Why buy commercial courseware when you can download it for free? USA Today’s Greg Toppo thinks new open courseware sites will rock the textbook companies.
A K-2 teacher at Achievement First Bushwick Elementary Charter School in Brooklyn, N.Y., (Dixon) Deutsch, 28, has been using Free-Reading.net, a reading instruction program that allows him to download, copy and share lessons with colleagues.
He can visit the website and comment on what works and what doesn’t. He can modify lessons to suit his students’ needs and post the modifications online: Think of a cross between a first-grade reading workbook and Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia written and edited by users.
If Deutsch wants to see a lesson taught by someone who already has mastered it, he clicks on a YouTube video linked to the site and sees a short demo. “I find it’s more teacher-friendly than a textbook,” he says.
Oh, and it’s free.
Florida may approve Free-Reading, a remediation program for primary-school children, by Christmas.
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.
Free-Reading emulates Wikipedia, letting teachers post their own lessons, modify other people’s lessons and leave comments.
http://www.wikibooks.org
I’m surprised that this thread doesn’t have more post. it’s an idea that is long since due. shows you how hard it is to change an entrenched bureaucracy.