Open Curricula

Brainstorm

Struggling public schools (urban/ rural)
Developing nations
Homeschool
Sharing between charter, pilot, neighborhood, public, private schools in the same communties
Tutoring programs
New teachers
Ed programs
Emergency schools (post-war, post-disaster)
Supporting students with individual interests (independent study)

No more re-inventing the wheel
More time dedicated to differentiating instruction and localizing lesson plans
Quality increases with cooperation and collaboration
Shared feedback and revision process
Forum for philosophical discussion
Space for side-by-side translation
Public archive for schools developing longitudinal data
Social tagging and filtering
Curriculum is live, each teacher’s individual experience folds back in to the benefit of the community

Upload small chunks (worksheets, activities, presentation materials, quizzes, etc.)
Create lesson plans that combine chunks
Create units that combine lesson plans

Allow all formats uploaded.
Encourage user-volunteers to copy non-free formats (doc, ppt, flash, etc.) to open formats (wiki, html, etc.)
Maintain easy to understand docs on using mixed environs. (E.g. saving to rtf from Word)

http://wikipedia.org/ - scope, archive, openness, social code
http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/ - tagging, cross-referencing, filtering
http://backpackit.com/ - interface
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html - precursor
http://sourceforge.net/ - successful model (unusable interface)
http://www.barnraiser.org/index.php?page=SoftwareAroundme - gpl social networking w/ blog/wiki modules
http://www.schoolforge.net/ - similar idea, dead in the water since 2003?
python school admin : http://www.schooltool.org/
Columbia Center for New Media Learning and Teaching http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/web/index.html

Goals

Save teacher time
No reinventing the wheel
Increase reputational / social capital return on investment in the creation of teaching materials
Improve institutional memory
Create support structures for new and experienced teachers both within and without of PHA
Collaboration across boundaries of time / distance
Allow ideas to seep outside of the charter school, make explicit connection to charter school's "incubator" role

*By the end of this workshop, teachers will...*
- ...be convinced of the value of the project
- ...be able to modify existing content
- ...be able to revert to a page in history
- ...be able to add new content
- ...have their own logins
- ...contribute to online discussion
*Introduction*
- Teachers all over the world reinventing the wheel
- Successful analogue: Wikipedia.org - free encyclopedia created by volunteers
Step 0: *Introduce the site*
- Explain top-down organization
  - Remember that any piece can be altered!
- Explain colored links
- Navigating the pages
- Searching on the site
Step 1: *Editing a page*
- Demonstrate editing a page
- Pass out Wiki Syntax Reference Sheet
Step 2: *History*
- Find the history
- Compare two versions
- Revert to an old version
Step 3: *Adding new content*
- Creating a link
- Creating a stub

--- ( Optional )

Step 4: *Your identity*
- Begin to create a persistent identity within the site
- Demonstrate creating a new account
- Lead teachers through account creation
- Demo log in/ log out
Step 5: *Conversation*
- Viewing the discussion pages
- Contributing to discussion

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Step 6: *Brainstorm: How can a wiki help ...*
- our teachers?
- our institution?
- the local educational community?
- our students?
Step 7: *Feedback*
- Ask teachers to fill out and return a Wiki Workshop Feedback Form