My major goal for my final project today was deciding on its purpose. I was amazed how focussed the rest of the class seemed in describing what they were doing and why. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had too many potential ideas, and since they all seemed like worthwhile mini causes, it was difficult to throw some of them away (or perhaps postpone them, but it seems like an uncommon opportunity we have in this course to have both time and a network of supporter on our side).
After Jenny mentioned OER (Open Educational Resources) I spent some time looking to see what was currently available to support the subjects that I teach. For certain topics, there are already quite a few resources available, although not necessarily always at the ideal grade level. What I intend to do with my project is create a website where educators in BC can find out what’s available for free to support their own curriculum, rate what’s available, identify where resources are still lacking, and encourage one another to create (or have their students create) resources in those areas. This may be too big to accomplish in a week, but I’m looking forward to getting started. I feel strongly that information should be free for schools to use and the ability to share what OER Commons is doing and add to the cause will make me feel like I’ve at least played a small part!
I’m looking into using YOLA as a platform at this point. I’ll spend some time experimenting with it to see if it has what I need, but it seems to be easy to use and the websites are professional-looking. Any suggestions you can offer at this point (or any point along my journey) would be great!
This is a great idea. One of the challenges educators face, once they do get online, is discerning what is important, relevant, reputable, etc. At present I haven’t seen a cohesive response to this situation by teachers. It is often used as an argument for not going online at all. If educators were able to collaborate on a system of assessing online resources, annotating their findings, and tagging for grade level, subject, or topic, this would start to create a collection of educational resources online that teachers could use as initial inquiry into developing online learning resources. There is no reason this task should be left up to corporate entities and blocked behind paywalls.