Open-Source Early Literacy Materials Gaining Some Attention

phooky writes "Although open teaching materials have been available at the university level for a while now, there have been very few materials for younger learners. That's beginning to change now with the advent of Free-Reading, a free, wiki-based resource for early literacy instruction. The availability of free materials could free up millions of dollars from school budgets for more teachers and training. From the USA Today article: 'Last fall, a Florida textbook adoption committee approved Free-Reading, a remediation program for primary-school children that's believed to be the first free, open-source reading program for K-12 public schools. It's awaiting approval by Eric Smith, the state's incoming education commissioner, who could approve it by mid-December. Florida is one of the top five textbook markets in the USA, so its move could lead to the development of other free materials that might someday challenge the dominance of a handful of big educational publishers.'"

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Re:Start a wiki!

[DragonWriter]

An excellent start! Someone with time should start some kind of wiki for projects like this...

Indeed [wikibooks.org].

Yay

[RNelson]

Florida is one of the top five textbook markets in the USA, so its move could lead to the development of other free materials that might someday challenge the dominance of a handful of big educational publishers.

While I'm not in Florida, I am both a college student and a fan of free learning materials. Having to pay for text books every semester (even if I buy the international editions) hurts. I agree with #21302639 [slashdot.org]; there should be a place somewhere (dmoz, "List of..." article on Wikipedia, a completely separate wiki) to list, maybe even host, all of these resources. Everything from learning to read through higher level, just an all-encompassing (as near as can be attained, of course) collection of these materials.

Literacy Council

[Ambiguous Coward]

While we're on the topic, I MUST supply the obligatory plug:

Please, please, PLEASE consider volunteering with the Literacy Council. You have enjoyed being able to read for (likely) some time now, and many people lack this ability. LC is a wonderful group. They will pair you with a student that meets your specifications. Young, old, male, female, disability, ESL, you name it. You can truly help people here, and it's such an easy thing to do.

My wife volunteers and is currently assisting an ESL mother-of-two learn to read english. I am in the process of learning to teach younger children. You do not need any prior experience, and LC will provide you with help and instruction to get you and your student started. Location is not an issue. Whether your in downtown San Francisco, or Fairbanks, Alaska, you can help.

Again, PLEASE consider volunteering. You could literally change someone's life.

Literacy Council
http://www.literacycouncil.org/ [literacycouncil.org]

Disclaimer: I am not a Literacy Council representative in any way, I just think you should offer your time and expertise to those who lack the latter.

-G

Convert Them and Repost

[Anonymous Coward]

What's nice is that they can be converted to ODF, etc. The problem with MP3 is that its lossy so you really can't liberate it by converting it to Ogg Vorbis without losing some quality, you'd need to convert it from the original wav etc.

If you share anything do it in ODF, it will help it spread.

it's about time.

[themusicteacher]

I would love more free/open source teaching materials. I have never met a music textbook I like; they are so often ridiculous, bloated pieces of garbage and it's ridiculous the amount of money that the states spend on them when they aren't even any good.

Next thing they can get rid of (or at least cut back on) is the hideously expensive standardized testing program.

any copyleft teaching aid books in PDF?

[weighn]

so I go to free-reading.net, click on a book and it offers me the choices:

• AddALL
• PriceSCAN
• Barnes & Noble
• Amazon.com

did I miss seeing the PDF link?

Re:The downloadable flash-cards

[MrCopilot]

Hmm tried to fix it for you.

Upload warning

".odt" is not a recommended image file format. Bummer.

Holy Shit - I want to be a Superintendent

[fat_mike]

No wonder they are looking for "free" alternatives, his starting salary is $197,000 with another $100,000 in benefits and other incentives.

Half the teachers at my high school in Missouri are on food stamps.

Re:I work for a large textbook company & its a

[Attila Dimedici]

The problem is that the educational system is an even bigger scam. Tuition has gone up even faster than textbooks. I worked for two separate college bookstores. At one of them one of the professors wrote a book that he used for his class. The publisher discontinued the publication and gave him the remaining copies. He provided them to the bookstore every year for the price that the publisher had. He then checked that each student had a copy of the book, if you didn't have a copy of the book, you didn't pass. Oh yeah, the bookstore wasn't allowed to sell used copies. I have two or three other similar stories.
Open Source teaching materials is a great thing, but colleges and universities will try and find a way to get money out of it.

Homeschoolers need this

[vrmlguy]

My three kids (9, 7 and 7) are being home-schooled by my wife, a former teacher. Our biggest problem is finding decent textbooks, especially science. Apparently, most home schoolers believe in intelligent design, and the science books reflect this. So we gather stuff from Wikipedia and other sources and she writes here own tests. I've been thinking about releasing everything under a Creative Commons license, but they could use some cleaning up so I've also thought about putting them on Sourceforge or something. Does anyone know of anything similar? Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Thanks.

Re:Yay

[servognome]

Having to pay for text books every semester (even if I buy the international editions) hurts.

In college free learning materials won't change anything. I had Mat. Sci. classes that used photocopied course notes for $15, and a kinetics class that had a useless textbook which cost $2/page (100page book for $200).
Ultimately it's up to your professor who often wrote the book, collaborated with the author, or gets a kickback from the publisher.