Deciding Whether to Purchase, Create, or Curate Content.

4. Selecting Online Content
Now that you've determined a blended
model that meets the needs of your
classroom/school, consider your
content.
Inherent in any blended model is that
there will be online content to help
teachers personalize instruction.

5. Selecting Online Content
It's up to you and your district
whether you will be purchasing,
creating, or curating that content.

6. Purchase
If you decide to purchase digital content,
there is a large variety available from
complete courses to tools that support a
particular area (like grammar, for
example).
Sifting through what's available, testing
before buying, and understanding cost are
all part of the purchasing process.

7. Purchase
It's also important to understand that
these are for-profit companies that may or
may not have an appropriate educational
presence in the designing of these
products. Proceed carefully.

8. Purchase
Some commonly used content providers
that provide complete courses
are: APEX, FuelEducation, and Edgenuity.
Some commonly used content providers
that provide support in a particular area
are: Achieve 3000, NoRedInk,
and TenMarks.

9. Create
If you decide to create content, typically
teachers will use a Learning Management
System (LMS), such as Schoology, Moodle,
or Blackboard.
If teachers decide to create content to
support blended learning, it's important to
consider the time and training necessary
to develop significant content.

10. Create
Teacher-created videos used in support of
a flipped classroom is a common way that
teachers are creating content.
Standards for creating quality online
courses to support blended instruction
have been developed by iNACOL.

11. Curate
Curating content means picking and
choosing between purchased content, free
content, and teacher-created content and
putting them together using an LMS.
Again, as with creating content, curating
content can be time intensive and may
require some training.

12. Curate
When curating content, teachers may also
be using an LMS to put together the
various resources. They may use some
purchased content, create some of their
own, and/or take advantage of the
growing number of free resources
available on the web.

13. Curate
Some free resources with content or a way
to sift through content are:
Khan Academy
PowerMyLearning
Graphite
PBS LearningMedia
OERCommons