[school-discuss] ESL and OSS (was Hello - OSS in government)

["chris walker" <christonw@networld.com>]

Hi Bill,
Thanks for the reply. I'm a bit to the east of you here in 
Utah, thanks for the invite though. And I will check the 
local LUG's in my area. I also checked out your 
quotes/news site thanks for the link you've got some good 
stuff there.

Putting the gov't stuff aside for a minute, one problem I 
would like to solve is how to effectively teach k-12 
subjects to English language learners.

Helping the ESL (Spanish/English) students keep up 
especially in literacy is one of the biggest hurdles in 
Utah K-12 education. An idea that I would like to see 
implemented is an Open Source - Open Content solution to 
learn English and/or literacy at the K-12 level.

Is anyone aware of projects that could be used to teach 
ESL or literacy in a K-12 environment? (see PS below)


Thanks again,
Chris Walker
christonw@networld.com

PS
I've been looking around for the last week or so. It looks 
like this problem has two parts "content" and "vehicle" 
I'd like to share a couple of links I've found so far that 
looks promising.

Vehicle
I was very impressed by the OpenACS community and the .LRN 
(www.dotlrn.com) project at MIT but it is geared to higher 
education but it could be adapted. Also it seems to be 
BYOC (bring your own content).

Content
The Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org) and Open 
Textbook movements seem to have huge potential in 
providing content that truly "wants to be free." One good 
link that you may already be familiar with is 
http://www.k12os.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=47
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