OpenEd Launches Comprehensive Catalog of Common Core Content

OpenEd Institute offers a free open catalog of educational content aligned to the Common Core. Co-Founder Lisa Blum calls it the biggest on the web.

The simple search feature provides access to over 120,000 videos and 80,000 educational games, searchable by keyword, grade and standard.  The content was selected and tagged by a group of teachers throughout the U.S.  Teachers can mark their favorites and recommend the best resources for each standard.
When Lisa talked to teachers, she was surprised to learn that most teachers weren’t using a learning management system–so they built one. The simple content management system makes it easy to string together content objects into a unit or class. “We will keep LMS simple to use, free and open source,” said Lisa.  Assessments will be added beginning in August.
“We started OpenEd because our son was struggling.  We noticed Khan Academy improved his performance, but it was still hard to find just the right videos.”
Why another open content library?  Lisa said, “We have two orders of magnitude more standards-aligned content than other sites.” Another differentiator, “The simple and easy, free and open source LMS with assessments.” Lisa “thinks there is room for flipped classroom LMS.”
A team of teachers a “a bunch of algorithms” have been hard at work for a year assembling the collection.
OpenEd is C corp but “not worried about a business model.”  Lisa said, “Every piece is open source.”  At least it will be on August 1–that’s when developers will get full access to the APIs
Down the road, OpenEd plans to link to global standards, develop an iPad app, and integrate with other LMS.