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Open-Source Early Literacy Materials Gaining Some Attention
phooky writes "Although open teaching materials have been available at the university level for a while now, there have been very few materials for younger learners. That's beginning to change now with the advent of Free-Reading, a free, wiki-based resource for early literacy instruction. The availability of free materials could free up millions of dollars from school budgets for more teachers and training. From the USA Today article: 'Last fall, a Florida textbook adoption committee approved Free-Reading, a remediation program for primary-school children that's believed to be the first free, open-source reading program for K-12 public schools. It's awaiting approval by Eric Smith, the state's incoming education commissioner, who could approve it by mid-December. Florida is one of the top five textbook markets in the USA, so its move could lead to the development of other free materials that might someday challenge the dominance of a handful of big educational publishers.'"
They compiled a book completely from literature that was out of copyright from the Internet and then took that book and sent it off to be printed and bound for the whole class. This was back in 1998 and the school was Arcadia High School in California.
are in ".doc" format files generated with Microsoft Wrod. Not so open source.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They already have one. In fact it is linked in the main article summary.
Kudos. this is great. I went to a small rural school where a lot of the teachers used a somewhat open sourced tact when creating yearly curriculums. that way all the differing classes could have some sort of continuity. and by using/re-using each other's work they took quite a load off of an overburdened group of people. now with this taking over perhaps the wiki style implementation will allow for a larger group of educators to have something of a similar system. the time and monetary savings could be put to some great projects that there was never time or finances for.
King Kong Died For Your Sins
Florida is one of the top five textbook markets in the USA, so its move could lead to the development of other free materials that might someday challenge the dominance of a handful of big educational publishers.
While I'm not in Florida, I am both a college student and a fan of free learning materials. Having to pay for text books every semester (even if I buy the international editions) hurts. I agree with #21302639; there should be a place somewhere (dmoz, "List of..." article on Wikipedia, a completely separate wiki) to list, maybe even host, all of these resources. Everything from learning to read through higher level, just an all-encompassing (as near as can be attained, of course) collection of these materials.
While we're on the topic, I MUST supply the obligatory plug:
Please, please, PLEASE consider volunteering with the Literacy Council. You have enjoyed being able to read for (likely) some time now, and many people lack this ability. LC is a wonderful group. They will pair you with a student that meets your specifications. Young, old, male, female, disability, ESL, you name it. You can truly help people here, and it's such an easy thing to do.
My wife volunteers and is currently assisting an ESL mother-of-two learn to read english. I am in the process of learning to teach younger children. You do not need any prior experience, and LC will provide you with help and instruction to get you and your student started. Location is not an issue. Whether your in downtown San Francisco, or Fairbanks, Alaska, you can help.
Again, PLEASE consider volunteering. You could literally change someone's life.
Literacy Council
http://www.literacycouncil.org/
Disclaimer: I am not a Literacy Council representative in any way, I just think you should offer your time and expertise to those who lack the latter.
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
I would love more free/open source teaching materials. I have never met a music textbook I like; they are so often ridiculous, bloated pieces of garbage and it's ridiculous the amount of money that the states spend on them when they aren't even any good.
Next thing they can get rid of (or at least cut back on) is the hideously expensive standardized testing program.
Most books are on two or three year revision cycles - THIS IS GUARANTEED INCOME. Every three years time to buy another book. Wake up, its a scam to bleed our education system dry. You want to make use of a used book? Fuck you, buddy. You know how we prevent that? We make websites that you HAVE to purchase a code to get into. Professors use the sites to distribute homework and take tests and if you don't subscribe, then you are SOL. The result is everyone needs to buy the damn book every damn semester.
These publishers will do anything and everything to keep the turnover high and used book market dead.
Colleges and university really need to make their intranets more effective and make the textbook publishers work with them. Refuse to pay more than $30 for books and we'll have a much more affordable education system!!
- AddALL
- PriceSCAN
- Barnes & Noble
- Amazon.com
did I miss seeing the PDF link?Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
My son loves starfall. However, at the end of the stories - he continually rates them "not so good." He seems to like how they respond.
Funny - I don't remember being able to use a touchpad when I was five.
Wait - they didn't have touchpads on PC's when I was five.
Wait - they didn't have PC's when I was five...
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Parental involvement is the key and I hope that you continue with your efforts.
I've wondered about the potential for something like this- could you make "open source" textbooks?
The project linked seems to go a different way. My vision was such:
You would have a central company, not a charity, but not for-profit. It would do the things that textbook companies regularly do (or I hope they do), hire experts to write the text books, editors to check everything, a small publishing house, etc.
The difference is that it's all put online. It can be peer-reviewed by thousands, if not millions, and used by anyone. In order to make the company non-reliant on donations, it would be released under a custom license, one that allows reproduction of x pages at a time and unlimited but unedited online disbursal, while the company still sells the textbooks at cost.
The idea is that you would get a textbook that can be referenced by anyone, checked by anyone, and teachers can download updates and corrections without having to buy a whole new damn book. I don't know how well it would work in the long run, but I'd say it's a sight better than the current set up for text books in school.
No wonder they are looking for "free" alternatives, his starting salary is $197,000 with another $100,000 in benefits and other incentives.
Half the teachers at my high school in Missouri are on food stamps.
They should do this with history, too. History text books are terrible. Lies My Teacher Told Me makes a pretty good read.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
My 19 month old is in the habit of using a stick to transcribe slabs of Homer's Iliad onto the surface of his sandpit. I'm a bit worried about his development though as he keeps on getting the 'a' backwards in Iliad.
Seriously though my 19 month old just enjoys being outside and experiencing the world. My task is to not inhibit his sense of discovery by trying to shoehorn him into my completely corrupted view of what constitutes success and education in this world. The priority isn't to teach him to read but to teach him to love books along with the rest of life. There's plenty of time for formal education in his future. Once he goes to school he can learn his ABCs but not how fantastic it feels to roll in the mud.
The problem is that the educational system is an even bigger scam. Tuition has gone up even faster than textbooks. I worked for two separate college bookstores. At one of them one of the professors wrote a book that he used for his class. The publisher discontinued the publication and gave him the remaining copies. He provided them to the bookstore every year for the price that the publisher had. He then checked that each student had a copy of the book, if you didn't have a copy of the book, you didn't pass. Oh yeah, the bookstore wasn't allowed to sell used copies. I have two or three other similar stories.
Open Source teaching materials is a great thing, but colleges and universities will try and find a way to get money out of it.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
My three kids (9, 7 and 7) are being home-schooled by my wife, a former teacher. Our biggest problem is finding decent textbooks, especially science. Apparently, most home schoolers believe in intelligent design, and the science books reflect this. So we gather stuff from Wikipedia and other sources and she writes here own tests. I've been thinking about releasing everything under a Creative Commons license, but they could use some cleaning up so I've also thought about putting them on Sourceforge or something. Does anyone know of anything similar? Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Thanks.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?