Open-Source Education

For those who know me, it comes as no surprise that I discount the idea of copyright when it comes to what I use in my classroom. If I can get my hands on it, and it will improve the education I can give my students, I will use it. Period. My job is to teach, not to worry over someone else's profit margin.

Here's my vision: A wiki. Starting off Kindergarten only, because that's my expertise. Individual ideas on their own pages, tagged and categorized by the skill(s) they teach. (By using tags, an idea will come up in a search for any of the skills it meets.) Each idea with space for users to comment. Comments to include a review of how well the activity works, or variations on it, problems with it, etc.

Ultimately this would become a compendium of methods for teaching all knowledge and skills at K level. I would like to start by going though curriculum books I have, and entering their activities into the wiki. (OCR will make this much easier). Ideas and activities cannot be withheld as copyrighted, in my mind. No one owns the idea of sorting bears by color, even if the idea is in their book. Now scans of worksheets or pictures would be inappropriate, as those constitute a product. Ideally as the wiki evolves, there will be the ability for users to upload user-generated printables. (Open source licensing ONLY!).

So, thoughts?

First Post!

This blog is a place for me to catalog and share teaching ideas I come across or think up. I hope it will be of use to someone. The plan is to catalog every teaching idea we use.