Blogs on Curriculum

I wanted to share a guide I have created when it comes to deciding on new technology purchases. It might seem complicated, but if you follow it, everyone will be happy.

Did you check out Open Education Week this month? The international event highlighted free lesson plans and materials, searchable by subject, grade and quality. I spent a couple days throwing keywords into OER (open education resources are digital materials freely available through open licenses) search engines to assess the quality of secondary and higher education writing curricula.

One area that I have not written much about on this blog is educational apps. This is mostly due to the fact that my school has one first generation iPad and two iPod Touches for the entire school. We also ban cell phones and other electronic devices, so these are not available for use in the classroom unless the teachers specifically plan for the kids to use them for a lesson or activity, hand them out to the kids and collect them at the end of the lesson. I won't pretend to be an expert on apps in the classroom, which is why I haven't covered their use here.

Educational author and former teacher, Dr. Michael Schmoker shares in his book, Results Now, a study that found of 1,500 classrooms visited, 85 percent of them had engaged less than 50 percent of the students. In other words, only 15 percent of the classrooms had more than half of the class at least paying attention to the lesson.