Open Curricula?
15-April-2006
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Interesting s series of posts by Tom Hoffman who is looking at the idea of seeking to have the Pacesetter English curriculum released under an open content license, such as a Creative Commons license.
Tom says "The most obvious question is "Why?" What would the goals of this project be?
The most direct goal is to save the curriculum from oblivion. Pacesetter English represents untold thousands of hours of work throughout the 1990's by many of the leading experts on English instruction, as well as classroom teachers who helped develop and test the work. .... Since all the contents of Pacesetter are proprietary, everything that was learned in its creation and embodied in its texts will simply be inaccessible, lost to the world. This would be a tragic waste."
I think the issue goes further than not wasting the effort of the curriculum developers. It raises questions about what we are trying to achieve in developing Open Content for education. Of course Open Content learning materials and multi media are a boon to teachers. But there is some doubt over how prepared and easy teachers are in using other peoples learning designs.
But Open Content materials on their own do not provide a learning programme. I have written much on informal learning and learner driven(or auto-didactic) learning. However there is a case to say that learners - even those motivated to learn in their own time out of need or interest, need some form of guidance in developing ideas and knowledge. Such guidance has traditionally been contained in curricula.
A big issue - and one that Tom begins to explore - is what form an Open Curriculum might take, How far is a a guide to teachers in help them structure their teaching programme - and how much might it be a guide for learners to assist them in structuring their own learning?
Technorati Tags: edublogs, Open content, oss_education
