TTT#332 Gooru for Learning with Xenia Shih, Timothy Burke, and Jody Donovan – plus Leah Jensen and Gail Desler 01.16.13

Summary: Download. Find out more about Gooru http://goorulearning.org on this episode of TTT. This is the first in a series of webcasts in which we'll focus on Gooru, asking: How do you teach with Gooru? We'll be talking with teachers who use Gooru in their classrooms, asking them to share best practices and exchange ideas. And we'll dialogue with the Gooru team around what might be done to improve Gooru for all of us? If you're new to Gooru, here are three places to start your inquiries: You might take a look through the lens of Open Educational Resources (OER): Project Blue Sky: Big Boost to OER From . . . Pearson? Gooru Learning itself has a pedigree that is worth considering. Gooru is developed by Ednovo, the nonprofit education startup founded by Prasad Ram. Ram has a rich history in Silicon Valley, including work at Xerox PARC, Yahoo! and Google. While Director of Engineering for Google Research, Ram developed the concept for using search technology to discover educational content. Ram decided to leave Google in January 2011 and pursue this concept. Ram has started an education focused non-profit startup called Ednovo, which is going to build upon Gooru, a free web based education solution that was begun as a ’20% effort’ at Google, and piloted in India with 25 classrooms and 1000 students. Gooru allows teachers to use openly licensed web resources, find lesson plans on all subjects and topics and then customize it to their specific needs, with rich multimedia content including videos, slides, and simulations. You could take a dive into Kevin Hodgson's Meandering Mind and read his review, Gooru: Another Research Project Resource. So, this morning, I went to Gooru to poke around a bit and remember what it is about. When I had been there last, the site had recently launched and I wasn’t quite sure what they were up to. There didn’t seem to be a lot of content. Now I understand. The site is another way to help students streamline their research queries (sort of like Instagrok, which I use) and for teachers to build up “collections” of resources that can be shared. I like the overall feel of the site — it takes a few minutes to get a sense of what to do, but once you understand it, you will see there are powerful paths to follow. You might also go to Gooru themselves and find out that they want to help us "Spend More Time Learning–and Less Time Searching." Every day teachers and students scour the web to find the best resources to help them learn or teach, pulling from different resources scattered all over the Internet–but what if you could find and organize all the best web resources in one place? With Gooru, you can. Watch NASA videos about solar flares, play interactive games on PBS.com that teach about friction, and take quizzes on equations from Khan Academy. We aggregate the best of the web, giving you high-quality and free multimedia resources within seconds, so you can spend more time studying, and less time searching. When you find resources you love, you can then organize them into a playlist called a collection. You might also find out what you need to know to get started by listening to our inspiring guests for this episode of TTT: Paul Allison, Monika Hardy, and Chris Sloanhost Xenia Shih, Timothy Burke, and Jody Donovan from Gooru along with two amazing California teachers, Leah Jensen and Gail Desler. Enjoy! Go to EdTechTalk to see the chat that was happening during this live webcast and some important links to resources.