Restraint

CNAME

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+modulearner.com

docs/about.md

@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+# About This Project and Our Organization
+
+##The Curriculum
+
+The goal of this project is to offer a science curriculum that is free for any and all educators, and is based in a practice of *doing* science hands-on.  Curricular materials will be written by contributors across the domains of science and education.  While material can be written by anyone (i.e. content will eventually be crowd sourced), we will always keep an up-to-date curated curriculum that highlights content that has been verified as both scientifically correct and classroom appropriate. 
+
+ In writing and verifying curricular materials, we espouse the philosophies of Experiential Education, Democratic Education, and Maker/DIY Constructionism.  We believe in the classroom as an enriching environment where kids take on authentic roles in the process of doing and learning science.  Further, we do not see *fundamental* divides between scientific disciplines nor do we see any reason to sever science off from other subjects, such as the teaching of art or history.  With this in mind, we hope to create and support the creation of curricula that has a multi-modal and cross-disciplinary appeal for students and teachers.  <-"very buzzwordy paragraph.  sounds nice as an academic but are we writing this for teachers or for a grant app reviewing comittee?  or should i give teachers more credit with respect to phil of ed lingo?"
+
+Though we will offer a curated version of the curriculum, all content will be treated as modular components that can be snapped together as a series of chapters, exercises, labs, graphics, etc in any order you see fit.  This provides the freedom to move through the content at any pace, order, or style best suiting your classroom's needs and practices.
+
+Being a curriculum that is entirely free, we strive to remove the burden on teachers and school districts to buy expensive, copyrighted materials for their classroom and instead spend money on classroom equipment that makes for more engaging educational environments.  Also, we recognize that not every school, teacher, or child has the same resources, and thus, hope to provide anyone interested in learning access to top-of-the-line educational materials regardless of their financial situation.  
+
+##Using our Website
+
+###Organizing Your Curriculum
+Our website will offer many different tools to help you design and organize the content and flow of your curriculum.  We will provide users with various interfaces such as graphs, digital notecards, and customized textbooks to view, build, and reorganize your curriculum.  Since we recognize that we do not know what is best for every teacher, we offer different interfaces and strategies to provide options to the user based on what she/he finds most intuitive.
+
+[Should add a few graphics of the views we've rendered so far perhaps?]<-"are the views rendered so far somewhat final or will they be changed quite a bit in appearance?"
+
+###Student Feedback
+In line with our democratic view of education, we hope to see teachers publish their curriculum ahead of time for their students to view.  This allows students to both make suggestions to upcoming curricular modules and provide feedback for past modules that have already been taught.  Even though the curriculum is free and open to the public, students can be assigned, privately, to classrooms and give feedback that goes exclusively to their teacher, allowing teachers to be responsive to the needs of their students.  
+
+###Your Inventory
+Another feature we offer is an inventory tracker that allows you to document what materials you have available to your classroom.  You can also establish a shared inventory between a set of teachers from your school if you have the capacity to share classroom materials.  This inventory then allows you to search through activities and labs, knowing exactly which ones you can support given your current materials or what you need to buy in order to fully support a curricular module you'd like to teach.  
+
+###Assessments
+While student feedback can be used as a formative assessment of your classroom practices, we will also support both traditional and progressive forms of evaluation.  That is, we will provide a basic tool that lets you create, save, and share quizzes and tests that verify the progress of your students in our curriculum.  We will also offer project-based assessment tasks as an alternative to traditional testing measures, which will allow you to give either individualized or group tasks to your students to see what they can accomplish without reverting back to pencil-and-paper tests.  
+
+[Once we're up and running we could put a link here to contact us if you plan to use project-based assessment and would like to participate in our experiments]
+
+###Customize Anything
+Any and all content that is posted on our website is open for users to edit and all users are encouraged to add content as they find gaps in what is available.  While we'll maintain a set of content that is verified as accurate and appropriate, you can make customized copies of that content adding in your own knowledge and expertise to the material.  Though this will not be on immediate offer, we hope to eventually have a rating system so that expert teachers have a way of propagating their content out to other teachers and perhaps have their curricula added into our curated content. <-"will we provide cloud space for teachers to upload handouts and other documentation?  might be a good idea but i don't know what sort of servers we'll need for that..."
+
+##Our Organization
+Collective Laboratories is a group of educators, scientists, coders, and caring citizens who tries to join our skills and efforts to complete projects in the public interest.  We should emphasize the word *collective* in our organization title as we are not exclusive, and thus feel anyone with the desire to contribute toward these same projects and goals is not only included as part of our effort, but will receive credit for their contribution.
+
+Currently, most of our contributors are based in Boulder, Colorado and Brooklyn, New York.  If you want to learn more about the individuals behind Collective Laboratories go to our Personnel Page.  [Should we create one of these as well and have 1 paragraph bios on there?]<-"sure, i'm board for that" >> Isn't our name just CoLab?  
+
+##Our Plan for the Future of This Project
+While we are currently working on phase 1 of this project, which involves delivering a curriculum and a working web resource, we do hope to fill more needs of schools and teachers in the future.  Including, but not limited to:  
++ **Educational Kits** that provide your classroom with the materials needed to complete many of our posted activities and labs.  
++ **Printing service** for teachers who do not have the computer resources to make the online version of this curriculum a systematic option for their classes.  
++ **Data analysis and content suggestions** based on the information we gather from your classroom practices, your students' performance and feedback, and other teachers' data.  This will allow us to participate in the effort to determine what works and what does not work in schools, and help teachers get in better resonance with their students' needs.  
++ **Expanded Curriculum** for areas outside of the major sciences and mathematics.  We currently focus on this area because it is both in our domain of expertise and school systems are continually being pressured to improve STEM education outcomes; though, we are fully in support of the arts and humanities as well as participatory civic education, and hope in the future to support these areas as well.
+

docs/faq.md

@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+#Frequently Asked Questions
+
+1. [Is it free?](#1-is-it-free)
+2. [What makes this different from traditional
+textbooks?](#2-what-makes-this-different-from-traditional-textbooks)
+3. [How will I assess my students?](#3-how-will-i-assess-my-students)
+4. [What does my classroom need to do these
+activities?](#4-what-does-my-classroom-need-to-do-these-activities)
+5. [Will these exercises conform to the standards of Common
+Core?](#5-will-these-exercises-conform-to-the-standards-of-common-core)
+6. [Can curricular material be downloaded/uploaded from/to this
+website?](#6-can-curricular-material-be-downloadeduploaded-fromto-this-website)
+7. [What are the affiliations of this
+website?](#7-what-are-the-affiliations-of-this-website)
+
+
+## 1) Is it free?
+Yes! Modulearner is a completely free, open source platform, in order to involve as many teachers and classrooms as possible. We believe STEM education shouldn't be confined to those with more financial opportunity.  Our goal is to give teachers the ability to spend less money on textbooks and more on building an enriching learning environment.
+
+## 2) What makes this different from traditional textbooks?
+Modulearner is unique in its modular structure.  What we mean by this, is that individual lessons, called **modules** can be added or taken away from the teacher's **curricular web**, allowing each teacher to have a completely customized curriculum.  We emphasize key connections between modules by allowing teachers to view their curriculum as a set of connected concepts.  This allows teachers to fine tune their course to their students without leaving out important linchpins to the students' understanding.
+
+Our website will also feature a curated version of a curriculum that has been filled with the best content and organized according to our writers.  While we expect teachers (or even students) to create their own, we offer this as either a starter curriculum for those wanting to start using our resource right away or as a suggestion to build upon.
+
+One key component that separates our textbook from traditional ones is a focus on hands-on learning.  Since we believe science is a participatory activity where we gain knowledge through critical thinking and experimentation, our modules will privilege an active classroom over a passive one.
+
+## 3) How will I assess my students?
+Along with each module, a list of recommended discussion points and questions will be provided, however it is up to the teacher to holistically evaluate the students' performance on the module based off of his or her participation and creativity in the included hands-on activity.  By evaluating the students' engagement in the lesson, and performance in the activity, the transfer of *actual* knowledge as opposed to regurgitation of a predefined list of words will be more apparent.
+
+We will structure our assessments to be both formative and summative (i.e., asking students for their feedback and opinions, while also testing knowledge aquisition).  Further, we plan to offer project-based assessment strategies and rubrics that allow you to assess your students through their tangible skills, or as a way to assess groups of students ability to collaborate.
+
+## 4) What does my classroom need to do these activities?
+Every module will be accompanied with a list of relevant materials. Some materials are essential but others can be creatively replaced by the student or teacher, to further promote a feeling of creation and discovery in the process of performing the lesson. We believe that the feeling of agency is paramount in a students' interest in science. A space to explore and make one's own decisions will encourage even the more hesitant students.
+
+## 5) Will these exercises conform to the standards of the Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards?
+While our organization does not support the idea of a standard or precise definition for accomplishing a learning task, we do wish to support teachers and schools with their needs.  Thus, we will tag modules based on the NGSS standards insofar as they aid teachers who are mandated to use them; however, our curated curriculum will not be structured around any standard or specific program.
+
+Since we believe that a standard approach will both harm certain students as well as ignore crucial content 
+for learning by privileging certain content, it is our goal to develop a more complete, authentic approach to learning science that is responsive to different learners.  Even though all our site's content will be free to use in any way, we hope our users will take full advantage of what we offer to build the best classroom experience possible.
+
+## 6) Can curricular material be downloaded/uploaded from/to this website?
+Not sure what features the website will have yet but yeah, eventually it'd be nice if teachers could uplaod specific handouts they designed for each module and it might be nice if we made some too.
+
+## 7) What are the affiliations of this website?
+At the moment, this website has no external affiliation.  The modules are written by a handful of eager young expositors of science, and the design of the website itself is done pro bono by coders with similar interests in science and pedagogy.
+
+## 8) Who creates the curriculum?  Is it trustworthy?
+Most importanly, yes, our curated curriculum will be written and reviewed by scientists, engineerings, teachers, and subject-matter experts.  While we will do our best to always be up-to-date and error-free, we hope our users realize that there is no ultimate authority on knowledge.  Consider the number of times popular textbooks are revised and re-released at an upcharge.  We will have trained, knowledgeable staff writing our curriculum while also constantly updating and correcting errors as they are found or as the status of knowledge changes.
+
+## 9) What is the maker/DIY movement and how is this curriculum related to that?
+The Maker/DIY movement is the current iteration of a long history of people designing, testing, inventing, 
+experimenting, building, etc, outside of traditional institutions of manufacturing and research.  Nowadays, the expansion of technologies has allowed much of what is done inside a lab or industrial site to be performed at a smaller scale and cheaper cost within the confines of your own home (or classroom!).  The growth in availabilty and simplicity of these components along with the help of the internet has brought about a larger sharing culture than has ever been known, allowing people to learn, repeat and modify one another's work at no cost.
+
+This movement coincides well with learning science as it opens up the flood gates to projects and interactions that accomodate almost any interest while actually *doing* real science and engineering.  We hope to take advantage of these resources both in terms of content and materials.