By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer

February is Black History Month in the U.S. It is also the month when we celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, on February 16.

There are many excellent resources for Black History Month, summarized at various sites:

1. @ Curriki – including on civil war, jazz, Lincoln – find them here
2. @ Larry Ferlazzo’s blog – http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/?s=black+history
3. @ the NEA site – http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/black-history-month.htm
4. and from the State of New Jersey – http://slic.njstatelib.org/NJ_Information/Digital_Collections/AAHCG/index.html – a complete high school curriculum on African American history

Take a look to see how you can include some of these excellent resources in your classroom.

Scott McNealy, Curriki’s founder, and I were so pleased to be interviewed by Jessica Aguirre recently on the NBC San Francisco Bay Area television program “Class Action”. We discussed what Curriki – a leading open source curricular repository – is doing to improve education in California and around the globe.

Open source curricular materials on Curriki are freely available, freely distributable, can be customized to particular requirements, and are cross-platform.  Over 40,000 open source materials are available at no cost, unlike traditional closed source educational materials, and the materials on Curriki are not confined to being used or viewed on a single platform or interface.

Take a look at the interview, it’s just a few minutes in length, and you can see it here: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/video/#!/on-air/shows/Open-Source-Education/138363864

A few highlights:
* The killer app is self-paced learning with assessment and scoring, kids are used to this from video games.
* Anyone can go to the Curriki.org web site and from the front page, search over 40,000 materials by subject, grade level, content type, media type. And the open source content is rated by users, with best content shown at the top of your search.
* Because the materials are open source, Curriki promotes personalization, so fast learners in a subject can zoom ahead and those needing help can try other methods of learning.

Thanks again to Jessica Aquirre and NBC Bay Area’s “Class Action” for hosting us and promoting Open Source Education!

By Curriki Chief Academic Officer Janet Pinto

Curriki was voted “Top Rated in 2011” by Great Non-Profits.  Please help us retain this ranking in 2012 by adding your comments to our page.  Here’s an example of what people had to say last year:

Please take a moment and write something (1-2 sentences) today! We really appreciate your support. Thank you, as always, to our loyal member community.

By Guest Author Kathleen Duhl, Curriki Review Team

Recently, I led a seminar for intern teachers, all of whom graduated from outstanding colleges or universities.  As second year teaching interns, they are embarking on their job search for the fall of 2012.  We have been working on resume building, and practicing interviews.

I asked them how they would respond to two questions in an interview:

1. How do you define 21^st century learning?
2. What specific 21^st century skills have you incorporated into your teaching?

The room went silent. They looked dumbfounded. Everyone looked at each other, then at me, then each other. Finally, one of them asked nervously, “Well what is the right answer?”

Ugh!  Here we are, almost 12 years into the new millennium, with recent college graduates on their way to become our next generation of teachers, and they have not been taught how to incorporate technology in the elementary classroom.

What does this mean?  Why is it so difficult?  Why do school districts continue to purchase the same spelling workbooks, handwriting workbooks, or math workbooks? What will it take to bridge the integration of 21^st century learning?

Curriki would love to hear how your college or university prepared you to be a 21^st century teacher and learner. Please share in the comment section below.

Characteristics of 21st Century Teacher

If you’re like me, you’re frustrated by the standardized, ready-made approach to education our schools take, as well as the painfully slow rate of change.  In many instances, this is fueling an “unschooling” trend.

Many homeschoolers and “unschoolers” are testing out powerful new ideas in education.

Do you agree with these insights from Unschooling Rules?

• Sitting through a classroom lecture is not just unnatural for most people, it is painful.
• Animals are better than books about animals.
• Internships, apprenticeships, and interesting jobs beat term papers, textbooks, and tests.
• Tests don’t work. Get over it. Move on.

A diversity of approaches is clearly important. Here are some resources to help provide new learning experiences:

• What is unschooling?
• Unschooling definition
• Curriculum to Unschooling
• Unschooling: Is it Right for You?

Are you an “unschooler?”  Tell me what works for you.

Janet Pinto, Curriki

Photo courtesy of www.gatewaytogold.com

I wanted to share with you my top 10 reasons for using Curriki. Join the OER movement (and make your job easier) by becoming a Curriki member today!

Kathy Duhl

1. It’s FREE!  FREE to join, FREE to take excellent curriculum, FREE to post your best material.
2.  Join the OER movement and be recognized as a forward thinking educator.
3.  Build collections from our repository that you can add to, modify and adapt to the needs of your students.
4.  Help other educators around the world gain access to resources they could not otherwise afford by submitting curriculum you have developed.
5.  Get your curriculum reviewed by content experts.
6.  Start a group at your school or district to collaborate on topics, develop curriculum or document important policies and meetings for future reference.
7.  Engage with other educational groups who have similar interests as you.
8.  Peruse the site and get inspired by amazing units, videos, and full courses. Share the content you find with your colleagues so easily.
9.  Get your collections ready to show future employers your skill and knowledge in implementing 21^st century tools for schools. They will be impressed by how you can save them money!
10.  Don’t have enough STEM material in your classroom?  Run out of new ideas to teach the same content?  Learn from others the value of sharing and being part of a growing community that is committed to equalizing the education divide… one lesson at a time.

Please share this with a colleague and tell us how you use Curriki.

Curriki is very pleased to recognize the top 10 content contributors for their additions during 2011 to our rapidly growing collection of open source curricular resources. The top 10 individuals collectively contributed exactly 1000 new resources into the Curriki portfolio for the benefit of the Curriki community!

Top Ten Curriki content contributors for 2011:

1. Karen Fasimpaur, professional education techology, Arizona
2. Sue Costagliola, professional, New York
3. Virginia Malone, educational consultant / retired teacher, Texas
4. Kate Hall, teacher, Utah
5. Darci Mock, teacher, Utah
6. Jason Mammano, school district administrator, North Carolina
7. Terrie Teegarden, community college teacher, California
8. Micki Halsey Randall, teacher, Oregon
9. Chris Frey, teacher, Florida
10. Marion Pallotta, curriculum office, New York

We thank all of our contributors during the past year and especially wish to thank these leaders for their contributions to the Curriki community. We look forward to all of your new contributions during 2012 as we advance the open educational resource cause for the benefit of all of our members and the educational community across the globe.

As we begin a new year, it is customary for people to share wishes for a peaceful year ahead. War and armed conflict are perhaps the most severe impediments of all to education, as documented by UNESCO in The hidden Crisis: Armed conflict and education. War, and especially civil war, disrupts societies and communities and displaces children, their families and teachers alike. Schoolrooms may be destroyed, and the students scattered to refugee camps. Teachers may be pressed into military service. Providing education to children in a war-stricken region can become extremely difficult or impossible.

So it is good news to hear that, despite the daily headlines that may cause us to think otherwise, the frequency of war appears to be decreasing in recent decades.

Professor Joshua Goldstein is the author of Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide. In a recent blog entry at http://www.internationalrelations.com/ (Dec. 27, 2011) under the title “Peace on Earth, More than a Wish”, he has noted that “wars are fewer, smaller, and more localized” than in the past. Not only have major wars between nations abated in the last few decades, so have the frequency and intensity of civil wars. Peace has come to regions that were suffering from multiple civil or ethnic wars just two or three decades ago, including the Balkans, West Africa, and Central America. Peacekeeping missions by the United Nations, which now has 100,000 troops under its supervision, have become much more effective, with ceasefires holding 85% of the time. The number of battle deaths has dropped considerably since the 1990s. Nevertheless, there are over a dozen wars or armed conflicts in progress at present:
http://www.internationalrelations.com/wars-in-progress/

This could be an interesting discussion topic or essay assignment for a high school civics, history or geography class. Is this an enduring trend? Can war become obsolete? Or at least can it continue to be minimized through more cooperative international relations?

This has been a great year for Curriki and I am most grateful to you, our Curriki members, who continue to contribute or enhance resources and send us helpful suggestions for improvement.  Here is one example of how Curriki is making a difference:

“Being able to browse through Curriki has allowed me to bring effective lessons and teaching ideas into the classroom when my brain is too exhausted to develop them on my own.”

Thank you if you’ve already given to Curriki’s 2011 annual fund! There are only three days left in the calendar year! We’d appreciate if you would please take a moment to make an online donation, so that we can deliver an even better Curriki experience. Even a small donation will make a difference!

In our January newsletter (mailed Jan. 3, click here to subscribe), I share some of the enhancements to the Curriki site that we will be bringing to you shortly.

On behalf of the entire Curriki community, thank you and Happy New Year!

Regards,

Kim Jones

CEO, Curriki

Are your students asking “who are the 99%?” and “what are Occupy activists protesting against and why?” The Occupy movement is now a global issue and provides us with a current-events opportunity to teach our students about civics, activism, free speech and more.

Here’s a story on How One Teacher Brought Lessons from Occupy Wall Street to Class from Mind/Shift KQED

Plus, here are several resources you can use in the classroom:

• Who Are the 99%? Ways to Teach About Occupy Wall Street from The New York Times’ The Learning Network
• Should students support or oppose the “Occupy” movement? From C-Span Classroom Deliberations
• 5 Resources for Teaching About Occupy Wall Street from the Humane Connection blog
• Occupy L.A. offers a hands-on civics lesson for students, teachers from the Los Angeles Times
• Occupy needs a lesson on financing the public good blog from Crosscut

Photo: thefreeonline.wordpress.com