I found a great article on the Mind/shift: How We Will Learn site (retrieved from: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/02/three-trends-that-will-shape-the-future-of-curriculum/ ) The article is titled, "Three Trends That Will Shape the Future of Curriculum". The three trends are 1) Digital Delivery, 2) Interest-driven, and 3) Skills. The basic premise of "digital delivery" is that sites such as, Shmoop (retrieved from: http://www.shmoop.com/) where there are many fun based learning content activities, and many other OERs, allows for release of being shackled to books and having access to many digital resources that can be used to facilitate learning. The second trend is based on tailoring content to students' interests so that curriculum can be built around it. The third trend is around working on skills for readiness in the "real world", with using collaboration, innovation, critical thinking and communication. It is interesting that I see a direct correlation to this in what we are doing in our cohort. We are collaborating on projects, using innovative tools, having to be extremely critical thinkers of the material we are delving into, and even though we are not in a f2f classroom have had a lot of communication through chats, Skype, Twitter, and Facebook.
I have taken a look at what I am doing in my f2f grade three classroom and have realized that I am just beginning to scratch the surface of the above mentioned three trends. I have a Weebly site for my grade three class and each student has their own Weebly site under my teacher site. They are learning how to blog and respond to another's post. Another thing I am doing in my f2f classroom is helping my students learn how to navigate their way around the web, how to search for information, and how to determine whether a site they are visiting is viable for their needs. We have also been working on Inquiry based projects. My students and I have been gathering OERs and placing them in our class Weebly. I started them off with a couple of sites and they have been adding sites that they have found. I am sharing a few of their blog comments: "I love the math blog its my favorite", "do you now a web cite of canadas history", "I now a web cite for math it is called math mate how do i post a link to you", "please show me later eney time in-between seven or six". I am thrilled that many of my students are finding value in what we are doing and am very engaged, however, I have a long way to go to reach all of my students.
My next goal is to continue to gather OERs that will engage all of my students. I also need to start my students off right at the beginning of the year with blogging, navigating the "Web" and inquiry based projects, instead of half way through as I did with this class. I also need to be way more in-tune with the needs of all of my students so that I am able to "reach" all of them on some level. I think I have a good start on gathering OERs, and am excited, to further develop my repertoire of engaging OERs.