the popular website is as reliable as Encyclopedia Britannica ), there ’ s a movement afoot to make it a more trusted source . Revered institutions like Harvard and Georgetown are creating coursework for students out of editing Wikipedia entries .
Following in the steps of Wikipedia – and the collaborative world of Web 2.0 — a growing proliferation of open-source sites aimed at education have sprouted up over the past few years . For both K-12 schools and higher education , sites like MIT Open SourceWare that publishes almost all the university ’ s content for students .
Entire school districts are starting to go open-source , too , such as the Bering Strait School District in Alaska , which is using a Wiki-style format for its curriculum . CK12 is part of California ’ s Free Digital Textbook Initiative , and school districts in Pennsylvania are also considering using its materials once the curricula has met state standards .
Watch for : 1 ) Google ’ s role in providing content , and how states and districts work with the institution . 2 ) Open-source sites and content publishers working collaboratively in the same content space .
2 . Interest-driven
Though students typically have to wait until their third year of college to choose what they learn , the idea of K-12 education being tailored to students ’ own interests is becoming more commonplace . Whether it ’ s through Japanese manga art , Lady Gaga , or the sport of curling , the idea is to grab students where their interests lie and build the curriculum around it .
Every learner counts .
The idea of learner-centered education might not be new — research from the 1990s shows that students ’ interests is directly correlated to their achievement . But a growing movement is being propelled by the explosive growth in individualized learning technology that could feed it and we ’ re starting to see the outlines of how it could seep into the world of formal education .
Take , for example , Forest Lake Elementary School in South Carolina , where the entire school is built around personalized learning . Or schools in Portland , Maine , that are entirely project based .