Flickr: NP_Josh

As the open education movement grows, the ripple effects of what it means for teachers to take control of what they teach is being witnessed across all spectrums in education. Customizable content, sharing and becoming part of a community, and deconstructing entrenched ideologies about what constitutes quality learning materials — these are just a few paths that the open education movement is creating.

At the Big Ideas Fest in December, we spoke to stakeholders in open education about how it’s transforming learning.

For some, like Una Daly, associate director of Open College Textbooks the movement is inevitable. Open education is a natural progression in the freeing and sharing of information on the Internet. “Open education is an evolutionary step in making sharing easier for students teachers and public,” she said.

Neeru Khosla, founder of CK12, a nonprofit open education source for free Web-based content in the form of digital “Flexbooks,” points out that customizable content allows educators to meet each of their students’ specific needs, unlike the rigid text format.

But for public school teacher Constance Moore, who teaches art in Oakland, Calif., the logistics of finding open education resources online is a major challenge. “You can’t get online,” she said. “You can barely send a fax from a lot of public schools. There’s a big gap between what’s available and how to access it.”

And that’s exactly the point made by Christian Long, vice president of education at Cannon Design, a firm that works with school districts to redesign learning environments. Long is worried that all the available resources online will get into the hands of those who already have means, leaving those who don’t even further behind.

“Those who have leverage, power and resources are going to pull it off, and those who don’t will be further marginalized in terms of opportunity,” Long said. If the debate is tangled around issues like “public versus private versus charter, we’re going to wake up sooner rather than later with a massive discrepancy.”

Watch the full interviews here.

[Co-produced with Matthew Williams.]

Flickr: Marquette La

By Dolores Gende

Apple’s iBooks2 and authoring app has created big waves in education circles. But smart educators don’t necessarily need Apple’s slick devices and software to create their own books. How educators think of content curation in the classroom is enough to change their reliance on print textbooks.

As the open education movement continues to grow and become an even more rich trove of resources, teachers can use the content to make their own interactive textbooks. It might seem daunting, but the availability of quality materials online and the power of tapping into personal learning networks should make it easier.

Here’s how to create a digital textbook and strategies for involving the students in its development in three steps.

1. AGGREGATION. Gather all your sources of information. The best way to aggregate content is through social bookmarking with great online tools like Delicious and Diigo, which allow you to bookmark sites that can be seen and shared online. As Diigo’s web site explains it, the site “allows teachers to highlight critical features within text and images and write comments directly on the web pages, to collect and organize series of web pages and web sites into coherent and thematic sets, and to facilitate online conversations within the context of the materials themselves. (Watch this video to see how to do this step-by-step.)

Teachers can work with colleagues within their subject area departments and beyond the walls of the classroom to aggregate resources through social bookmarking. Invaluable sources of information for professional learning come through Personal Learning Networks (PLN) in Twitter  and from RSS feeds.

Also try Paper.li or The Twitted Times, which will sift through your connections’ resources and organize them.

2. CURATION. While aggregation is collecting Web sites, the process of curation involves a deeper analysis of those sites to select the ones that have the most relevant information for a particular topic. Use your subject area syllabus, state standards or learning objectives to hand pick the content for a particular unit of study. Focus on the essential questions to help you choose resources. Use the most powerful potential of Web tools to make your textbook engaging by using images, videos and simulations.

One of the most user-friendly tools to post resources for your course is LiveBinders. Another great tool for curation is Scoop-it!, which allows you to create your own online magazine. (See how articles related to physics are curated on Scoop-it’s PhysicsLearn.)

You can find many more useful tools for curation. Check out  30+ Cool Content Curation Tools for Personal and Professional Use. And if you’re using an iPad, take a look at these curation apps.

3. CREATION. This is the most important (and fun) part of the process. You can create an online repository using a wiki digital tool such as Google Sites, PBworks or Wikispaces that organize your resources neatly. You could also use LiveBinders to select a template that allows you to include text for each of your resources. Learning management systems (LMS) such as Edmodo and Schoology are also great alternatives with neat features for educational social networking.

Google Sites also allows you to create and share Web pages, and has lots of customizable features. You can easily post images, directly embed videos from YouTube, lecture podcasts, and Google Docs for easy collaboration among your students. You can even embed assessments using Google Forms and a calendar.

And now, of course, if you have an Apple platform you can use the iBooks Author. Though it can only be used on Macs, the free app offers a drag-and-drop template that can be customized with images, interactive diagrams and videos to create a polished book.

TARGETING YOUR READERS
As you put your book together, consider some of these questions:

• How are learners going to use the information?
• How will they demonstrate what they’ve learned?
• Are they completing a document, creating an outline or answering a set of questions?
• What are the assessments associated with the material?

TEACHER AND LEARNER ROLES
The table below compares and contrasts the elements of the various levels of involvement of teachers and learners in the process of creating a textbook. You can use the traditional model where all steps of the process are managed by the teacher or move towards a learner-centered approach using the chart to determine which level is appropriate for your course.

TAKING CONTROL

Teachers as curators: Check out this unit on Projectile Motion, which includes content information, exercises, a virtual lab and a couple of assessments and this wiki from Craig Savage, which contains his resources for AP Biology and AP Psychology.

Students as curators: American Democracy in Action, a digital textbook for AP US Government created by seniors at St. Gregory College Preparatory School. For excellent strategies to involve your students take a look at Silvia Tolisano’s Students Becoming Curators of Information.

RESOURCES TO GET YOU STARTED

iTunesU: This free app enables video, audio, and an integrated Learning Management System with available push notifications options.

CK-12 Foundation: You can customize your own FlexBooks with open-content in all subject areas.

Open Culture Links: 400 Free Online Courses from Top Universities

National Repository of Online Courses: Algebra, Calculus, History, Biology, Environmental Science,Physics and World Religions.

Cybrary Man Educational Resources

And much more: K-5 Resources, Language Arts/ English, Math, History/Social Studies, Science, World Languages.

Ready to ditch your textbook yet?

Dolores Gende is the Director of Instructional Technology, Science Department Head and Honors Physics teacher at Parish Episcopal School in Dallas, TX.

Flickr: FontFont

By Sara Bernard

As the open source movement in education grows, so do the number of nonprofits, foundations, and collaborative sites that support it (and vice versa). The following is not an exhaustive list by any means. Stay tuned for more posts on open source textbooks and curricula in the coming weeks.

Open Educational Resources (OER) Commons: Created by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), OER is a rich and comprehensive landing site for open source education software, from peer-reviewed e-textbooks to lesson plans, video lectures to worksheets. Almost everything is Creative Commons licensed and open for modification and adaptation. You can follow their blog or find them on Twitter, and the OER Commons Initiative is also hard at work developing training programs and collaborative projects with teachers, students, and schools.

Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources: A branch of the OER movement with the goal of growing and improving open textbooks for use in community colleges. Established in 2007 by the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, this is a community-college destination page for networking with colleagues and using and editing instructional materials in everything from anthropology to physics. Similarly, the Community College Open Textbook Collaborative catalogs textbooks by subject alongside reviews of those textbooks. Colleges, governmental agencies, and other education organizations belong to this group, which also provides training for instructors aiming to adopt and adapt open resources.

Flat World Knowledge: One of the leading organizations in the open textbook movement, this for-profit company provides online versions of their Creative Commons-licensed material to anyone free of charge (with the ability to customize and modify it), but sells print and downloadable versions of their books to keep business afloat. Also available: Audio books, study guides, and Webinars.

HippoCampus: A project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, this affectionately-termed resource page is a one-stop shop for high school and college students looking for study and homework help, and for instructors interested in supplementing their course materials. The site includes multimedia lessons, complete courses, and study aids on a variety of topics.

Open Textbook Catalog: College students, professors, and the rest of the globe can access this collection of customizable, printable online textbooks. There’s still a disclaimer in place, though, since this site is organized by a student group that doesn’t have the resources or expertise to review and rate every listing extensively. Their Open Textbook Resources page is a great spot for information and links to additional organizations, however.