from Crosscut

Photo: thefreeonline.wordpress.com