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.