Using #OER for Common Core State Standards
This lesson is comprised of several facets of using OERs for Common Core State Standards (CCSS), including finding OERs aligned to CCSS, integrating OERs into teaching and learning, contributing to OERs you use.
Educators across the nation are working hard to begin developing updated curricula that will fit into the new Common Core State Standards, which will be fully applied in 45 U.S. states (Texas, Alaska, Nebraska, Virginia, and Minnesota have opted out of statewide participation) by 2015. CCSS was created as a means of better equipping students with the knowledge they need to be competitive in the modern world. 50 resources are compiled for educators.
Common Core 101 on Saylor.org is a free resource developed by Pinter to give educators “an overview of the Common Core State Standards and points [them] to many of the most comprehensive resources available on these standards.”
The Common Core Curriculum Map uses an intuitive interface to present in-depth thematic units plans and materials, roughly six per grade level that connects activities with skills outlined in the Common Core Curriculum. Common Core Curriculum Maps: Digital Resources: a nice list of online digital resources and tools for creating, collaborating, researching, and sharing.
Especially recommended is the free app (Android, iOS) made by Mastery Connect , it is designed to help educators quickly locate the common core standards details, and has been downloaded over 500k times. MasteryConnect also provides a widget version of the app that schools can embed on their website.
And, achievethecore.org is an open source resource assembled by Student Achievement Partners(SAP). All the tools and resources it develops are available at no cost to educators. SAP was founded by three of the lead authors of the Common Core and focuses on development and dissemination of resources, like the Basal Alignment Project. 10,000 Teachers Collaborate on Common Core-Alignment Project, these teachers on Edmodo have turned to the The Basal Alignment Project, a free online library of revised replacement lessons from common basal reading series (3rd-5th grades) each carefully aligned to the Common Core State Standards (Request to join the Edmodo Group).
Other useful links:
- 15 Twitter tweets for amazing Common Core resources
- ELA Common Core Resources for Elementary Educators
Learning Registry and Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
Two ongoing developments are making it feasible for states, districts, and teachers to share digital resources such as OERs: a new infrastructure for sharing called the Learning Registry and the Common Core State Standards.
The Learning Registry is currently concentrating on a few key areas:
Data about how learning resources relate to, or align with, standards,
Ratings and opinions about resources from educators from several state websites, and
Descriptions of learning resources from many education-oriented portals and
As many states adopt the Common Core State Standards, the potential for sharing across state borders will expand dramatically. For example, if a state or district determines that a particular Khan Academy video is useful for teaching a specific standard in math, that alignment information can be captured using a machine-readable format that other systems can also understand. That alignment relationship can then be shared into the Learning Registry and used by states, districts, or even teachers to locate learning resources.
This sharing of standards alignment data represents a unique opportunity to accelerate the shift to digital learning and OER. Consider this: If 20 states each aligned just 50 digital resources to standards from the Common Core and shared that information with other states through the Learning Registry, teachers in every state would have access to 1,000 standards-aligned resources, and they could access these resources via the system they already use.
Many educational organizations already have portals and repositories that serve curriculum specialists and teachers. In contrast to these Web destinations, the Learning Registry is like a road network that helps cars and trucks – information – get from place to place. The Learning Registry helps deliver the learning – resource information created by one site to another and thereby enables each site to find information about resources contributed by others.
In April 2012, the Washington State Legislature passed bill HB2337, directing the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction(OSPI) to create a collection of openly licensed courseware aligned to the common-core standards and an associated awareness campaign to inform school districts about these resources. OSPI’s OER Project will develop a review process that acts as a model for districts considering the adoption of full-course OER.
Integrating OER into Teaching and Learning
On a conceptual level, using an OER is similar to using proprietary materials. After all, the reason you use these materials in the classroom is because they have educational value for your students. However, OER are different in that they allow for extra flexibility in the classroom. This is a powerful teaching opportunity as it empowers students to take control of their own learning. Another result of this flexibility is the option to have students openly publish their work. If you aren’t a geek about programming, you may like the project 100,000 Wikis in the Classroom. Here you can start an own project if you are a K12-teacher (kindergarten through secondary school). After filling out a form with 8 fields then you can begin. The wikis can be public, protected or just personal.
There are eight steps to OER integration.
Assess the validity and reliability of the OER.
Determine placement within the curriculum, if not already done. Note that some OER integration may be abandoned at this point if the OER relates poorly to the rest of the curriculum.
Check for license compatibility. (See License Incompatibility in Licensing for more details).
Eliminate extraneous content within the OER (assuming the license permits derivatives).
Identify areas of localization.
Remix with other educational materials, if applicable.
Determine the logistics of using the OER within the lesson. For example, you may need to print handouts for learners. In other cases special software may be needed.
Devise a method of evaluation or whether the currently planned evaluation needs adjustment.
Like Stu Harris pointed out in this post :
In K12 education the link between outcomes based curricula, inquiry and therefore the integration/ incorporation/ creation of OER is then obvious. It is a natural part of the requirement for students to be active learners, collaborative learners, social learners, problem solvers and publishers of content. In particular active learning approaches like project, problem, issues [related to problem-based learning] and challenge -based learning expect that students will create products or connect with community. And because of the nature of inquiry and the openness of the questions that can be explored and answered by students [still linked to curriculum of course] it is likely that materials will need to be created or customized on the part of the teacher in order to appropriately support the process. The 8 steps then speak very well to the planning and work that is required on the part of the teacher [and by the active learner] in the selection, customization and distribution [making OER available] of learning materials.
I would add to this integration list one important step. Step 9 should to be to design appropriate methods of distribution, sharing and collaborative creation of OER…from both the student and teacher perspective. Only then will teachers and students develop a firm understanding of the intent of OER.
Suggest the resources and related information to Learning Registry if it’s not registered yet to increase its visibility
Translating the OER into multiple languages
Improving the accessibility of the OER
Recently at Burlington Public Schools, we have moved toward opening up our course content and started organizing our faculty-created resources — presentations, assignment sheets, etc. — along with OER options. What we are doing is giving our faculty and our students more ways to connect and share dynamic, developing content. Plus, a digital resource created by teachers in conjunction with OER does not require edition upgrades. What’s more, teachers can change and update content when they need to. This option gives them full autonomy over their classroom content….