Textbookless+Classes+and+Digital+Content

From Jan Neufeld, USD 373 Newton, KS (2.28.11)

One of the things I am working on as we begin the new pathway with the transition to the Common Core assessments is to begin to find free or low costs resources for the classroom. With the adoption of the CC, vendors are scrambling and reassuring us their resources are "aligned" with the Common Core. In addition, the many releases of curriculum by MIT, KHAN Academy and itunes University is turning up some comprehensive course curriculums. As you work with colleagues, vendors, 21st Century learning partners, service centers or course developers, will you alert via the list serve of resources you may find? A lot of time finding these resources is time intense and then to find out many of our colleagues are wondering or looking for the same resources.

The CC now directs us to a common set of standards for the majority of states. Vendors will find it much easier to work with the CC than with individual state standards. What are your experiences for anyone working with digital content from PowerSpeak, Aventa, Advanced Academics, FLVS and OdysseyWare?

Randy Rivers: We're in the process of developing skeleton Moodle Courses that are designed around the common core standards so we can start collecting and developing resources and assessments for them.

You can view them at [] (Login - upper right corner; Login as guest on login page; guest enrollment key is "bluestem".

These common core standards are set up as topic labels in Moodle. We anticipate adding resource links, assessment banks, pacing guides, wikis, our own books, etc. to each standard.

We would like to make this an "open source" project for Kansas educators. If you would be interested in collaborating / contributing to the project, please let me know and we can begin to expand this project at a faster rate. Randy Rivers

Egenio was introduced to the ESSDACK supts last week and I wanted to look at it as a digital curriculum resource. I signed up with them to look further into it.

Odysseyware is great as far as content.... But it is very easy for students to not read the material and skip straight to the questions and guess.... We have changed over to E2020. Students can not advance to the next activity without completing the current assignment. Cheating is no longer an issue. Pam Ireland Administrator

I know of a few districts in Washington State that have been using Advanced Academics and OdysseyWare for awhile. Some stayed and some didn't. Would you like me to get contacts for you so that you can ask them their thoughts? I know that a couple switched to A Plus instead of staying with OdyseeyWare at some point. Let me know if you would like those contacts, and I will be happy to get them for you. Heather Hastie-Ulery

As states, districts, and school look for the 'best' resources available for students, much attention and conversation is happening around Open Education Resources. A number of recent articles outline some of the state level policy changes and discuss opportunities related to this important topic:

[|http://thejournal.com/articles/2009/06/24/the-disruption-of-the-tra...] [|http://thejournal.com/Articles/2009/02/25/Signs-of-a-Significant-Di...] []

The Creative Commons [] Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation. Melinda Stanley

__**FREE online editable textbooks!**__

http://www.ck12.org/flexbook/

== This is quite possibly the coolest science textbook resource that I've come across in a long time. On this website, you can find a wide variety of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics textbooks that are available for free! The textbooks are editable by instructors (you can pull chapters from a variety of textbooks, edit and re-arrange them to fit your curriculum) and can then be delivered to students through an online viewer, or students can download them through iBooks or Kindle apps. I've spent the last hour combing through the website to look for the catch, but I haven't found one yet. For the content that I've previewed so far in biology, the information is on target, the graphics are high quality, good links are included, youtube video explanations of complicated topics are embedded in the text, and on and on...

If anyone finds a catch, please let me know, but from where I'm sitting, this looks pretty amazing.

Middle School Chemistry The American Chemical Society (ACS) has just released a new free middle school science resource at __ http://middleschoolchemistry.com __. It is a completely free source of activity-based lesson plans for teaching basic chemistry concepts at the middle school level. The lessons cover all the main concepts in middle school chemistry so any part of a lesson or the entire lesson can be used on its own or in conjunction with the curriculum the teacher is already using. Each lesson also contains integrated animations and video that a teacher can use to help explain student observations on the molecular level. Online professional development will also be available to introduce and familiarize teachers with the demonstrations, activities, and chemistry content in the site. Jim Kessler, ACS Education Division Office of K-8 Science (202) 872-6165==