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Flexbooks are super cool online textbooks that can be shared on multiple devices for free, but you already know that, right? What you may not know yet is how you can use the power of groups to make an even better online textbook.
If you're a teacher, you know how frustrating it is to have a print textbook with typos or sections that you'd rather teach in a different order. Flexbooks allow you to create your own custom online textbook that can be shared with your class and other teachers. Creating a textbook on your own can be hard work and that's why we love (and encourage) collaboration!
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The school year has officially drawn to a close. Woo! That means teachers everywhere are basking in the sun, galavanting around Europe, and reading piles of romance and mystery novels, right? WRONG!
Like those in any other profession, teachers would love to take two months off to relax, but there is work to be done! Work you say? What kind of work could teachers possibly be doing when students aren't in school?
Teachers spend the majority of their days working with students, but there are so many other things a teacher does besides work with students! Did you know that on average, a teacher spends five hours each week grading papers outside of regular school hours?
According to a study by the National Center of Educational Statistics, teachers spend an average of 8.6 hours per week working on school related activities outside of school hours without students present. These activities include: grading papers, meetings, lesson planning, etc. Teachers spend an additional 3.6 hours outside of school hours doing activities with students such as chaperoning school dances, attending school performances, coaching sports, etc.
Summer is here, but that doesn't mean the learning needs to stop!
As a parent, you can continue growing the understanding of math and science concepts all summer long, no matter how old your kid is. In fact, your kids might actually learn MORE by going out and experiencing math and science concepts in the real world!
Today's post comes from our co-founder and Executive Director, Neeru Khosla. This is the first part of a series of posts from Khosla.
If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our students of their tomorrow - John Dewey
How often have you thought: What if someone improved the way I'm doing [x] right now to make it more efficient/simple/easy? It got me thinking, what if we tried answering that question in education? What if we tried to question some old norms and use technology (we have become more digital right?) in our discourse of public and private education? After all, isn't that what technology's promise is: offer efficiency and simplicity with an opportunity to improve?
Last month, 6 high school students at Leadership Public School in Oakland, California were announced as the grand prize winners of the Get Real competition. This is their story...
Students often ask how the things taught in the classroom every day relate to the real world. Where will algebra get them in life? Why are chemistry concepts important?
The CK-12 Get Real Competition challenged students to show exactly how those classroom geometry, physics and chemistry concepts can be applied in the world around us. Students were challenged to apply math and science concepts in the real world to demonstrate learning.
This math concept gem has been around for a few years, but we couldn't help but get excited when we found it posted by the Washington Post today. We thought you'd find it fun to use simple arithmetic and math concepts to calculate your age. Try it!
Math Concept: Your Age by Chocolate Math
Last week, in celebration of Teacher Appreciation Week, we asked you to thank your teachers in our Say Thanks campaign.
We were so excited to receive the thousands of submissions from students who care for their teachers so much! Students thanked their teachers for helping them to learn algebra, for drilling home chemistry concepts and for providing physics lessons that have helped them get into the best colleges.
Happy Friday!
Today is the last day of our favorite week of the year, Teacher Appreciation Week. That means you have one last day to thank your teachers for all their hard work and support in our CK-12 Say Thanks drive.
All you need to do is go to http://www.thankingteachers.org/ and fill out a thank you note to your favorite teacher. The note will be emailed to them and it will be added to our wall of thank you's. Your teacher will also be entered to win a $25 gift card!
Today's guest post comes from David Wiley. Wiley is a professor at Brigham Young University and a Shuttleworth Fellow, working to lower the cost and improve the quality of education.
In 2010, with funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, we began the Utah Open Textbooks (UTOT) initiative.
The goals of UTOT are to replace expensive high school science textbooks with collections of open educational resources (OER), while researching the impacts on student learning and costs. Naturally, UTOT takes the CK-12 Foundation's excellent science textbooks as theirstarting point.
