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Teachers and Students Create Their Own Curriculum in Alaska

November 10, 2010 | 12:11 PM | By

By Sara Bernard

The Bering Strait School District (BSSD) in Alaska –  which spans a swathe of land and sea the size of Great Britain — is one of the few districts in the nation that has replaced textbooks with online content that can be modified by any of its teachers, students, parents and anyone who wants to participate. The school district uses the same user-generated software as Wikipedia — an open-source, online interface that allows everyone in the district (and outside of it) to access and edit learning standards, curricular materials, and projects.

John Concilus, educational technology coordinator at BSSD, told me about the district’s Open Content Initiative and offered his views on the future of open source materials in education.

FAST FACTS:
PROGRAM: Instead of textbooks, the Bering Strait School District uses modifiable, open source software for learning standards, curriculum, and student projects.

COST: Free (after the initial labor investment to build the infrastructure and original content of the wiki. The site is hosted on free virtual servers).

BENEFITS: Allows users to contribute to a growing body of knowledge and resources that benefit students, teachers, and community members around the world.

CHALLENGES: High learning curve for using the software and fear that an open environment will lead to misinformation or inappropriate posts.

ADDRESSING CHALLENGES: Intensive teacher training and implementation of a new, more intuitive interface (the same one used by Wikipedia).

Q: How and why did BSSD begin its OpenContent Initiative?

A: Roughly five years ago, we got the idea for this from a really well-known treatise by someone named Eric Raymond. He was part of the original open source software movement. He wrote eleven precepts about how and why open source projects should be built and why it’s better to use a “bazaar,” or free exchange of ideas, versus using a “cathedral,” or top-down, regimented approach. When I read it as an educator, I was really interested in its application to school curriculum. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Bering Strait School District, Inspired Ideas, open source software, Wikis

Students Need Both Tech Tools and Teachers

November 8, 2010 | 2:36 PM | By

In the age of the technology avalanche, what happens to a teacher’s role?

Cheryl Davis, District Curriculum & Instruction Technology Specialist at Acalanes Unified School District says they’re crucial to the equation.

“A good teacher is a good teacher. The added value they bring as our kids move forward in this world, to have experiences with different technologies, is invaluable,” she said. “For me, I’m interested in students being content creators. Can students use technologies in academic ways? We know they can use technologies without us. They’ve got mobiles, texts, Facebook, and people out in the work world and academic world use technologies all the time. If you have a very engaging science teacher, but no technology there, where will students learn the other part of being a scientist, for example, and how can they add their own content and creativity?”

I interviewed Davis recently for a feature I’ll post this week about the district’s exploration of using e-readers in four high schools in the East Bay.

FILED UNDER: digital textbooks, Inspired Ideas, iPad, Technology in Schools