Educators Assess 'Open Content' Movement
Leaving their textbooks to gather dust, Houston middle school teacher Ardith A. Stewart and her students studied science this spring by assembling much of their curriculum on a class “wiki.” The materials included students’ written postings on class topics, and projects, grading rubrics, and discussion questions that Ms. Stewart prepared or obtained from teachers in other parts of Texas and the United States.
The students at the 1,200-student Burbank Middle School were able to pursue the state’s learning goals at least as well as if they had read the decade-old textbook, in which “Pluto is still listed as a planet,” Ms. Stewart said.
The Texas teacher is part of a small but growing movement of K-12 educators that is latching on to educational resources that are “open,” or free for others to use, change, and republish on Web sites that promote sharing. The open-content movement is fueled partly by digital creation tools that make it easy to create “mash-ups,” or digital medleys of...
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