Gooru is a free platform for students and teachers to access standards-based online resources in organized “playlists” for learning. Created by a Google employee, it’s run by a nonprofit group called Ednovo.
On their website http://www.goorulearning.org they write that their mission is to "make high quality education accessible and free to the world's one billion students within three years. Ednovo breaks down the barriers of access to education with a free web application, Gooru, that leverages technology, amplifies the effect of stellar teaching, and inspires students to learn. Gooru provides teachers with the ability to "search and teach" and students with the ability to "search and study" to find curriculum-appropriate web resources for any lesson. Teachers and students then share their lessons and notes with each other to enable learning in a truly social way.
The unlimited amount of web resources today has taken learning to a new level. However, students still struggle in school as society faces an educational crisis. We've developed Gooru, a platform for students and teachers to easily access online resources in organized playlists for learning. Instead of sorting through individual websites or poor content, our Classplans and Classbooks contain standards-aligned multimedia. In our world, a student can search a topic and learn everything he wants to know with just one click. Gooru provides the world-class education that everyone is entitled to for free."
In order to register at the site first you should request invitation. Within a week they promise to send it on your e-mail.
The site itself is colorful and interesting. I am sure that children will study with pleasure with the help of this free platform.
Gooru looks like an interesting platform for teachers and students (in secondary school). Especially the fact that you can find videos and the fact that Gooru provides the resources for free attract me a lot.
ReplyDeleteBut at the same time, I’m wondering
- how Gooru guarantees the quality of the resources. On the website I can read that teachers can share their own lesson plans, videos and other resources with a huge network.
- what the added value is with other websites offering a bit the same. edu-youtube contains a whole range of videos, nicely classified in subjects and Klascement or Edmodo are social networks of teachers and students sharing their resources. Though they all differ in a sense … how do we have to survive in this huge amount of platforms, websites, … offering resources for education?
- if Gooru will be successful all over the world or just in some regions.As with all platforms, the success will depend on the use of it and Gooru will have to encourage teachers and students to use the platform and especially the integration of the platform in their teaching and assignments they give to students.
I requested access to Gooru, and I’m looking forward to have a closer look at it. I’m curious if I could find some interesting things for my teaching.