Blog: Our Journey to #GoOpen

As soon as our team began meeting, brainstorming, and planning, we knew we needed to record our experiences. As the movement towards OERs gains momentum, other districts and schools will find themselves wondering the same things we've wondered. We hope our blog serves as a source of answers and inspiration, and becomes a place where educators, from teachers up to administration, can share and discuss all things OER.

Summertime Recharge

7/6/17

posted by Kelly Hart

Ask any teacher what they love about summer, and they will surely mention the time off from grading, lesson planning, staff meetings, and alarm clocks. What they might not mention, however, is the time spent reflecting, learning, and reading. Most members of my teacher tribe, myself included, do some combination of these activities over the summer to improve their practice. We attend conferences and take college classes. We tweak and revise some lessons, throw some out altogether, and create brand new units to share with our students. This time away from the daily grind of teaching makes it possible for us return to our classrooms ready for our new crop of students, prepared with the best material from the best resources.

My dive into the OER ocean has drastically changed the way I tackle my summertime to-do list. During the 16-17 school year, I used all open resources for my 7th grade ELA classes. I was overwhelmed with the depth of the modules from EngageNY, inspired by lesson ideas from CPALMS, and all the while trying to sort out best practices using my students' iPads (it was our first year of a 1:1 roll out!). Now it's easier than ever for me to tweak and revise. All of the resources and materials I used this year are stored in my Google Drive, and my students used a combination of Blackboard, Google Classroom, and hyerdocs to access and interact with materials. I don't need to haul home a stack of teacher resources or flip back through my lesson plan book to recall what I taught when, or what I wanted to change about it. I just added a teacher note in Blackboard reminding me of my ideas, and set it so it wasn't visible to my students. Now all I have to do is review my units in Blackboard and make the changes I noted during the year!

Of course, a few new ideas worked their way into my plans for next year. I am looking for ways to run literature circles (or book clubs) in class this year utilizing our iPads. I want to avoid the traditional worksheets with the individual roles where kids just record info from the book. I want to encourage critical thinking, questioning (a la Costa's levels of questioning) and collaboration. Luckily, between my awesome PLN and my favorite OER sites, I'm sure to have all sorts of ideas in no time!

7th grade ELA Standards Tracker

8/4/16

posted by Kelly Hart

I spent this afternoon binge-watching Netflix (check out The Fall if you want a super dark and dramatic crime show!) and creating this standards tracker! I've been meaning to formally keep track of which standards are addressed during the year so that I ensure equal time. I often feel like speaking & listening get left behind, and my hope is that this tracker will help me hit those standards often throughout the year.

In the spirit of Open Ed, I am sharing this tracker with you! Please remix it to fit your specific needs, but be sure to share out your version. It may be exactly what someone else is looking for! I made each section of the standards (reading literature, writing, etc) its own tab on a Google Sheet. This way I can just click across the bottom to see all the areas and make sure the current unit hits several areas at once. No crazy scrolling! 😜 I think I will end up filling in unit numbers as opposed to dates since I don't always teach everything in the same order from year to year. How will you use the tracker? Let me know your thoughts!

Odell Education

6/27/16

posted by Kristl Taylor

We have landed on an incredibly relevant resource for our 7th grade ELA course! ODell Education is providing free curriculum that includes a series of four units at each grade level (6-12). Each unit highlights a core literacy proficiency and includes:

-approaches

-instructional sequences

-handouts

-tools and texts

So far, we are using this resource for our first unit (Reading Closely).

Two sides of the same coin

6/17/16

posted by Kelly Hart

So, I'm sitting in the tech cafe of our district office with Kristl, and we are chatting about iPads, apps, and workflow. Our middle schools are rolling out 1-to-1 iPads in the fall, and since we heard the news we have been buzzing with ideas we want to try. We are meeting today to continue finding OERs for my ELA classroom and I'm starting to set up units and day to day lessons. But we keep going back to iPads, apps, and workflow.

As we talked and worked, I had an epiphany. This process of adapting curriculum to be 100% open really has two parts. First, we have to find the OERs that align with our curriculum and are culturally relevant and rigorous. Second, we have to decide how to administer this content to our students and figure out how they will deliver their products to us. These are two entirely separate endeavors but they are so closely linked. It is proving hard to focus on one without thinking about the other. I think this is what causes me to take two steps forward and one step back. Every time I locate a fabulous resource, I wind up spinning my wheels with the how of it: how will students access this? how will they complete their work? how will they share it with me? how do iPas fit? how do iPads not fit? And on and on!

Moving forward with our planning, it is important for me to keep both sides of this process in mind. However, the focus must remain on the OERs and figuring out which resources fit our needs. I will always have time to work with the classroom management side of things. Plus, figuring out a lot of these issues will be much easier when I have a classroom full of students in front of me. It's also important to note that every teacher has his or her own teaching style. How I decide to to teach these resources will be different than how you would teach them. The resources that I create and share need to keep that in mind and allow for all teachers to use them according to their teaching style.

Perhaps this all seems very obvious to some, but Kristl and I are just glad that we found the words to express our thoughts. We have not been moving as fast as we had anticipated in creating our units, and this is why.

The Exchange

4/27/16

posted by Kelly Hart

Life certainly has a way of carrying on whether you are ready or not! It has been over a month since the #GoOpen Exchange took place & I have not yet shared all the great teamwork that took place and ideas that were shared.

Take Away #1

After having a few conversations with other cohorts, I realized something scary. All the districts in our cohort are working towards open curriculum for math and science. My district chose to start with ELA. We figured if it can’t be done for the toughest area, then it might not be something our district wants to take to full adoption. I’ve already begun working with my teammates to embed as many ELA standards into their content as possible. However, we have to include culturally relevant literature for the kids to read. Bringing copyrighted novels and nonfiction into the classroom is something I’ve been dwelling on - but that’s for another post!

Take Away #2

This movement is large and full of incredibly passionate, supportive people both in and out of the field of education. I met so many great corporate partners who are tweaking their existing products to facilitate the use of OERs. I’m especially excited to hear back from Amazon Education - I want to get involved with their beta Inspire engine so I can start adding my ELA ideas for others who want to go the way of OERs. The sharing of OERs is critical to growing this movement and bringing new schools on board.

Take Away #3

Sky Walker Ranch is unreal. I know this doesn’t really relate, but hear me out! Everywhere you look, you are confronted with beauty - natural beauty around Ewok Lake, incredible works of art, and original movie memorabilia. It was so easy to be inspired in this setting! In addition, the staff (both at the ranch and from the Office of Ed Tech) was welcoming and had all of the bases covered. There was time to mingle and network, time to listen to other share their stories and successes, and time to hear from OET about how to move our mission forward. The Exchange also left my cohort planning a time to hold a regional Exchange, where we can continue the process.

OERs and Future Ready

2/16/16

posted by Jerri Kemble

I will never forget the day I heard about the Department of Education's OER initiative. I was at a School CIO event and Joseph South from the White House was speaking right before lunch. I was very excited to hear that Joseph was at the event, as I had met him the year before at the White House when President Obama rolled out the #Future Ready initiative. I was fondly remembering the #Future ready event, signing the pledge on the iPad and seeing the President of the United States speaking to administrators about the plans the US Department of Education was making. I remember thinking the US Department of Education was filled with "out of the box" thinkers that were pushing the administrators in the room to new levels. I'll admit I was pleasantly surprised by their futuristic plans. After meeting them, listening to their vision for ALL students, and discussing the innovative practices that were happening across the nation, I WAS ALL IN!

I was not quite sure what "Go Open" meant, but I was anxious to listen to Joseph South. I was remembering the pledge I had taken and how I was personally and professionally committed to the plans that were laid out by President Obama and the Department of Education. Joseph South spoke of OER's the money it could save districts and how we could get involved. The more Joseph spoke, the more I knew that we could do this. In fact we were already doing this in our district. Our Teachers on Special Assignment were curating content for course shells and creating courses filled with resources for our teachers. I thought of the TOSAs and the teachers that were already involved in this work and how we could continue to grow in this area and at the same time share the knowledge we had gained with other districts. After all, collaborating with other districts was a component of the Future Ready Pledge.

At the same time this was happening, I was serving on the Kansas Commissioner of Education's ReDesign Education Committee. I considered the impact OER's could have on not only our district, but on the state of Kansas. Many school districts in Kansas are struggling financially. If our districts could share resources we could offer the students in our state an amazing education using high quality tools, and save districts money at the same time. Giving students and teachers free resources is quite exciting and I am quite excited to be on this journey.

Since I am such a fan of #futureready, I will share video I created to review the main points of the Future Ready Day at the White House.

Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQr4juQSPGQ

#goOpen

My First Roadblock

2/16/16

posted by Kelly Hart

Today I pushed out an activity to a few students to let them "test drive" it for me. It's a pretty standard "get to know each other" activity, but with some secret writing formative assessment going on! I wanted to see if the directions were clear, if they could navigate the links I used, and if they were able to create Adobe IDs for using Slate. (If you don't know about Slate, you need to!! It's free - check it out here.) The kids looked over my example, understood the directions, got all excited to work on their own....and then got a big ol' access denied message.

Crud! The first time I saw this, I figured we'd made a mistake somewhere along the line, so I rounded up three more kids to give it a go. Two of them got this same message, and one actually made it to an account page to start creating a Slate. These moments are so priceless to me as a teacher - to show students that grown ups need to apply their problem solving skills in their lives - and I wanted to be sure to model the never-say-uncle attitude that is necessary in life. We tried different computers, we made sure we had email addresses typed in correctly, and we triple checked to be sure passwords contained the required laundry list of elements. Still no!

I finally told kids my hunch - Adobe requires you to input your date of birth. My students are 12 or 13. Perhaps there is something in their eligibility requirements about being over a certain age. If that's the case, I'll need to do some further problem solving! I also used my resources - our IT guy, Adam! I emailed him asking for advice. I'll be sure to update with any info I learn from him and my future sleuthing. Once I get it all sorted out, I will also post the activity this is all for (with a Creative Commons license, of course!)

UPDATE! Upon carefully reading of the terms of use, I discovered the problem. Users must be at least 13 years old to create an account. Drat. Not all 7th graders are 13. I hate to have a tool as awesome as Slate and then say "Sorry!! Only the 13 year olds can use it!" Back to the drawing board I go for another great web tool that kids can use to introduce their story to the class...

UPDATE #2 After tweeting with the great folks @AdobeSpark, I set up a Google account for my students to use when they create Spark Pages, Videos, and Posts. It's been working great!

A Little Background...

2/15/16

posted by Kelly Hart

For a look at how blended learning has transformed the learning environment, watch this video from Blackboard, our LMS provider.

Let's #GoOpen!

2/15/15

posted by Jennifer Scotten

As a library media specialist my mission is to provide students and teachers in my learning community reliable and culturally relevant resources. Opportunity to influence and create equity in the curriculum through the #GoOpen initiative could not be passed up. Through #GoOpen I plan to help shape the culture of innovation and learning at South Middle school by providing curriculum support to classroom teachers. Cultivating Open Educational Resources and monitoring fair use requires a collaborative approach and I’m excited to apart of our #GoOpen team. The possibilities for enhancing instruction and engaging our student are endless. We’re no longer just “making it work” with inherited textbooks; we are remixing content and making the curriculum meaningful to our students.

Taking the Leap

2/15/16

posted by Kelly Hart

When I was first approached by my principal to get involved with the #GoOpen initiative as a classroom teacher, I had no idea what I was signing up for. At first I thought I'd just be ditching the textbook, which was fine with me since I hardly use it anyway. Once I had a chance to sit down with our team and listen in on a couple #GoOpen conference calls, I realized make the move to openly licensed resources was much more than just leaving out the textbook. I was a little apprehensive but more than ready to take the leap.

I had already started on the path toward OER without really realizing it when I began to implement blended learning in the classroom. Together with my building ELA colleagues, I built a few units into our Learning Management System using a mix of resources we developed along with short stories, poems, and nonfiction from our textbook. I love searching for new resources, new perspectives, and new activities to put in my students’ hands. And when I can’t find what I need, I have no problem creating it myself. Sometimes I’ll create from scratch, and other times I’ll remix pieces of what I’ve seen online. I thought that was what all teachers did! I had no idea that this creation and remixing of materials is a thing, and a pretty big one at that!

I think my openness to blended learning and trying new things (even if I fail!) has been a huge benefit to me as we start this process. I know that what I’m attempting to do can make a difference. I also have the support of a fantastic principal behind me. I can’t stress the importance of that. Having permission to fail makes it much easier to get started. At least I will learn from those failures and be able to move on to the next step.

Beginning the OER Journey

2/15/16

posted by Kristl Taylor

My story begins about two years ago when I was a sixth grade social studies teacher with a textbook that was published about 10 years earlier. I was constantly searching for resources on the Internet that aligned with the ELA and SS standards AND was engaging for my students. What I really needed was a "buffet" of resources at my finger tips.

Fast forward to present time~ I have moved to another school district and another position. I am now a Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA) for social studies, and one of my biggest responsibilities is to search for resources for social studies teachers. I have to search for open educational resources, so that I follow copyright laws. It has been challenging at times, but I feel that everyday I find more and more open educational resources.

My hopes in being part of this team and Go Open project is to learn more about Open Educational Resources, so that I can have more resources to provide to my colleagues.

Permission to Fail Forward

2/12/16

posted by Jennifer Bessolo

As a principal, I find myself frequently encouraging, speaking to, and even pushing progressive, innovating practices with our teachers. Yet, recently, I've stopped to reflect on why a small population of teachers are taking the plunge to try new instructional practices, while others show preference to retain current practice...no matter the success others are having! Rather than criticize 2/3 of our staff population for not being "early adopters" I've considered how educators in 2016 are receiving mixed messages from well-meaning principals, including myself. We still ask our teachers to increase student performance on state assessments, measure MAP growth, retain good classroom management practices, and many who may have had success in these areas have tried and true ways they typically aren't ready to "forego" quite yet.

So what message can I share to relieve the angst in pushing forward? Our teachers have heard me talk about taking risks within our vision and mission, and changing roles from direct instructor to facilitator/activator in the classroom. We've even discussed failing as part of the process. Yet, I've realized this message is far more complex than just "adopting new practices." The pause in changing practice may be largely encompassed in fear of failure, not entirely unwillingness to change.

Recently, an executive from the Apple Education division, Dr. Oldfield, shared with me the concept of asking teachers to "fail forward." The concept of "failing forward" refers to the idea of it being far better to fail as our instructional practices move forward and we try new things, rather than failing by not moving at all, or preserving status quo in an ever-changing educational landscape.

So as I consider my leadership journey, and our work with personalized learning in twelve classrooms in our building, we now look ahead to our exciting journey creating OER course masters. My message to those taking this next step is to be brave, consider the needs of our students as 21st century learners and embrace the pioneer mentality as we move ahead together. I don't lead how my principals lead, and I don't believe teachers should continue teaching how their teachers taught. Moving out of current comfort zones to build something new requires a different kind of support from principals. Support, permission to fail, and time are three continuums heard over and over from our teacher leaders. I will continue to share the concept of "failing forward" as we learn, improve, revise, and implement our work with OERS.

Looking at leadership of an OER endeavor from a broader leadership lens, I'm impassioned at the concept of "owning our initiative" as a school leader. Too often I see educational leaders play it safe, living in the world of management versus leadership or passing initiatives such as this onto upper district officials. As a principal, failure to own and advocate for our initiatives strongly perpetuates the stagnation of our school systems today. Our movement towards OER and course masters replacing textbooks will be a political conversation at some point, and will require principal leadership to articulate the "why" behind this initiative in multiple dialogues with our stakeholders. As our educational climate and needs of our students change, it's our role as leaders to be willing to stand up for the initiatives we are working towards, and inspire our teachers, colleagues, parents, and our community to embrace this vision with us, not as a fad, but a turning point in 21st century education for our students.

So in essence, this "bold leadership" requires us principals to be willing to try new things, support new ideas, and communicate to teachers it's okay to fail, as long as we're failing forward. But lastly, let us leaders also not forget...as we build new educational platforms together, we too may "fail forward" as we learn together. The key to this? We're moving.

And we launch!

2/8/18

posted by Angelique Nedved

As an Assistant Superintendent, launching in to the world of #GoOpen and OER generated tons of questions in my brain.....what does this all mean, how do we measure success, and how do we ensure quality resources are available for students and staff? On a team with an exceptional group of professional women educators, blogging about the experience seemed a natural step to capture the excitement and energy within the group, while sharing perspectives from my role. Why might an Assistant Superintendent of Teaching & Learning be involved in such an endeavor?.....I responded, "Why not?!"

In my role of leading Teaching & Learning, allocation of resources is a large portion of the decision making - whether financial, time, or human resources, it's critical that all these meet the needs of our students and staff. Not a task to be taken lightly, I had feelings of skepticism, nervousness, and excitement bundled in to one emphatic YES when asked to participate as one of ten Launch Districts across the nation. I jumped at the chance to maximize the tremendous potential of increasing our district's access to high-quality education opportunities through OERs. Sharing our journey of personalized learning through blended environments (an initiative we started in 2012) was the kick-off....how did we start, what types of support have we implemented, what challenges have we faced, and how did this effect student achievement? Excellent questions, opportunities to push ourselves and investigate deeper.

I'll be blogging here about our journey of #GoOpen, as seen through my Assistant Superintendent eyes. I'll be sharing my mishaps, the barriers, my mindset and personal growth, and our district’s celebrations as we implement OERs.

Our journey begins:

We specifically selected the area of 7th grade English language arts as our focus content and grade level for the #GoOpen campaign. Our reasoning for this grade and content was the result of our past experiences in curating text and resources for our students while running in to copyright concerns as we implemented blend learning. We wanted our staff to be able to adapt and customize learning materials to meet the needs of our students without breaking copyright laws. In addition - because traditional textbooks are consistently outdated, we’ve been forced to re-invest significant portions of our budget on replacement costs. Going through my mind….there has to be a better way, a way that utilizes our finite resources, honors the skills of our staff, and moves our classrooms in to digital, personalized learning environments. How do we accomplish this without spending more on instructional resources? An intriguing component of OERs - these can be freely distributed to anyone, increasing the equity to high quality learning materials.

We’ve learned over the past 3 years the power in and critical inclusion of collaboration. One of the most valuable currencies teachers have is time, so securing this for our #GoOpen team to participate and successfully launch this campaign was necessary. We’ve secured at least 4 full day collaborations through the next 3 months for the 7th grade ELA classroom teacher, the Library Media Specialist, and our Teacher on Special Assignment to plan, discuss, and problem-solve. Our implementation goal is August 2016. After 2 full days of planning together, the team has completed one entire unit, with 4 more on the way to round out the instructional year.

Most recently, we’ve been asked to present our work to others as we share our process in implementing OER resources – YAY and GULP simultaneously!! I’m confident that our #GoOpen team is well poised to share our story and am humbled to work with @jlscotten, @jennybessolo, @MrsHartSMS, @trendinged3, and @jkemble !!

Read more here about the launch of the #GoOpen Districts <http://tech.ed.gov/open-education/go-open-districts/>.