Hi
I have just started a one day a week research project with the Specialist Schools Trust (under their iNet programme) - into the use / abuse of Web2.0 technologies.
As part of that (and an ongoing idea), I would like to start to address the duplication / wasted time & effort that all teachers find themselves in when writing / updating schemes of work.
I find myself tasking my team to rewrite the Science GCSE, KS3 and now Btec schemes of work, almost every year. (I know that's the fluid nature of SOW's but still....) We look for ideas, insporation elsewhere, within LEA and across the broader Internet..... Whilst we collaborate internally and share ideas externally, the sense that everyone is doing the same thing and wasting time / effort grows every year.
So I propose establishing a website (www.opensow.org or similar), setting up some collaborative tools (eg a Wiki) and creating with collaboration SOWs.
I appreciate that exam boards often publish "sample" SOWs, but they are static, untested and owned by commerical companies.
In the first instance I am looking to be shot down and for someone to stay - "That's a daft idea because..."
Cheers
Glen Gilchrist
Subject Team Leader -- Science
Perhaps you need to clarify whether it is your use of web technologies that is based on open source or the activities in your scheme of work, or both. My reading is that it is your proposed scheme of work that is open for discussion, comments and editing rather than that the contents use open source, but this may be a misunderstanding.
Hi
Sorry for the confused start to a topic. What I intended was a SOW created under a GPL that others are free to contribute to, take copies of and generally evolve. The project would involve the use of OpenSource tools to make the collaboration possible - say the creation of a wiki to support the contributors.
Thanks for the input.
Glen
Blogging at: http://glengilchrist.tumblr.com
This is a really good idea, is could be married with developing OpenSource Courses and Resources for Moodle.
I really like this idea - it's something that me and my team in BBC Learning have looked into a couple of times.
It's technically very feasible - there are plenty of wikis and content management systems that could be used for this purpose pretty much out of the box.
Editorially there are more complications - for example, finding a large enough body of teachers to actually contribute content to and maintain the system.
There's also a big issue about what to 'peg' the OS schemes of work to - my understanding is that the schemes of work are being deprecated in favour of more flexible guidelines on what to teach and how. Trying to create a system of tagging or content management that would be specific enough and flexible enough to cope with a modification of the curriculum is no mean feat.
Anyway, I'd be very happy to discuss in more detail, either in this forum or by email (harry [dot] robbins [at] bbc [dot] co [dot] uk).
Best,
Harry
Not sure if you know about the curriki project. his seems to be along th same lines.
http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome