A few of you have said that you were unable to download/read the attachment,
so I am including the ³Vision Document² below:
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Utah OpenTextbooks Project
Overview: The Utah OpenTextbooks Project will cultivate a grassroots
community of K-12 teachers, students, university professors, educational
administrators, and concerned citizens within the state of Utah, with the
intent of creating open, free textbooks, along with supplemental digital
learning materials, for educational use.
The Vision: Within 5-10 years (2010-2015), we see the following as within
reach:
* Utah Saving Millions of $$$ in Textbook Costs: The state of Utah could
save literally millions of dollars a year in textbook costs by replacing
expensive textbooks with free, open textbooks (currently the annual K-12
budget for textbooks in Utah alone is $20M)
* UTAH State Standards: Utah OpenTextbooks will be directly \aligned with
both Utah state curriculum and local priorities/preferencesand will not be
oriented towards the curriculum, preferences, or social norms of other
states (e.g. New York, California, Florida, and Texas).
* Helping Teachers Teach Better, with Less Time Commitment: A major goal of
ours is to SIMPLIFY teacher¹s lives, by providing them with time-saving
course materials, while still helping them improve their overall
instruction. A few ideas include:
* Teacher subject matter knowledge and passion will
increase through
participation in the ³online teacher communities², as well as through
increased direct involvement in both content development and selection.
* By allowing teachers to share with each other quality digital supplemental
course material designed around a specific textbook (multimedia clips for
lectures, digital self-paced learning objects for student homework, test
banks, classroom exercises, etc), we hope to dramatically simplify teacher¹s
overall jobs, while still helping them improve their level of instruction
* Helping
Students Learn More via Social Networks and Digital ContentToday,
our competition for student time includes alternatives like Xbox, MTV,
Internet Forums, etc. By intermingling student learning with social groups
via a digital medium, we hope to create a special sauce¹ that will lead to
increased student interest, involvement and enjoyment in learning like never
before (making it ³cool² to learn, from a social perspective, and allowing
students to develop/foster social relationships within a learning context).
* Subject-specific online learning communities for
students will be
cultivated, such that students can ³socialize² with other students from around
the state in a learning environment (killing 3 birds with one stone by
facilitating learning, socialization, and fun simultaneously).
* Classroom lectures/activities become better for students, by providing
professors with better materials for lectures and activities (see above)
* By providing students with well-designed digital learning objects (digital
text, self-paced learning modules, multimedia clips, etc), students can learn
at their own pace, in a digital environment that is more familiar, and
potentially more compelling.
* As the communities begin to mature, city-wide and even state-wide
competitions could be held (think of online or state-wide history or math
tournaments), where students gain notoriety/respect/success (ratings?
Rankings?) for excelling within specific subject areas.
How We Will Do This:
1. Online Community: For starters, we will create an online community of
educators, and actively recruit participants. Currently, this forum is
located at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/utahopentextbooks. We will seek to
recruit members from: a) contacts in Logan/Cache Valley and at Utah State
University, b) the Utah Educators Association, c) the Utah Educators
Network, and d) any other area/forum where Utah educators congregate.
2. The ³Kernel² (our 1st Textbook)To borrow on a software-related metaphor,
the ³kernel² of our efforts will be the creation of a single community and
textbook (we are thinking U.S. History to start with). We will try to find
an author of an existing text (or other opentextbook initiative) who is
willing to ³donate² their textbook to our cause as a foundation. If we
can¹t find this, we will seek grant money to pay 4 or 5 university
professors and/or teachers $20K each ($100K total) to help design the 1st
textbook over a year¹s time. This book will be developed:
1. DIRECTLY based on Utah State curriculum
requirements
2. With EXTENSIVE input from real, live, active teachers in the given field
3. With a ³Wiki² approach (see
www.wikipedia.org <http://www.wikipedia.org> ).
While we are intent on approaching the design of this text w/ a spirit of
openness and community, we will optimize around creating a quality text in a
reasonable amount of time (1 year?)and will sacrifice openness (in terms of
authoring, not input) to ensure a quality/timely release. 2 potential models
for development include:
1. 5 paid authorsthousands of volunteer
reviewers
2. Thousands of volunteer authors5 paid editors/reviewers (gate-keepers)
4.
Digital Content: We will seek to obtain digital content for the textbook
from any/all available sources, including the Library of Congress, National
Archives, National Science Foundation, other learning object repositories,
etc.
3. Printing and Evangelizing the Textbook: While this textbook will be fully
digital/online, it will also be available via print. We will locate a
printer who is able to print a quality version of this text (hard copy?) for
under $5/copy. Once the 1st textbook is completed, it will be evangelized
to charter schools, school districts, and even the state of Utah for pilot
usage.
4. Supplemental Digital Content Libraries: Once the text is completed (or
perhaps in parallel), the community will be invited to submit digital
³learning objects² to supplement the text. Possible items for submission
will include:
1. Lesson plans, including supplemental digital
multimedia
2. Group exercises
3. Student homework /assignments
4. Test questions
5. Other supplemental instruction or learning materials
What will differentiate our content repository from the plethora of other
³failed² content repositories is:
1. It will be directly associated with a specific course/textbook, instead
of generic subjectsthus teachers will have much more of a direct interest
in participating.
2. By fostering usage within a unified state/systemwe will be able to
create a critical mass of community members, with enough in common, and with
enough mutual familiarity, to add real value to the individual members. The
content will be created and evangelized via a local community of teachers
(³viral marketing²)
3. The content (text and digital learning objects) will be rated by teachers
AND learners, such that a ³virtual feedback loop² will be digitally enabled
(leading to dramatic content improvement). As far as learning objects go,
only a few of the VERY BEST content objects will be recommended for each
section of instruction. In other wordsSIMPLIFIED CHOICES, SUPER HIGH
QUALITY.
And of course, this initiative will likely solve world peace, world hunger,
and general moral decaybut I wanted to keep predictions relatively
conservative at this point. J