Getting Smart has found more than a dozen excellent open educational resources for secondary schools and presents them in the following organized grouping with quick-reference summaries: Science and Math — includes CK12.org and Educurious Comprehensive Modular Resources — includes Curriki and and OERCommons.org Grade-Level Collections — includes Gooru Learning and Power My Learning History — includes Big History Project and Muzzylane Mostly Higher Ed — includes Connexions and the Open…
A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age
January 24, 2013EdSurge discusses a Bill of Rights and Principles, newly developed by a group of people passionate about learning, serving today’s students, and using every available tool to respond better to the needs of students in a global, interactive, digitally connected world....
Digital Content: What Does the Future Hold for Education Systems?
January 23, 2013GETideas.org hosted this GooglePlus hangout on the future of digital content. The online discussion featured a panel of education experts, including Nicole Allen, affordable-textbooks advocate, Student PIRGS; Una Daly, communication college outreach director, OpenCourseWare Consortium; and Cable Green, director of global...
Explaining Inequalities in School Achievement: A Realist Analysis
January 22, 2013In Explaining Inequalities in School Achievement, author Roy Nash argues that a realist framework for the sociological explanation of educational group differences can, and must be, constructed. A move to such an explanatory framework will allow society to take into account the...
Education 3.0: Seven Steps to Better Schools
January 14, 2013In Education 3.0: Seven Steps to Better Schools, renowned educator and technology expert Jim Lengel provides a refreshing and hopeful picture of what schools should look like, including a groundbreaking seven-step process for envisioning and building them that draws on the...
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September 24, 2012This report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) highlights the sea change underway in the multi-billion-dollar U.S. K-12 instructional-materials market enabled by recent technology and intellectual-property-rights innovations. With a focus on the ultimate impact on student learning, the report provides examples of lessons learned from recent digital and open (OER) content initiatives by leading states and school districts and offers comprehensive recommendations for government, industry, and educators to…
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August 13, 2012Writing in the GettingSmart blog, teacher Susan Lucille Davis shares recommended tools for 21st-century educators. For a basic toolbox, Davis discusses Collaborize, Diigo, and Study Blue. Davis also covers more advanced tools for digital portfolios and blogging.
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August 13, 2012Our team at the Faculty Assistance Center for Teaching (FACT) developed the PDF Syllabus Builder as an XML-based dynamic PDF (using Adobe LiveCycle Designer) for three main reasons: Adobe Reader is a free and ubiquitous software program The tool operates on a local machine, PC or Mac No Internet connection required No browser version issues Text-based PDF files are accessible to all students (508 compliance) Upon opening the tool in…
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August 1, 2012You’ve been asked to teach online–now what? The PDF Course Guide Builder is an open-source tool, developed at Utah State University, that runs in Adobe Reader. Instructors are guided through the Objectives-Activities-Resources (O-A-R) model to identify the components that will form the foundation for an online course delivered via a learning management system.
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July 23, 2012This infographic from the Boundless blog demystifies terminology around education technology, providing definitions for concepts from blended learning to differentiated learning, from flipped classrooms to gamification, from MOOC to OER.
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July 10, 2012Create writeable, saveable, and accessible question-and-answer assignments for your online course with a free program–Adobe Reader. This tool is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License and available for download at: http://fact.usu.edu/files/uploads/AB3.pdf
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July 6, 2012Developed at Utah State University, this free tool for instructors features a user-friendly design that makes it easy to plan and organize a course–in the free program Adobe Reader. This free tool is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Download the file at http://fact.usu.edu/files/uploads/PDFCSB_v1.pdf.
