District/School Administration PK-16 Program Support
Educational Technology

1998 EdTech Update Report

On-Line Curriculum Resource

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will use three distinct, but integrated initiatives to improve access to curriculum resources on-line.

The Department's on-line curriculum resource effort is comprised of three distinct, but integrated, initiatives. These initiatives are funded through the State appropriation for the Mass Community Network (MCN). They are part of a larger goal to put more content, of more value to educators, on the web and in the hands of educators

The first initiative is called CLASP (Curriculum Library Alignment and Sharing Program) and is led by the Mass Networks Education Partnership, Inc. (Mass Networks), in collaboration with the North Andover School District, a fore-runner in the area of using databases to support curriculum alignment. CLASP's focus will be on enhancing and supporting the North Andover database application to help Districts compare and align their curriculum plans with the standards found in the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. Mass Networks will extend the value of the application by creating regional forums where curriculum directors and planning committees can compare notes and learn from each other, as well as learn how to get the most from the database application. Its goal will be to help coalesce a growing movement towards sharing and co-developing curriculum plans, definitions, and standards.

The second initiative is a joint project between Mass Networks and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE). It will involve two things: an interface to the CLASP database geared to the Curriculum Framework writers, such that they will have a way to directly input the revised frameworks into a database; and consulting services to help the writers develop a common document structure, so that all the frameworks can be consistently ordered and numbered.

The third initiative is being led by the ESE. This initiative will focus on building an on-line web database of lesson plans that will enable teachers to download curricula that are directly tied to the Curriculum Frameworks according to user-defined criteria (filters). For example, a teacher might want to view lesson plans for tenth grade level history learning strand 1, Chronology and Cause, that were endorsed by the Bradley Commission on History in Schools. They would be able to specify these criteria when conducting a search of the database, by using a simple web form. In addition to searching for existing lesson plans, teachers, districts, and publishers will also be able to submit their own lesson plans into the database so we can build a showcase of the State's best work. In the future, a compensation function ("e-commerce") will be piloted to determine whether we can create a market economy for on-line curricula. Finally, the Department will be working with several vendors to supply curriculum materials such as source documents, interactive media, and streaming video with the lesson plans pertaining to them. This would create a "one-stop shop" for lesson plans and curriculum resources.

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