KM in Education

Sharing instruction through curriculum mapping

While speaking with a charter school start-up today, I learned of their recent selection of a curriculum mapping tool to enable collaboration and sharing of instruction planning and assessment among teachers and administration. I decided to learn more about curriculum mapping and have summarized below what I found.

Curriculum mapping appears to have grown out of the pioneering ideas in Heidi Hayes-Jacobs' book, Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum and Assessment K–12. In her first chaper, she writes:

With so little real-time data available, we find two polarized tendencies. One is to become rigid and lock step with curriculum guides, giving the impression that all is under control. The second is to become so loose and vague that no one seems to have a clue as to what is going on.

To make sense of our students' experiences over time, we need two lenses: a zoom lens into this year's curriculum for a particular grade and a wide-angle lens to see the K–12 perspective. The classroom (or micro) level is dependent on the site and district level (a macro view)....We need to change the process used in making curriculum decisions because most curriculum committees are ineffective at actually producing work that directly affects student performance.

What Dr. Jacobs proposes is a method that transforms curriculum planning into a vehicle for communication, collaboration and ongoing dynamic review of instructional planning. She also introduces the novel approach of taking a student's perspective in looking at the curriculum holistically and longitudinally to identify redundancies or gaps.

The first two chapters of Dr. Jacobs book provide a good overview of the process and reasons behind curriculum mapping. For a good primer on curriculum maps and different models, consult Least Tern's presentation.

The market for curriculum mapping is fast evolving, as many sites list outdated names and links. The major players all make reference to Dr. Jacobs' methodology as the basis for their design.

Among the more recognized curriculum mapping tools, I found:
AEL's Curriculum Creator - Curriculum Mapping & Design Tool
Atlas Curriculum Management System
Techpaths
WestJam's Curriculum Mapper

Additional players include:
Scantron's Curriculum Designer
Schoolution's MyLessonBuilder and CurrMapper

Beyond these vendors, many organizations such as NCREL and individuals offer consulting services for curriculum mapping.

Dr. Jacobs' site for curriculum design offers further resources.

A National Catalog of Education Resources

It is fitting that the day after writing up an assessment of a best practices website on afterschool practices, I learn of the US Department of Education's GEM initiative, the Gateway to Educational Materials. This latest national effort is intended to facilitate educators' access to the tremendous number of lesson plans and other educational resources available on various federal, state, university, commercial, and non-profit Internet sites. It already boasts over 42,000 records from over 500 collections.

The Gateway offers educators a searchable catalog including educational resources originating from diverse organizations and individuals such as the Exploratorium, a teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy, Montessori, and even the Federal Aviation Administration. It is a daunting project, and given the wealth of information it will encompass, strong search capabilities are going to become critical.

If educators know exactly what they are seeking, the site will serve them well. A search for Bungee Barbie, the famed physics lesson, immediately displays the desired link and summary information. However, if an urban school teacher wants to search for a language arts lesson for ESL students that meets certain state standards, is research-based, and has been well-recieved in other urban ESL classrooms, the catalog falls short. What it offers today is simple, raw information that has been categorized along a set of common attributes (e.g., subject, level).

Once more context is added to these program descriptions, such as teacher reviews or related research and evaluation programs, the resulting knowledge base should become quite practical for most users.

Evaluating an Afterschool Best Practices website

I recently started volunteering at a school in Oakland to help redesign its afterschool program and wondered how easy it would be to find helpful best practices. I came across a number of sites, citing best practices for afterschool programs, but only one that would truly be useful and easy to use for any afterschool stakeholder.

The Promising Practices in Afterschool website stands head and shoulders above other sites by providing both high content quality and a well-structured design layout and format. The best practices are truly 'best' as they are culled from several different afterschool program networks that identified promising practices and then undergo a multi-step review process. The content is categorized into easily identifiable groups, facilitating searching across key components of afterschool programs: Community & Family Involvement, Programming, Management & Administration, Staffing & Training, Financing, Policy & Advocacy, and Research, Evaluation & Knowledge Base. Each best practice is described both in summary form and in comprehensive detail, and provides users with the ability to quickly review activities, impacts and contact information.

However, as a seeker of afterschool knowledge, I still see opportunities for improvement. At the end of my search process, I was still combing practices in a random alphabetical list. To help me more quickly access the knowledge I need, search capabilities should be extended beyond key components to my key criteria such as the problem I want to resolve (e.g., arts education) or the student group I am targeting (e.g., at-risk kids). Perhaps I am a demanding consumer trained by sites such as eBay and Amazon, as I would also like to see ratings for each practice by other users and/or the review panel or perhaps a quantitative performance impact if possible. Finally, I find it odd that the price of each program is not included in the summary facts. Funding must be a key factor in every afterschool program, and a very effective best practice would demonstrate that in its overall cost. Still, despite these opportunity areas, I see this site as a strong starting point for afterschool best practices and possibly an exemplary best practices site in the education sector.

Sharing across states

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices Education Division has launched a Clearinghouse on Educational Policy Issues to enable states to learn from each other's experiences. It has published one policy primer on Closing the Achievement Gap that gives a good overview of the issue and key target areas for associated state initiatives: Early Childhood Care and Education, Improving Teacher Quality, Early Intervention and College Preparation, and Extra Learning Opportunities.

Additional primers are expected to be published in coming months on emerging and important education policy issues. It should become a good resource for those seeking examples of educational policy across states.

Handheld Resources for Educators

I do not know how many classrooms and schools are actually using handhelds, but I suspect it is small and growing, given the number of sites and services I found dedicated to the use of handhelds in education.

If you have any doubts about the range of applications for handhelds, consult 101 Great Educational Uses for your Handheld Computer published by K12 Handhelds.

It's not clear who publishes handheldeducation.com, but it appears to offer unbiased, helpful resources to handheld software, hardware, as well as reviews and other web resources.

The Concord Consortium offers a site dedicated to ubiquitous computing in education, including a comprehensive supplier/vendor index. They also have created a searchable library of online reviews of Palm applications in education. Each review includes a description, a rating, download link, recommended users, and relevant academic subjects. You can learn more about Cooties, one of the more famous applications, enabling students to experience a virus-transfer simulation and in doing so, learn principles of algebra, biology, history, math and statistics.

For the futuristic-minded, IDEO and the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies produced a report defining the DataGotchi, a handheld device designed specifically for education purposes. It includes product requirements and descriptive scenarios.

Additional resources include:

The University of Michigan Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education with its handheld computing site. Their many handheld software applications are now licensed by and available at goknow.

education@PalmOne

The Idea Bank at Palm Education Pioneers

pdaED.com

Educator Networks & Resources

I am intrigued by how educators identify which online resources to use. So many organizations have created forums, databases and networks for teachers to tap into, but is anybody tracking or measuring their effectiveness? And among educators, are there certain sites that are considered the equivalent of Coke and Pepsi in the education market? Personally, I have found many of them difficult to navigate and have a hard time imagining droves of teachers diving into these websites to develop their lessons. I would love to get comments on what sites are considered the best ones in terms of usability, network support, and content quality.

I have stumbled across a few that I find interesting for what they are trying to achieve:

teachers.net - possibly one of the leading websites for teachers, claiming over 100,000 teachers and visitors. Among many offerings it provides, it helps foster professional development through very active chatboards at its Mentor Support Center and aid classroom preparation via its Lesson Bank.

North Carolina Teachers' Network - An example of one state that has developed a website with a lot of content that is linked directly to state curriculum standards. However, it does seem a shame to me that another state couldn't benefit from all this content because it has a set of different standards.

Elementary Education Majors & Interns' Journal - One of many education interest group communities sharing their experiences and ideas for their particular interest, in this case, elementary school classrooms.