View source for Peter Levy Interview Notes - September 18, 2009

''Conducted with [[User:EGraeff|Erhardt Graeff]] and [[User:WikiSysop|Carolina Rossini]] in person at the Berkman Center on September 18, 2009, '''discussing Curriki's approach to OER.'''

== Interviewee ==
*'''Peter Levy'''
**Strategic Partnerships, [http://curriki.org Curriki]
**Email: plevy [at] curriki [dot] org

== Questions ==
* Sustainability -> Toward traditional publishing model
* Follow up to discussion of Future of OER
* How can our research and connections help facilitation greater partnering between OER projects and/or with traditional publishers?

== Notes ==
* PETER on OER: “It's got to exist and its got to be easy to use or nobody will use it”
* ASIDE: Peter's slide deck is for content partners

=== Intro to Curriki ===
* Spun out 3.5 years ago from Sun Microsystems (largely funded personally by Scott McNealy)
* All code is LPGL, all content is CC-BY
* First/Largest OER project in K-12
* Tests show that standards-based curriculum push students to score better on standardized tests--does not apply to supplementary materials.
* There is not going to be any
* Legislation in Indiana for public textbook dollars to be used for electronic resources
* Texas is now allowing e-Textbooks to go through adoption process
* Gov. Perry signed new law to liberalize how textbook dollars are spent
* THE Journal, Geoff Fletcher has been covering this
* CAN INTERVIEW HIM via Peter Levy

=== Curriki Statistics ===
* 85,000 registered members
* 31,000+ assets (ranges in size from whole course to individual worksheet)
* PBS Newshour, Sesame Workshop, and more
* Assets will double in next year if trends continue
* HuffPost blog on OpenTech by Curriki to start Monday

=== Content shared by... ===
* For-profit pubishers
* Non-profit publishers/organizations
* School districts/regional organizations
* Ministries of education
* Schools of education
* The global community of educators

=== Community Activity/Editing ===
* About 10% of community is very involved
* Within 24 hours of posting, a human checks uploaded content for being appropriate
* Then a subject content expert reviews material (search by topics for things that have already been reviewed)

=== Future Developments ===
* To deal with interoperability: plug into LMS
*: LMS would manage different formats and different content licenses
* Curriki is putting together a module for teachers to learn how to use and participate in OER (professional development ?)

=== Philosophy ===
* Curriki is about creating high organized database of content and displaying it (not set up to provide an interactive interface) -- VidiTalk allows for video use -- but its about displaying database content
* The point is not building these kind of sites, but going into schools and getting teachers to use this (OER) content/contribute.

=== Sustainability ===
* “Honestly, I think that sustainability is still a giant question mark”
* Outside of very big donors like Hewlett or Scott McNealy, Curriki is not sustainable

===Educational Model Shift===
* Curricular options: "Here is the 'learn list'"
* If you don’t like the this then try this alternative
** Changing role of Asst. Superintendents for Instruction, Dept. Heads
*** Job will change to curating from all different sources to provide teachers a custom selection of content that adheres to standards and fits a variety of instructional forms (interactive process)
*** Traditional publishers will have to radically change to service provision creating the interfaces and custom databases of content for each educational context (school)
* KEY OPINION: Adoption of these kind of models and OER needs to be top-down in order to truly pervade industry

===California Adoption Situation and Final Thoughts===
* If you are approved on one standard then you get listed as “approved”
* Find out actual adoption of CK-12 books (no one is adopting these books, no one is even talking about them)
* Working on Continuing Education Credit through Foothill College for learning instructional design in order to evaluate existing Curriki content and improve them
* INCENTIVIZE GETTING INVOLVED WITH OER THROUGH PUBLIC FUNDING (LIBERALIZATION)

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