Changing Practice: School Librarians as OER Curators
School librarians play a vital role in curating instructional resources to match the needs of their targeted school audiences.
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What Role Does Theory Play in OER Success?
Last month, OER research got some serious air time. I attended a convening of researchers, school district leaders, state departments of education, and funders at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. to shine a light on where OER research has been and where it’s headed.
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Making the Grade with the Common Core: Primary Source Project
For the past 18 months, as a researcher and lead on ISKME’s Primary Source Project, I have been part of a group of twelve educators across eight states to create an open collection of primary sources and lessons that meet the Common Core’s requirement for increased used of informational and non-fiction literary texts across core subjects. We have also been working together to develop an instructional design toolkit to help teachers both create and also implement new curriculum to meet the Common Core State Standards.
We started off the project with four primary goals:
Supporting Student Learning through CCSS-aligned Formative Assessment
As districts and states begin to prioritize and structure their roll out of Common Core State Standards (CCSS), they are also looking at how to implement formative assessments to capture and understand specific CCSS-aligned shifts in learning. These shifts include, for example, students’ ability to do critical thinking and evidence building through close reading of materials, logic and inquiry.
George Lakoff: Neural Binding Can Nurture Big Ideas
“Every idea that you have is physical — because you think with your brain,” said keynote speaker, George Lakoff, during the closing session of Big Ideas Fest. In outlining what that meant to the educational community, the well-known cognitive linguist and UC Berkeley professor explained that neurons in the brain travel on circuits, which in turn form our thoughts. Those circuits, a physical part of our bodies, are fixed in early childhood.