An Open Education Maths Course for Secondary Schools

Open Education Resources (OERs) have been in the press a lot of late - for very good reason in my opinion. After all, if we really do believe in the notion of an accessible education for everyone, it is reasonable to expect that there will be a quantum of resource available that students and teachers can call on for little or no cost.

So why do schools invest large amounts of $ on text books when there are many resources already there? There are of course lots of answers to this ... but from a simple perspective ... Is it viable to use OER for a traditional secondary course? Is there enough out there for a teacher to find and use without too much stress?

Well, being a maths teacher in a past life, I set myself the goal of finding an open source text book to start with that would serve the purpose of my text book for a secondary course



A simple Google search turns up plenty of options - but the one I settled for was CK-12's flex book - they have a number of mathematics and science titles that are appropriate for secondary level. One of the nice things is that CK-12 offer both PDF and web versions of their texts. Of course, the PDF doesn't have any of the video tutorials that the web version does - but you can simply provide both versions for your students ... The best of both worlds.

The videos in the web version ... Turned out they are from Khan Academy - and that reminded me of the potential power of the Khan Academy online tutorials and related system ... And here they are matched with a text book! Brilliant!!



So - in my mind a great line up to supplement any Maths course ... You have a text book, large numbers of video examples and you as the teacher. All you need to do is change to a free textbook ... Maths content doesn't appear to change much year on year (that's the subject of another debate!) - so this should work.

Want to give it a try? Just think - if it worked ... And with a Maths text costing say $40 per copy ... And 30 kids per class, and (in our case) maybe 6 classes per year level ... That means we could save $7200 per level on texts, plus any annual replacements.

And let's be really honest ... If you can be bothered looking ... you will find plenty of free resources from texts to video to ... you name it. Today's teachers and students have the world at their fingertips. It's really time to start harnessing some of this great power.

Authentic Learning - Does this have a hope of working?

Over at Practical Theory the other day I read Chris's entry about "A School I'd love to see". You should read his full entry, but the gist of it is in this quote ... 
"Imagine this high school:

Every morning, the first thing everyone did was read the New York Times for an hour. Now, imagine that they are using some kind of Kindle-style software so that they can annotate with ideas, questions, etc... such that at the end of the hour, the school community could see who had similar questions from the day’s paper.

And now, imagine what it would look like if the kids spent the better part of the day researching those questions and seeing where that took them, with the end of every day being a "share out" where kids shared what they learned across a variety of media..."

OK - so, having thought about this and identified with Chris all of the reasons NOT to do something ... late that night I broke open my iPad NZ Herald App and had a 3 minute look on the articles granny Herald deemed worthy of their iPad version for the day wondering if there was story content that might appease the scientists, the mathematicians, the english/literacy teachers ...

Here are some of the stories that took not much time at all to find ... I'll start with one of the lead stories ...

This is a little ripper to start with ... as a primary producer, NZ has much to be thankful for on the world stage - we produce a lot of dairy and is our biggest export earner by far. And we have a monopoly company in charge. So, with this one story alone I can see history, geography, economics, accounting, mathematics, statistics ... from the standard curriculum ... and then what a dream to use some of the content coming out of the research being presented digitally via some form of infographic.

So - after no more than a few seconds I have one story that I can swing a whole series of "lessons" out of.

But lets not forget the Arts - they had better fit too ... well, off to the entertainment section ... didn't actually read any of the articles - but I see there is something covering the tragedy of Amy Winehouse, there are stories of dance groups and other musos, there is a tattoo story (why do so many people have tats these days?) - so I reckon I can find something here without too much trouble.

Next maybe there is a story around the JK Rowling headline? As someone who has never looked at a Harry Potter book (and don't intend to) ... I suspect that most of my students have and so they could probably lead this one for me ... I'll just act as the guide where I can.

I'm sure that I can find plenty on the sports pages to spark discussions and activities around health and physical education - probably on the health pages too.

Poor Christchurch's bad run continued over the holidays with snow adding to their earthquake woes. Again, scientists, mathematicians and geographers can delight in the data and the stories around this.

And to finish for today - what about an ethical discussion about the perceived rights and wrongs of copyright and privacy laws in the information age. Maybe we might even learn a little about politics and leadership too ...

And my current thoughts ... I have spent 3 minutes reading Chris's original post - and another 3 minutes browsing for possible content on the Herald iPad version for the day. I have spend probably another 10 - 15 minutes thinking about what it might mean and 15 minutes putting these thoughts down.

Sure - there needs to be some more thought given to making something like this work ... that is IF there any value in this as a notion ... or should I just shelve it and return to the safety of my classroom and close the door again?

I think is was Einstein who said we'll never fix the ills of the day with the thinking and tools that caused them - something like that anyway ... when are we really going to address authentic learning.

What do you think?

TED Talks: The mathematics of cities ... our future?

Have just watched Geoffrey West give a talk on the "simple" mathematics that governs the growth of rats, people, cities and companies. Well worth 17 minutes of anyone's time.

Selling a product to people that don't want it - the future of maths in schools?

"I sell a product to people that don't want it but are forced to have it by law." These are some of the opening remarks of Dan Meyer, a maths teacher from New York. In an 11 minute TEDx talk he goes into his method for making math problems more meaningful and realistic for students. He makes the case that text books and their approach to problem solving are "buying you out of your obligation" to be a successful maths teacher.
This short video is worth the look - and if you are a math teacher and you have access to some technology in your classroom, then try and take up the challenge. It might be worth it - especially for those who struggle a little.



You can get an idea of some of the stuff Dan has tried from his blog - the general address is here.
For some specific approaches to curriculum try this link.