First MIT, now Core Knowledge – Free, High Quality Curriculum Abounds

By Wesley Fryer On February 1, 2010 · · Add Comment

The MIT Open Courseware project demonstrates the powerful and surprising ways digital distribution channels and innovative thinking are radically changing access to ideas. If you’re interested in learning as well as equity issues, the Open Educational Resources movement is a BIG deal. Dr. Alec Couros’ K12Online08 presentation, “Open, Social, Connected: Reflections of an Open Graduate Course Experience,” provides a great deal of insight into the ways the OER movement can impact graduate education experiences when faculty understand and embrace these potentials.

Given my keen interest in OER and high quality digital curriculum sources generally, I was enthused to learn this evening (thanks to a tweet by Bud Hunt) the outstanding Core Knowledge Curriculum is being released / published free to the world:

Over at Education Week, Catherine Gewertz has advance word on a big piece of upcoming news: After more than two decades of publishing and distributing its K-8 Core Knowledge Sequence exclusively to Core Knowledge schools, the Foundation is planning to make its proprietary curriculum available for free online… The move to common standards “could be bigger than any other reform I can think of,” Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, Jr. tells Gewertz. “We’ve had a hell of an incoherent system. It’s been based on a how-to theory, and not enough attention has been paid to the build-up of knowledge. This is a moment when we really could change the direction.”

The learning revolution marches on.

For more background and resources related to OER, check out the podcast “Free Content + Open Tools + Massive Collaboration = Learning for All by Karen Fasimpaur” from NCCE 2008.

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