Temple Run

What does the popular video game Temple Run have anything to do with algebra? Just a few clicks into CK12′s free educational content site, you’ll see it’s leveraged as a real-world application of using algebra to compare the difference between the top scores of the game.

The simple tactic of using references like Temple Run in explaining math concepts is one of CK12′s new offerings to its open education resources — free content that teachers can customize for their classes. The company, which has been offering its online digital content through FlexBooks for several years, has recently added more interactive resources to its offerings, including quizzes, videos, and real-world application examples.

In the Biology category, for example, under Proteins, students and teachers will find written explanations, practice exercises, discussion questions, and relevant links to many more online resources. They’ll also find a short video of an educator explaining what proteins are created by MindBites, and one of the better built-out multimodality resources on the site. Other concepts include Khan Academy videos, as well as content from PBS’s NOVA, and any other content that helps explain subjects. Check out these series of video that explain how Egyptian pyramids are related to congruent triangles.

“We give kids all these big concepts, but they don’t know what it means,” said Founder Neeru Khosla. “If you start showing them how they’re applied, it becomes more meaningful.”

Khosla says the more advanced iteration of CK12′s offerings is meant to help educators and students find all the resources they need in one spot, and to help them contextualize it. Each broad

subject is broken down into concepts — smaller, bite-sized chunks — and so far, the site provides more than 5,000 concepts. Educators can also create a dashboard and see how students are developing along each of the concepts.

“It’s provided in one container so you can learn it many different ways,” Khosla said. “And it’s in smaller chunk, which kids prefer. What we’re moving away from is that grade-based, artificial separation to a lot more fluid system, going at your own pace.”

CK12′s offerings will be piloted in Leadership Public Schools in middle and high school grades in California. Khosla says the content is aligned to the Common Core, and some of the CK12 content is available on iTunes as an app.

Hoping to capitalize on Facebook as a study tool, the company also released its new Facebook peer-to-peer application called studyHELP,  which teachers can use to create study groups for classrooms.

Lenny Gonzalez

Eighth grade students at Presidio Middle School share an iPad while working on a lesson.

There’s no argument that Silicon Valley startups have influenced how businesses operate. The fact that most companies now count social media strategy as a crucial part of their operation is a testament to the Internet culture infiltrating far beyond the Internet-only based businesses.

The same phenomenon is happening in education. Here are five ways tech-based startups in Silicon Valley have influenced education.

1. Social media

Not long ago, social media and education had absolutely nothing to do with one another. These days, it has become enmeshed in school policy and practice. Schools are figuring out guidelines for using Facebook. Teachers are using Twitter to engage and gauge student interaction. They’re using blogs and wikis to communicate and to teach. Parents are friending teachers and schools. “If you’re not on Facebook, it’s hard to communicate with us,” said Eric Sheninger, principal of New Milford High School in Bergen County, New Jersey. “Our new hub of real time information is Facebook. When I post things about kids’ accomplishments, and when students and parents comment, as a principal I’m proud.”

2. Grassroots growth

As with Mashable and Yelp, the use of Web 2.0 tools in education is proliferating from the ground up. Educators are finding each other online, teaming up, and sharing smart tactics on how best to inventively use tech to engage their students and keep up with the quickly changing world outside school walls. They meet and confer online with weekly Twitter meetups on #Edchat, and spread the word about best practices through Twitter and Facebook and their own blog, even if it means circumventing school rules.

3. User-generated content

Like Huffington Post, Flickr, Yelp, and the mother of all UGC sites, Wikipedia, forward-thinking educators are incorporating student-created media, feedback, essays, and blogs as part of the curriculum they teach in class. Rather than feeding their students information, they’re giving value and recognition to their students’ ideas and encouraging them to think for themselves.

4. Open-source education

As with Linux and Mozilla (creator of your Firefox browser), progressive educators are throwing open their classroom doors and sharing their knowledge with each other and with the world. They’re using content sites like Open Education Resources and CK12 to create and customize their own curriculum, and allowing others to access all of it.

5. Venture capital

There may come a day when schools can “go public,” so to speak, (as in have stockholders), but until then schools are finding ways to fund new initiatives through private investments. Organizations like NewSchool Venture Fund are fueling the growth of charter schools like Rocketship, Green Dot, and Aspire — and their progress is worth following.

Read more about trends in education.

• 6 Ways Social Media is Changing Education
• How Learning Environments are Changing
• Three Trends That Define the Future of Teaching and Learning
• Trends That Will Shape the Future of Curriculum

He writes:

I have developed a strong interest in open or free text ever since I purchased a brand new grey-market, European textbook for 60 dollars, a full third of what Americans pay for the same biology book. I also got into a heated discussion with my professor about free education, and free information. I was upset because he forced us to buy his access guide and sub par “media lab” that he created with flash sometime in 2002.

I have a few questions that this article does not address. The first is who is involved with creating the content for the books? Are the writers paid? volunteers? vetted? If they are paid then who is paying for the free books? And my last question is are the books truly free, meaning does anyone have access to them? Calling something free, then selling a college level product at an inflated rate to make up for the lost profits is, in my opinion, inconsistent with a desire to provide free high quality information to students.

I asked Neeru Khosla, the founder of CK12 to respond directly.

CK-12 FlexBooks are created by teachers who have had domain experience for at least 5 years or so. In addition to the authors, we have domain expert, technical editor, and editing. The books when they are finalized through this team are also sent to classroom teachers for feedback and review.

Our books are not written by volunteers, however you can donate a book to our project and we will determine the quality at this point as is the case of People’s Physics Book and From Stargazers to Starships. We pay them a small fee. The money comes from funding through grant from a private foundation. These books are truly free everyone has access to them. We don’t have any limitation.

And lastly, my input:

CK-12′s FlexBooks earned perfect scores in Phase Two of California’s Free Digital Textbook Initiative.