Creating Digital Content
There is much talk these days about abandoing traditional publishers and having teachers create their own content. There are many tools that make this possible, but just because it can be done, does not mean that it should be done. Having been a classroom teacher for almost 20 years and with increasing record keeping (data collection) I am not sure when a teacher can add this to their to do list.
If a district did wish to create their own digital content or texts is would make more sense to combine it with curriculum writing and be part of group effort. As schools review the new common core and adjust their existing curriculum they should begin collecting resources, images,video and text. Gathering the material to be used is the most time consuming part. The initial creation would be the most demanding, once it is created the only updating and tweaking would be required in the future.
If your school has created their own text, please share your strategies.
4 thoughts on “Creating Digital Content”
You could find ways to “crowd-source” the creation of digital materials, and then spend more time curating those resources.
There’s a group of us doing something like that for math, trying to capture real world math problems (or at least real world like scenarios), and then share them through a common portal and let people take what they want to be used in the classroom.
http://vimeo.com/channels/videostoryproblems
Even though this would be a huge undertaking, I think that creating your own digital content would be worth the effort. For my fellow music educators in my county, a portal where we could post music sight reading samples that any could download for their classroom and use to prepare for festivals or just for everyday learning would be a great source. We could also put vocal exercises for particular techniques we are rehearsing.
Beth, you could have your students help with the creation of your content material. While working on my masters, I read chapter 6 of the book Web literacy for educators, and the author talked about a pre-calculus teacher that had his class create a student guide for class. Using a blog, a different student is responsible each day for posting notes, diagrams, illustrations, etc. from the day’s lesson. Basically, instead of reading a text book, the students are creating the text book. This would most certainly help in the creation of your content material, and would take some of the pressure off the teacher you talked about.
Also, Ben, I love your idea about posting real world situations. I have been looking for a way to use blogs, or something similar, to create, discuss, and investigate real world situations and problems to help motivate my students, as well as getting the parents and community involved. Do you have any ideas to help with this?
Thanks all for the comments,
The opportunity to make targeted, relevant, interactive digital texts and media is too good to pass up. “Crowd sourcing” even at a local level is essential to get things off the ground. Having student create some of the elements that can go into a book are worthwhile. At the foundation there will need to be a change in the workflow and the way we do things to make it work it can not be “in addition to” but must be an “instead of”.