Learning Josh

Doing the 4th year maths unit in semester 1 this year, we had a rather street-smart lecturer who truthfully didn’t teach us that much about maths as we would have liked, but gave us so much insight and street-smart ideas for when we really start teaching. I personally loved his class because he was full of great ideas, quite wise and very confident. I think he run his own business in IT with education now..

Anyway, he introduced us to CURRIKI. According to the website, its ‘your world of educational resources and curriculum’. Users can develop, publish, share, discuss, evaluate and download free classroom resources (such as curriculum documents, worksheets, lesson plans, weeks worth of programming) from all over the world. One week, our homework was to check this website out and report on our findings. I must say, it is relatively new and predominantly American, but still I think this is one education website to keep your eye on.

Check this video out: A guide to Curriki (youtube)

 The reason why I think this is that the potential is so great! This one stop shop for teachers could be the answer to good quality resources that we use in the classroom. Their goal is that ‘Every student and educator will have access to quality learning resources aligned to frameworks that support learning within the US and support the UN Millennium Goals globally’. Schools and teachers in remote areas can benefit from this as it is accessible and free. Eventually though, I think this resource will and should be used by all teachers around the world – it just might take a while to catch on.

There are some issues that come with this new territory – how much of the material is actually ‘good’ and relevant for my classroom? What makes a good classroom resource in Texas, doesn’t necessarily mean it will be good for an international school in Japan.

With technology making the world so globalised, a concept like Curriki may be a practical way we access our resources when we start teaching. Even though Curriki does have that ‘American’ stigma to it, we should still give this a chance. I’ll be interested to see what you think of it!