Co-written by Tom Vander Ark and Sarah Cargill
Last week Secretary Duncan
said it was time to dump the heavy, expensive books students lug around in their backpacks. We agree, it’s time to shift to digital. High-quality open
educational resources (OER) help make the case.
Digital learning advocate and co-founder of two online high schools, Robyn Bagley, recently asked, “What are some good open high school courses?”
We compiled 14 open resources.
Science and Mathematics
CK12.org
is a pioneer in open resources providing secondary math and science Flexbooks includingFlexmath content originally developed at Leadership Public Schools.
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National Repository of Online Courses (NROC)
provides an online library of OER high school and AP courses at HippoCampus.org. You’ll find
solid courseware available in modules with voice over text. It is easy to create media playlists, find track high-trending learning materials, and
share learning content with students.Find their next gen content at NROCmath.org including a great Hewlett Foundation-funded open
Algebra 1 course and a developmental math sequence.
Educurious
is Gates-funded OER and project-based learning (PBL) curriculum designed to align with Common Core State Standards.
Khan Academy
has a library of more than 3,000 math, science, and history lessons delivered in easy-to-understand videos.
Comprehensive Modular Resources
The Gateway to 21st Century Skills
is one of the oldest repositories of education resources online, providing a variety of activities, lessons plans, projects, and assessments.
Curriki.org
is a big library of shared courses and content.
OERcommons.org
offers free-to-use teaching and learning content and a long list of content providers.
Grade-Level Collections
Gooru
curates the Web’s best resources, compiling them into collections and attaching quizzes.
Power My Learning
provides math, Language Arts, science, social studies, art/music, computer programing, and more educational activities for parents and teachers.
History
Big History Project
is a Gates-funded thematic interdisciplinary project.
Muzzylane
transforms history into a game.
Mostly Higher Education
Connexions
provides a platform for learning modules and content creation that can be compiled into courses, books, reports, and more.
Open Courseware Consortium
provides free and open college- and university-level educational materials online, anytime.
The Saylor Foundation
provides free and open college-level courses to students without registrations or fees. Several districts are using Saylor.org courses in high school.
Watch for more Common Core aligned resources.
Additional Free Resources
Google in Education
and
Google Course Builder
provide great professional dvelopment and learning resources for educators to create and collaborate in the classroom.
iTunesU
has tons of mostly post-sec content.
YouTube EDU
has more than 1,000 educational channels.
PBS LearningMedia
provides tens of thousands of digital resources for educators and is especially valuable to the flipped classroom.
National Geographic
has a longstanding reputation of supporting learning with valuable multimedia resources for any classroom.