OER Science Opportunity

I would like to share an opportunity for your school district, especially, those looking to engage  Elementary teachers in online course development. Dan McGuire of the Minnesota Partnership for Collaborative Curriculum asked me to share an opportunity with 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade science teachers. The Minnesota Partnership for Collaborative Curriculum is a grassroots initiative to promote the creation of open digital curriculum. The goal is to leverage the power of collaboration and digital resources to launch teachers and students into new learning frontiers.

Dan is looking for elementary teachers who want to incorporate OER (Open Education Resources) lessons into their teaching. He works with the coordinators of the Minnesota Partnership for Collaborative Curriculum (MPCC) curriculum effort in Minnesota, which has some money to pay teachers who would like to help finish the 4th and 5th grade content. Iowa teachers would work on lessons that are similar to Minnesota standards; there’s not a lot of difference. This video is an introduction to the Minnesota Partnership for Collaborative Curriculum.

He is also looking for 3rd grade science teachers to test out the 3rd grade science curriculum.

The teachers who will get paid by the MPCC for creating the first editions of 4th and 5th grade science are the ones who raise their hands first, and jump the very low hurdles that the MPCC has for bringing on writers. The content is platform neutral but, ideally, development will be done with Moodle and in a 1:1 classroom environment or classrooms with regular access to laptops or tablets. Teacher pay is based on the number of lessons or units developed.

Here are slides to the presentation Dan made at the Mn eLearning Summit. Dan will work with you to address the current standards vs NGSS issue. The work Dan has done so far will work for both current standards and NGSS with minimal tweaking. That's the beauty (one of them, anyway) of OER - things can get tweaked, modified, changed as needed.

If you are interested or know of a teacher interested in this opportunity you can contact Dan McGuire directly or you can contact me to help you make the connection with Dan and the MPCC curriculum effort.

Dan McGuire
Email: danmcguir@gmail.com
Phone: 612-889-3482