As educators, we need to STOP locking up all our curriculum content behind logins and passwords. We need to stop following behind our institutions like compliant sheep when our leaders suggest things like, “You should put your entire course in BlackBoard / WebCT / Moodle / etc.”
In today’s webinar, I argued that every classroom needs three digital spaces for sharing: a “home base” site (wiki), a newspaper (blog), and a “digital locker.” That digital locker is the space for sharing confidential information like student grades, taking quizzes and tests, etc. It’s NOT the space for creating and sharing digital curriculum. Those activities need to be done on the OPEN WEB, outside logins and passwords. Curriculum for the Technology 4 Teachers class I taught at UCO last spring is an example. Jim Askew’s amazing high school chemistry curriculum for students in Crescent, Oklahoma, is another. There are more examples, but there need to be MANY, MANY more. This kind of open curriculum sharing on the web needs to become the NORM, not the exception.
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