[K12OSN] Open Source Curriculum Site?

[Eric Brown]

I am a teacher, but not a teacher involved in AR.  I am in involved in FOSS.
I have had the idea of a program like AR, where questions are submitted by
teachers, and shared in a database.  I think, if teachers could realize more
money in their budgets because AR was not required, I'm sure they could come
up with 5 or 10 questions.

I would be happy to help Luis administate such a project. I think, if we
planned properly, we could bury ar, and more importantly, help kids with
their reading comprehension.

Eric 

-----Original Message-----
From: k12osn-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:k12osn-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf
Of Luis Montes
Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 12:25 AM
To: Steve Hargadon; Support list for opensource software in schools.
Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Open Source Curriculum Site?

Steve Hargadon wrote:

>Has anyone created a website for collaboration on Open Source curricula 
>for schoolteachers?  Maybe something with moodle or drupal?
>
>Seems like a ready resource for classroom instructional materials would 
>be a good pull to bring devoted teachers to Open Source.  And likely a 
>necessary step for helping expand k12ltsp into schools without an Open 
>Source technical guru.
>
>If it exists, I'd like to be able to point people to it.  If it doesn't 
>exist, is it something others feel is worth creating?
>
>  
>
I'm not an educator, just a software engineer. I'm not aware of a good open
source curricula effort, but I've had an idea I've been kicking around:

An open source replacement for Accelerated Reader.  Not just the software,
but the data as well.

First off, testing software is brain-dead simple and renlearn.com has done a
horrible job at it so far. They have shown zero interest in making their
software cross-platform.
What they have done right is provided a large amount of tests.

I  would need the help of teachers in providing testing data based on a wide
array of reading materials for grades k-12.

I'd be more than happy to develop the software (web based) for the testing
as well as building a site for teachers to submit tests and forums for
discussion, rating, and auditing the tests.

We would need to be very careful so as not to copy anything from accelerated
reader, so I would need help in auditing that part as well.

If  we could establish a good standard as to the format of the tests, I
think at the very least we would have a nice free database of educational
content.

Any thoughts?

Luis

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