Let us start with the premise that you want to search for a better way to teach and explain say the solar system to your class. You google it and there are hundreds of content development services for k12 who have the ‘solar system’ under their links.
But all of these digital content solution providers seem to have similar content. One is as good as the other, unless someone is using maybe 3D graphics instead of 2D or some other such other gimmick. The content is the same and the treatment of the content is also exactly the same as per the curriculum guidelines. Nothing wrong there.
Does this not make you wonder when you as a teacher get bored seeing these similar content options by digital content solution providers, would your students like it or not? With the advent of technology many of your students will also hit these same websites to search and will be treated to similar blaise content in the name of flexibility and convenience. What can make your content stand out is originality of thought that content development services for k12 can provide.
A futuristic digital content solution provider will provide you with an interactivity of the solar system to make students realise the relative size of the planets and their distance scale instead of just using a commonly used picture of the solar system in perfect concentric rings around the sun in the middle which is factually incorrect but widely accepted as a good representation as defined by a restrictive curriculum. Your job as a teacher is to make your students realise the concept correctly so that their future assumptions are in sync with reality.
The second main question to tackle for any content development services for k12 is the challenge to provide the tools to the student to apply their knowledge in the real world. For once the students apply this knowledge, it shall remain with them for life and not be forgotten right after they have regurgitated the fact in an examination that it takes 8 minutes for sunlight to reach earth, for instance. They will instead try to understand the vast distance and the huge speed of light still taking so long to reach Earth. They should then be encouraged to apply this knowledge to make maybe absurd assumptions to create a new way of transportation. Any revolutionary idea starts with a basic absurdity as defined by society.
The third most important thing is to be aware that a portion of your class will plagiarise answers to questions that are basic in nature and due to the nature of the knowledge dissemination being online, will be hard to track. An easy way to tackle this is to allow your digital content solution provider to create referential questions which test the student’s ability to apply their knowledge in a meaningful manner. And the most difficult part is to forge a bond with your online students which is a much easier task when you are teaching them in a traditional set up face to face. Online learning becomes effective when the final outcome of the content is kept in mind at the content creation stage.
