Summer Reading Resources for Students

By Janet Pinto, Chief academic Officer, Curriki

How can we help children keep their minds engaged over the summer break? One of the best ways is by encouraging them to read.

There are a number of summer reading lists which you can find on Curriki. Here we mention a few of those.

Below is a link to a set of eight different reading lists for students in K-12. Each list is well annotated and like a mini book talk – engaging and hooking to even the most reluctant reader. This resource even includes a list for boys who are reluctant readers.

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_Group_CurrikisThematicCollections/SummerreadinglistsK-12

And here are two lists for teenage students:

For teenage girls -

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_Group_StorySnoops/SummerReadingList–BooksforTeenGirls

For teenage guys -

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_jennagel/2012SummerReadingList–BooksforTeenGuys

There are quite a few other resources, just go to curriki.org and search on “summer reading”!

Common Core and Open Educational Resources Working Together

By Kim Jones, Curriki CEO

Open Educational Resources are important enablers in support of Common Core standards. An article in Education Week entitled “Common Core Drives Interest in Open Education Resources” can be found here: http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/17/01open.h06.html

The article notes that Common Core standards are driving increased interest in open digital resources. For example, the state of Utah in the U.S. is creating textbooks made entirely from OER materials, and in the state of South Dakota educators have built a repository of OER content in support of the Common Core. The pilot projects for open textbooks in Utah were highly successful, so the open textbook project was expanded to be statewide during this current school year.

I was interviewed by Katie Ash, who wrote in the article:

“Such projects are exactly what the common core can now make possible”, says Kim Jones, the chairman and chief executive officer of Curriki, a nonprofit K-12 repository for open education resources based in Cupertino, Calif.
“We’re seeing a lot of teachers starting to contribute OER materials that are aligned to common-core standards,” says Jones. “We’re very excited about that and think it’s going to make a huge difference in allowing people across the U.S. to leverage what teachers are doing in other places.”

The article also noted Curriki’s work with the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative, which is working to categorize and tag OERs to make them more accessible and easier to search. Also mentioned was Curriki’s launch during 2012 of a free Algebra 1 course aligned to Common Core standards.

“It’s an exciting time for education, between OER really crossing the chasm and common-core standards coming out, and just the work that’s going on around technology,” says Jones, from Curriki. “It’s all coming together at a great time, and it’s really going to have a positive impact on education going forward.”

For more information on how OER supports Common Core standards implementation, we encourage you to read the full article at: http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/17/01open.h06.html

Incorporating the Arts into STEM

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

Appreciating and creating art fires the imagination, widens vision, and promotes creativity.

STEAM is the incorporation of Arts education into STEM learning. The relationship of Arts education to STEM subjects is not ambiguous in the least. Scientific progress and excellent design and engineering require insight, creativity, collaboration, communication and thinking out of the box. An appreciation of the Arts fuels creative thinking and innovation. Furthermore, technology needs to be developed with the human user always in mind.

“After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.” - Albert Einstein

The Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education (LCI) promotes imaginative learning through aesthetic education: for teachers, teacher educators, teaching artists, with multiple partnerships. Their home page is found at http://www.lcinstitute.org.

LCI’s approach to imaginative learning is grounded in a 35-year history. They have developed 10 Capacities for Imaginative Learning:

1. Noticing Deeply
2. Embodying
3. Questioning
4. Making Connections
5. Identifying Patterns
6. Exhibiting Empathy
7. Living with Ambiquity
8. Creating Meaning
9. Taking Action
10. Reflecting / Assessing

LCI has produced a superb document “Entering the World of the Work of Art“ that you can access at: http://www.lcinstitute.org/about-lci/imaginative-learning. It’s a guide to LCI’s instructional approach and a wonderful introduction to the methodology of imaginative learning.

“Imaginative thinking is best understood as the cognitive ability to visualize new possibilities. It allows students to develop the capacity to make connections, notice deeply, take action, and reflect, as they inquire and absorb information in any given discipline.” – Entering the World of the Work of Art

LCI believes that imaginative thinking can be taught and needs to be taught. Imagination leads to creativity, which brings about innovation. Their approach focuses on participatory activities including art making, questioning, reflection and contextual information and research.

The process involves selecting a work of art, brainstorming, creating lines of inquiry, and creating connections around the work of art. The document referenced above includes templates, guides, and rubrics for lesson creation.

We encourage you to take a look at “Entering the World of the Work of Art” and also to consider LCI’s educator workshops, held in New York and in other locations.

Information on educator workshops is found at: http://www.lcinstitute.org/workshops-and-courses including this summer in New York:

2012 Introductory-Level Workshops

Lincoln Center Institute
New York, NY: July 9–13 and July 16–20

Curriki is pleased to have the Lincoln Center Institute as a partner in open education.

College Board says “Don’t Forget Ed”

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

Recently the College Board established a website www.dontforgeted.org to promote the importance of education-related issues, especially during this election year in the US. The College Board is best known for administering standardized tests including the SATs used in college and university admittance decisions. It counts over 5900 colleges, universities and educational organizations as members.

On the “Don’t Forget Ed” web site they note some major shortcomings in the US educational system:

* The US ranks 16th worldwide for those ages 25 to 34 holding a college degree

* 70% of eighth graders can’t read proficiently

* American students rank 25th in math and 21st in science (in a ranking of 30 industrialized countries)

* Eighth grade American students are 2 years behind in math compared to other countries

* Increasing the high school completion rate by only 1% would save the US $1.4 billion per year in crime-related costs

* 44% of high school dropouts under 24 are jobless

* Individuals with a high school diploma are twice as likely to be unemployed as those with a college degree

And,

• Every hour of every school day 857 students drop out of high school

To dramatize this last item, the College Board set up 857 desks on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

An article on this can be found at http://ow.ly/bL1bx

Curriki believes that providing a wide variety of free, open educational resources can help to diminish the shortcomings in the education system in the US and around the world. Anyone, whether student, teacher, or parent can access these resources, which help support more individualized learning models. Curriki has over 47,000 free curricular resources accessible by the public with over 6 million users worldwide, and by over 250,000 Curriki members. (There is no charge to join at www.curriki.org).

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!

How Do You Use Curriki?

Are you wondering how other teachers use Curriki?  What are some favorite resources that have proven effective in the classroom?  How do schools use Curriki Groups?

Well, the best way is to ask, so we polled a few of our members and asked them to tell us why they joined Curriki.

For example, here’s what Sarah Lornston of Mahtomedi High School had to say:

I joined Curriki because I believe that in teaching, there’s no reason to start from scratch.  See what others are doing and build upon their experience!  Share what you do to help others who may be new teachers or new to a particular curriculum. — Sarah Middlebrook Lornston

See what others have to say.

Are you a Curriki member yet?  Help us meet our membership goal and join today. The more members we have, the stronger our community becomes, and the greater impact we can have on improving student outcomes!

Tell us how Curriki has benefited you (or your students). We’d love to hear from you!