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"oday's education system includes ingrained practices, including policy and decades-old methods, that prevent schools from moving to competency-based models. Solutions to this problem include: Creating and making available educational resources on competency-based learning. These resources might be best practices, rubrics or tools, or research. Convening a coalition of League of Innovative Schools districts that are working to build successful competency-based models. Creating a technical solution for flexible tracking of competencies and credits. Problem No. 2: Leadership doesn't always support second-order change, and those in potential leadership roles, such as teachers and librarians, aren't always empowered to help effect change. Solutions to this problem include: Promoting League of Innovative Schools efforts to enable second-order change leadership Creating a framework, to be used in professional development, that would target and explain second-order change leadership discussions Schedule panel discussions about second-order change leadership Problem No. 3: Communities and cultures are resistant to change, including technology-based change Solutions to this problem include: Identifying new and engaging ways to share cutting-edge and tech-savvy best practices with school and district stakeholders and community members Involve business leaders in technology-rich schools and create school-business partnerships Look to influential organizations to spearhead national ed-tech awareness campaigns Problem No. 4: Education budgets aren't always flexible enough to support the cost, sustainability, or scalability of innovations Solutions to this problem include: Build relationships with local businesses and career academies, and create incentives for companies to hire students, in order to create a revenue stream for schools Look to competitive pricing and creative solutions Leaders must not be afraid t

"EQuIP (Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products)is an initiative of the American Diploma Project (ADP) Network designed to identify high-quality materials aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The objectives are two-fold: Increase the supply of high quality lessons and units aligned to the CCSS that are available to elementary, middle, and high school teachers as soon as possible; and Build the capacity of educators to evaluate and improve the quality of instructional materials for use in their classrooms and schools. EQuIP builds on a collaborative effort of education leaders from Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island that Achieve facilitated. The outcome of that effort was the development of the "Tri-State Rubrics" and a quality review process designed to determine the quality and alignment of instructional lessons and units to the CCSS."

"Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource (OER) Objects The following rubrics represent an evaluation system for objects found within Open Education Resource s . An object could include images , applets , lessons , units , assessments and more. For the pu rpose of this evaluation, any component that can exist as a stand - alone qualifies as an object. T he rubrics in this packet can be applied across content areas and object types . In general, the rubrics should be applied to the smallest meaningful unit."

"Questions of quality in repositories of open educational resources: a literature review" Javiera Atenasa,b* and Leo Havemannc Abstract Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials which are freely available and openly licensed. Repositories of OER (ROER) are platforms that host and facilitate access to these resources. ROER should not just be designed to store this content - in keeping with the aims of the OER movement, they should support educators in embracing open educational practices (OEP) such as searching for and retrieving content that they will reuse, adapt or modify as needed, without economic barriers or copyright restrictions. This paper reviews key literature on OER and ROER, in order to understand the roles ROER are said or supposed to fulfil in relation to furthering the aims of the OER movement. Four themes which should shape repository design are identified, and the following 10 quality indicators (QI) for ROER effectiveness are discussed: featured resources; user evaluation tools; peer review; authorship of the resources; keywords of the resources; use of standardised metadata; multilingualism of the repositories; inclusion of social media tools; specification of the creative commons license; availability of the source code or original files. These QI form the basis of a method for the evaluation of ROER initiatives which, in concert with considerations of achievability and long-term sustainability, should assist in enhancement and development. Keywords: open educational resources; open access; open educational practice; repositories; quality assurance "

"Essential Principles of High-Quality Online Teaching: Guidelines for Evaluating K-12 Online Teachers "

"April 29, 2014 Achieve Webinar: Integrating EQuIP Into Your State's Common Core State Standards Implementation Strategy Achieve hosted a webinar on integrating EQuIP into Common Core State Standards implementation plans. Alissa Peltzman, Vice President, State Policy and Implementation Support, Achieve and Sasheen Phillips, Achieve's new Director of EQuIP and OER, provided an overview of the available tools and resources developed through Achieve's EQuIP (Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products) initiative, designed to identify high-quality materials aligned to the CCSS. We then heard directly from leaders at the state and district level who have put the EQuIP resources into use to support their efforts to identify quality and aligned instructional materials to advance implementation of the CCSS, including Merri Ann Drake, Idaho Core Coach, Idaho State Department of Education; Elissa Farmer, Curriculum Specialist, Seattle Public Schools; Terri King-Hunt, Gifted Support Specialist, Atlanta Public Schools; Linda Schoenbrodt, Elementary Mathematics Program Specialist, Maryland Department of Education; and Amy Youngblood, Founder, Eduoptimus. Please see below for resources shared during the webinar. Integrating EQuIP Into Your State's CCSS Implementation Strategy (PowerPoint slide deck) Integrating EQuIP Into Your State's CCSS Implementation Strategy (audio recording)"

"Open Educational Resources Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version Additional Resources OER Rubrics (PDF) OER Training Videos About the OER Rubrics and State Support Open Educational Resources (OER) offer opportunities for increasing equity and access to high-quality K-12 education. Many state education agencies now have offices devoted to identifying and using OER and other digital resources in their states. Below, learn more about the Achieve OER Rubrics and Evaluation Tool, training materials on the rubrics and the Achieve OER Institute."

"Knowledge knows no boundaries We're a global online learning community where educators collaborate, share resources and showcase accomplishments. Project Share is a collection of Web 2.0 tools and applications that provides high quality professional development in an interactive and engaging learning environment. Project Share leverages existing and new professional development resources for K-12 teachers across the state and builds professional learning communities where educators can collaborate and participate in online learning opportunities. The mission of Project Share is to provide an interactive and engaging learning environment that offers opportunities for: Communicating and disseminating information from state, region, and district levels. Creating or joining common interest networks to increase teacher-to-teacher collaboration, conversations with experts, and communication with students in a secure online environment. Accessing state-adopted and approved materials, including electronic textbooks and other materials developed through TEA partnerships. Accessing educational resources through McDonald Observatory StarDate, PBS Digital Learning Library, Texas PBS, and many others. Accessing Texas Education on iTunes U to explore the history and cultures of Texas, view educational tutorials, and download resources for personalized learning. Collaborating on the development, dissemination, and evaluation of online professional development sessions and courses. Highlighting individual accomplishments through the development of ePortfolios. Developing and sharing ideas and resources."

"Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license. These resources may be used free of charge , distributed without restriction , and modified without permission. In 2012, the Washington State Legislature passed Engrossed Second Substitute House Bill 2337 that directed the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to create a collection of openly licensed courseware aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and conduct an awareness campaign to inform school di stricts about these resources. The Legislature saw this as an opportunity to both "reduce the expenses that districts would otherwise incur in purchasing these materials" and "provide districts and students with a broader selection of materials, and materi als that are more up - to - date." As a part of th is legislative mandate , OSPI conducted a review of OER in high school mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) that built on the work of the 2013 WA OER R eview . Teams evaluated full - course Geometry/Integrated Math 2 and units in 9 th - 10 th grade ELA. In addition, an OER Algebra 1 course unavailable for review in 2013 was examined. The review process, conducted durin g February and March , 201 4 , made use of existing review instruments designed to gauge alignment with the C CSS and overall OER quality . Minor revisions to the 2013 process were informed by feedback from the first cohort of reviewers. The results from this r eview enable educators and content developers to tap into the most powerful feature of OER : the ability to freely adapt and redistribute materials ."

Ensuring that you've crossed off every item, this "to-do" list will allow you to create and implement successful, effective, informative, and practical eLearning courses for learners in both educational and professional settings.

Yowza! Great resource, Betsy.