[math4] Some Suggestions from K-12

[John Concilus]

>In this case, obviously, we're looking for fourth grade math teachers.  :)

Looking for K-12 Math Teachers?

Want to use the CaTB approach of making your users your developers? ;-)

We have lots of K-12 math teachers in BSSD who know their way around a wiki. I
can privately give Greg a link to the mail list that goes to all of 
our teachers if you
wanted to invite them to participate.

They wiki up a storm, and have about 11,500 pages and resources on all
sorts of things.

In any case, I like the way you have initial page of the wiki 
structured, but am
wondering if you don't need a template page linked to each standard 
that has the
areas of organization.

In other words, something like this that has sections of different resources or
help for teaching that standard...or for learning it on your own. 
This is just a starter
stub for us, but you can get the sections....refinement of that 
standard area, resources, instructional strategies, assessment 
strategies and projects / activities.

	http://wiki.bssd.org/index.php/GEO:_Regular-irregular_polygons

Just a thought, but if the goal is to both provide links to assist 
with teaching
that standard, and have a discussion page for the standard itself, it may make
sense. 

Such a structure would allow learners to work ahead if they were 
using our DART, or something
like SchoolTool or CanDo that could be linked to the wiki 
content....and provided information
about what each student needed to master in real time.

Standards Alignment - Why Re-invent the Wheel

Oh, and the odd alpha numerics in the standard are the alignment 
indicators to the
Alaska State Standards.  You may want to have a section that listed 
the specific
standards yours were aligning to...Massachusetts Math 4.26, NAEP 4.17, etc.

McREL labs in Denver did an alignment database project for all state 
standards a couple
of years ago, but the resource disappeared last year, I think, off 
their website. They
are one of the "Regional Education Labs" for K-12 in the US, and 
funded by the US Department
of Ed and others.

The work they did was outstanding, and the database made it easy to 
find out how
a math standard covering, say, dividing fractions in Maine compared 
to one covering
that same general concept in Florida.

Perhaps someone with "University Cred" could contact them for access 
to the data?  I
tried, and nobody responded to a lowly K-12er ;-) That would be a 
HUGE help in determining
which standards are similar to which OTHER standards, and make the 
resources you develop far easier
to use no matter where you taught. 

Although it could be used as basis, it would save developers here a 
million hours of labor,
and was done by some of the real experts in alignment. They have Bob 
Marzano and others
that have done standards-oriented work at McREL.

Obviously after you got it, aligning with international standards, 
such as IB and others,
would be a logical next step.

International Efforts for OER

The UNESCO Open Educational Resources group has a discussion going on right now
about just how OERs (Open Educational Resources) could be used 
internationally. Most
of the members of that list are from other countries, and many have 
mentioned the OLPC
in past discussions:

Suan D'Antoni runs the list (which is only open for like a month at a 
time with topics), and here is the link
to the current one...discussions going on right now here:

	https://communities.unesco.org/wws/arc/iiep-oer-opencontent

I will pitch in around here if there is a need, but the Iditarod Sled 
Dog race is starting
this week, so I may be mostly tied up with tour open educational 
project about that for the
next couple of weeks...IditaProject goes out for free by stream to 
about 8,500 students and teachers
starting on Saturday.

Regards,

JTC

>
>>  I'm sorry if these questions have been hashed out already, I'm still new
>>  here.
>
>No worries.  Everybody is new here.
>
>--g
>
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