Pythonroom.com offers free computer science curriculum for educators to use in their classrooms, or students to use individually. Pythonroom has a problem-based approach to computer science, which is the best next step after block based enivronments like Scratch or Tynker. Python works on any device with an internet connection, including Chromebooks, tablets and smartphones.
H5P ( h5p.org) makes it easy for teachers to create, share and reuse HTML5 content and applications. It is simple for teacheres to create rich and interactive web experiences– all they need is a web browser and a web site with an H5P plugin. The H5P plugin can be installed on Canvas, Moodle, WordPress and many other LMS/CMS platforms.
Teachers can create interactive videos, games, presentations, drag and drop images, charts, image hot spots, timelines and much more. Visit the h5p site to view examples of the interactive content. You can preview and explore the content types
Best of all, H5P is completely free and open technology. And all content available on h5p.org is licensed under the Creative Commons 4.0 license.
This video shows some of the types of content that you can create with H5P.
The U.S. Department of Education’s #GoOpen campaign encourages states, school districts and educators to use openly licensed educational materials to transform teaching and learning.
As part of this movement, over 40 educators and stakeholders met at the Utah State Capital complex in January for the Utah Open Education Collective. Dr. David Wiley– an OER expert that travels worldwide to promote the use/development of OER– spoke to the group. He explained what qualifies as OER and how to find it.
Wiley shared that to be considered open, educational resources must be free and give users the right to do the 5 R's:
Retain: make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
Reuse: use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
Revise: adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
Remix: combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
Redistribute: share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
As a group, the OER Collective examined and gathered open educational materials that were added to the OER collections in UEN eMedia. Over 150 resources were identified and added to the UEN OER collections. Educators can access the OER collections at http://www.uen.org/oer/.
Back in November 2014, at the OpenEd conference held in Washington D.C., the K12 OER Collaborative was announced. The intent of this organization and initiative was to create comprehensive, high-quality open education resources supporting K-12 math and ELA– all aligned with the Common Core. At that time, there was a request for proposals put out for development of full middle school OER math curriculum, including content, assessments, scaffolding and ancillary materials. Essentially the equivalent of what national content publishers were putting out, but instead of being protected by copyright and costing schools tens of thousands of dollars, this curriculum would be Creative Commons licensed, giving educators the ability to freely revise, remix and reuse.
In 2016, the K12 OER Collaborate launched Open-Up Resources, rolling out their openly licensed comprehensive curricula (middle school math grades 6-8). The materials will be openly available to districts for 2017-18 adoption, complete with the professional development and support services to foster successful implementation.
To learn more about the Open-Up programs or to preview samples materials, please contact info@openup.org or visit http://openupresources.org/
Teachers can leverage the BrainFlex program to encourage students to practice over the summer. CK-12 BrainFlex provides freehigh-quality, online education material for students and teachers.
Teachers can identify math/science content areas they would like their students to focus on, and download a letter that they can customize and send home with students.