Since their adoption in 2009, the Common Core State Standards have been analyzed and debated for their effective representation of educational standards. For every argument for their benefits, there seems to be just as many arguments against their reliability and effectiveness. Regardless of individual educators’ opinions, their existence has continued for 10 years and counting.
The fascinating aspect of the standards is that they haven’t just proven to greatly affect the classroom. The national educational standards have also greatly affected assessment writing and product development. This may seem like an obvious outcome, but interesting element comes in when considering the content that is associated with the assessment writing.
In a recent commentary written by Gregory Cizek for EdWeek, Cizek points out the difficulties the standards create for assessment writers. He states that the curation of content that meets some specified ELA and Science standards can sometimes be compared to “finding a needle in a haystack.” This is an argument that many education developers echo throughout product production on a regular basis.
Although this is not the only struggle for educators and education developers that Cizek points out, it is a significant one. It is so significant that in order for educational developers to grow in their profession and meet student needs, new programs and service must be created to help in these efforts.
The need to find content that meets more than one standard, covers specifics in the standards, and maintains student engagement is something that MOSAIQ’s CurationIQ is designed to do. Here is a brief look at how CurationIQ can help educational product developers navigate tricky CCSS content requirements.
Content that Goes Deep
Often in educational program and assessment development, time and budget restraints are tight. This makes it difficult for developers to dive deep into writing original content. If original content is created, it sometimes does not meet the significant depth needed to hit large-arching Common Core State Standards for ELA.
Consider the educational standard CCSS RL.4.3 which states, “Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).” The depth and breadth of this standard are vast. Published literature is the best way to truly accomplish assessing this standard.
But time is a factor in assessment and course development. This is why a platform such as CurationIQ can become a lifesaver. CurationIQ is an asset discovery tool and content licensing marketplace. Its mission is to help PreK-12 content developers build the best possible educational products with great content. Even better, there are no fees for users to access CurationIQ. Nor any fees for services on content research, getting licensing fee quotes, or assistance on licensing. MOSAIQ receives a commission share when material is licensed. The goal was to get educational developers content as easily as possible.
Additionally, CurationIQ works closely with publishers to bring high quality, original content to educational developers. It is a singular location where educational production companies can look for high-quality, published content. Developers can then license the material through MOSAIQ to meet these deep literary standards.
Tagged Content for Easy Vetting
In our blog post Content Curation – 3 Benefits in Educational Products, we discuss how access to a platform like CurationIQ can increase a product’s ROI. This is done by providing the texts, with extensive topic tagging, on the platform.
Take a look at the educational standard CCSS RL.6.9 for ELA which states, “Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres (e.g., stories and poems; historical novels and fantasy stories) in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics.” If an educational developer needs to write an assessment or course objective that covers this standard, having access to a platform that points them in the direction of different texts can save valuable time.
Also, when there are multiple texts to choose from, education developers can look closer at achieving student engagement. Once a student is fully engaged in a test, the effectiveness of an assessment grows exponentially.
CurationIQ is unique in that its free-to-use educational developer platform includes more than 130 topics. These topics include focuses like Biomes and Habitats, Historical Figures, and Perseverance. The topics can be specific or broad depending on your product’s standard-alignment needs. The topics were chosen to assist in hitting educational standards like the ones mentioned above.
CurationIQ Summary
Adopted educational standards work to truly assess student knowledge and retention. However, as many developers know, meeting this expectation without effective content is beyond difficult. This is exactly why MOSAIQ CEO Jennifer Kennett created CurationIQ.
CurationIQ works to be a trusted partner with educational developers for these and many other reasons. The platform works to bridge the gap between publishers and product developers for high quality content.
As an educational developer, what standards do you struggle to find content for? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Let’s start a conversation about how best to meet the needs of these standards.