A Primer on Curriculum Sharing Sites
Vanessa Vega is Edutopia's research analyst. You can follow her on Twitter @vvega500.
When I was teaching, the single greatest way for me to prepare was to have conversations with my colleagues who had taught the concepts before. For one, this helped all of us develop a common discourse, which was inevitably clearer once we were working through our thoughts in trying to explain ideas to each other.
Second, chatting informally helped me to develop a conversational tone, and to speak extemporaneously with the class, which ultimately helped to convey my passion for the subject matter, which is what brought my colleagues and I together in the first place. In addition, the most effective assignments that I used were based on ideas or resources that other teachers had shared with me.
Teacher collaboration not only saves time, and makes work easier, it improves the quality of curriculum. While it is best to hold regular grade-level meetings with teachers in your school, and even your district, curriculum sharing websites are re-defining the realms teachers can explore to find new methods and materials. At least two major domains of curriculum sharing sites exist to help infuse your curriculum with tried-and-true techniques. The first domain consists of sites that allow educators to share free curriculum materials with other educators, in a network model.
The second domain consists of sites that produce and share free curriculum materials, in a more traditional broadcast model. The following list is an initial attempt to curate some high quality sites in both categories. Since I am undoubtedly missing many great sites, please share your favorite curriculum sites using the comment section below. Hopefully our collective knowledge will help us to identify the top curriculum sites, and ultimately the best ideas and practices for our curriculum needs. Collaboration is key!
Curriculum Sharing Networks
1. Curriki.org is an online community for educators and students to create, share, rate, recommend, and publish free and open learning resources. Many activities are aligned to the Common Core Standards, currently adopted by more than 40 states.
2. Shmoop is a very imaginative online learning community that deftly wields witty prose and artsy aesthetic to destroy the forces of boredom. They offer free and open resources primarily in history, literature, and social sciences.
3. Adobe Education Exchange offers free K–12 resources, with a focus on developing skills in Adobe products for success in higher education and on the job. The site is currently holding an "educators choice" contest that rewards the best curriculum materials with prizes.
4. Digital Is is a sharing space. More than a repository of free and open lesson plans, it is a place where educators can engage in the type of conversations that help develop their practice, and reflect upon the role of technology in doing so.
Curriculum Sharing Broadcast Sites
1. Khan Academy provides thousands of videos with engaging, high-quality instruction in math, finance, and history. Recommended by American Association of School Librarians.
2. Common Core Curriculum Maps offers grade-specific thematic units, plans, and materials aligned with Common Core Curriculum skill. Currently, it is only offered for English Language Arts.
3. The Ohio Resource Center for Mathematics, Science, & Reading and the Ohio Social Studies Resource Center are great examples of curriculum sharing sites that align with state and national content standards.
4. PBS.org has standards-aligned, multimedia activity-kits for teachers.
5. Sitting in on college courses is a great way for advanced students to get a head start on college, as well as for secondary teachers to continue developing their expertise. A growing number of top universities now stream selected lectures online, including MIT, Yale, Berkeley, and many more.
Please add to the list by sharing your favorite resources that offer cutting-edge and effective curriculum for students.
If you like this, you might also like
- Radical Curriculum Sharing at the Open High School of Utah by Todd Finley
- Toss the Traditional Textbook: Revamping a Curriculum by Grace Rubenstein
- Open Source Textbooks by David Thornburg
Comments (15)
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Thanks!
These are a great set of resources. It is so nice as a teacher to have one "go to" curriculum resource website. One of my goals is to increase the college readiness of my students. The Transition College Curriculum is excellent. I also found a great AP Environmental Science curriculum. I am teaching it for the first time and this is super helpful. Thanks again!
Thanks for sharing your favorite curriculum sharing sites!
I have one more to add, OER Commons! It's a great free site for curriculum aligned to common core standards: http://bit.ly/uBI1mS
BetterLesson.com
Check out www.betterlesson.com as a place to upload and organize your own curriculum and share it with colleagues! -Chris
Another great site!
IRA's http://www.readwritethink.org/ is another great site for K-12 Language Arts lesson plans aligned to NCTE standards which served as part of the basis for the Common Core and most state standards.
The Getty...www.getty.edu
One site I find really helpful, especially when trying to teach across the curriculum (by that I mean including other subjects in with the subject you actually teach) is the Getty website. They have lots of free curriculum and materials online for educators. They even have FREE teacher workshops. The curriculum is based on the art work they have in the museum in L.A., but it connects to architecture, history, performing arts, environmental issues. It is a great site. You should check it out.
http://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom_resources/index.html
You can even sign up for a newsletter. Have fun exploring the site.
teacher-librarian
While this is a very useful article for teachers, I wish you would make sure your grammar is correct. Not wishing to be pedantic, but since this subject is no longer taught, many younger teachers no longer speak or write correctly. "my colleagues and I" should be "my colleagues and me" as all 3 words are the OBJECT in your sentence. This will also be true when they are the object of any preposition. The word "me" is being discarded from perfectly legitimate use simply because people are ignorant of how certain language structures work.
instructor, NWACC
A newer resource, but growing: FreshPlans. Free lesson plans, links, resources, videos -- all kinds of stuff for K-12, with a slight bias toward the plugged-in classroom.
K12Advantage.com
Great article. I would like to mention my (work in progress) for the last 3/4 of a year, K12Advantage.com ( http://www.k12advantage.com ). A site dedicated to fostering collaboration in K-12. There are forums, one on one text, audio and video chat as well as conference rooms for live collaboration. Calendars for every state and province in Canada and the U.S. to post upcoming events. My focus is technology, and as such I have more seeded content for that area. I am trying to spread the word about the site to draw people from all disciplines to help build additional content. Hope to see you there.
LessonCast.org
Great resources listed here! Another new curriculum sharing website is www.Lessoncast.org, which offers free 2-minute videos where teachers share strategies and lesson ideas. Resources can also be downloaded for free.
Easy Sharing of resources?
These are great resource for sure. One approach we have taken is to provide searching,saving, and easy accessibility for students of all ages (K-8) while providing a free easy to use ecosystem for teachers. Hundreds of educational websites and quizzes are accessible and reusable for all. For more information please see http://www.19Pencils.com.