BSSD OpenContent Project

From OER Grapevine

1 Wiki-based Curriculum System
2 DART: Data Analysis and Reporting Toolkit
3 DART <=> Wiki Integration
4 Program Contact

The Bering Strait School District (BSSD), a U.S. school district roughly the size of the state of Minnesota, uses wiki technology for its OpenContent collaborative curriculum development project, and has released an Open Source student information system that works with the curriculum database. Both are free like a puppy.

BSSD has two Open Education Resources that may be of interest to other organizations. One is a wiki-based curriculum system, and the other is an Open Source standards-tracking and Student Information System. The systems are closely integrated, and allow users to drive instruction with student data in ways that proprietary systems do not.

[edit] Wiki-based Curriculum System

The district’s OpenContent wiki project has over 9,998 pages of educational standards, curriculum content, staff development tutorials, and various user-oriented pages. Although some pages are very well populated, and some are article stubs, the body curriculum resources is increasing rapidly. Over 4,204 files have been uploaded. Use is exploding both inside and outside the organization.

Nearly all of BSSD’s teachers, students and administrators have contributed in the first two years of the project. All content is Creative Commons licensed, and editing by educators and interested parties outside the district is encouraged.

Although this is the official curriculum used by the school district's sixteen K-12 facilities, outside contrinbutors are welcome. The content changes and talk pages are utilized by the BSSD Curriculum Advisory Standing Committees to revise and edit the official, standards-based curriculum.

BSSD OpenContent Project
http://wiki.bssd.org

Contributions to the wiki allow meaningful collaboration over distance and time. Activity is high during the school year, and when teachers are scheduled to be actively working on curriculum the system is registering 1000+ edits, changes and uploads per day. During a four day period in late May, or example the Currciculum Committess make over 4500 changes.

Most of the content is currently structured under the standards that make up the BSSD curriculum. However, several WikiBooks style textbooks have been stubbed and started. This coming year we expect at least 8 -10 active textbooks to be worked on, at least judging from discussions and feedback from staff.

[edit] DART: Data Analysis and Reporting Toolkit

In addition, the BSSD has designed, created and released an Open Source standards-based tracking and student information system (SIS) called the Data Analysis and Reporting Toolkit (DART). The latest build completely replaced the district's use of an expensive proprietary student information system (Pearson's PowerSchool while still remaining free and open under the GPL.

DART directly links the OpenContent project standards information and resources in the its wiki to the individual and group needs so that teachers and learners can plan instruction, identify patterns of strengths and weaknesses, and monitor progress.

The software was built, and is running on the Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) platform. There are at least eight known installations of the first version released last year, and some are supporting up to 2,300 total users at this time, with up to 15 different school buildings.

Tech support needs have been minimal after initial configuration, and the system is quite stable and intuitive for users.

[edit] DART <=> Wiki Integration

The integration of the BSSD OpenContent Project with DART has changed the way BSSD teachers teach, and students learn.

BSSD welcomes collaboration with other like-minded school districts interested in sharing our collaboratively creating Open Content curriculum products, and Open Source solutions for K-12 users.

DART / Wiki modules have already been built that provide:

Standards Tracking - Group & individual progress monitoring and reporting
Attendance Data and Reporting
Discipline Logging
Dashboard Tool - Tracks overall school progress, attendance, discipline
State and Federal Programs Data Exports
Analysis and Data Visualization - links state required testing with standards progress data
Special Education Data - compliance reporting
School Improvement Planning - SIP Collaboratve creation, tracking & reporting
Success for All (SFA)- Districtwide tracking and reporting of reading data
Transcript Creation - Creates both standards-based, and Carnegie Credit style transcripts

Modules are planned or in progress for:

Special Education Process - Forms & data for referral and IEP monitoring, directly linked to wiki resources
ePortfolio - Integration of an ePortfolio system with DART, wiki and Moodle. This will track Career and Technical Education (CTE) progress and resources
School District Report Card (SDRC) - Annual NCLB accountability report generation

Live Demo of DART / Wiki Integration

Note: This is DART V.1, and only shows the standards tracking. A full demo of the new SIS features will be up in early November, 2007, as will the DART V.2 source code for download.

DART Instructions & Basics
http://wiki.bssd.org/index.php/DART_System

DART Demo Direct Link
http://dartdemo.bssd.org

Demo Admin User - Andy Admin
Username: aadmin
Pass: bssd

Demo Teacher User- Tommy Teacher
Username: tteacher
Pass: bssd

Demo Student User - Sally Student
Username: sstudent
Pass: bssd