Some Delicious Links, July 21, 2009

Reposted from Meg's Notebook



Consortium of School Networking (CoSN)
Founded in 1992, the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) is the premier professional association for school district technology leaders. If you check the list of CoSN initiatives it's quite clear they have been busy and involved in some very ambitious projects.


International Association for K-12 Online Learning
iNACOL, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, is a non-profit organization that facilitates collaboration, advocacy, and research to enhance quality K-12 online teaching and learning. A great resource for reports, research, promising practices, standards, and most anything which is relevant to the educator considering implementing an online learning strategy and infrastructure.


CK-12 Foundation
CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization aiming to take a bite out of the cost of textbooks by providing a sustainable community of eductators and contributors to generate and distribute open-content. They call this model the Flex Book: flexibility + textbook = flexbook. This service will allow users "to customize and produce content by re-purposing to suit what needs to be taught, using different modules that may suit a learner's learning style, region, language, or level of skill, while adhering to the local education standards" (see http://about.ck12.org/).

The freeing up of data from its original containers so that we can repackage with special attention paid to our classrooms' unique needs, is a smart, timely and, well I'll say it, cool idea, and we really do hope this web-based collaborative learning network really grows and gets the funding they need.


Microsoft Education Labs
Smart, progressive site by Microsoft offering collaborative prototype environments where you can test and participate in development with community members and colleagues. Includes a "futures" section with videos and demo scenarios of alternative teaching and learning practices for the digital generation. Blogs and discussion board for members and colleagues to brainstorm. A real "labs" environment, where projects will eventually become products with your help....how Google of Microsoft......