Developing an Education Ecosystem Using Knowledge Sharing

Created by ISKME, OER Commons  (www.oercommons.org) is a free teaching and learning network, bringing together over 20,000 educational resources available for anyone to use.

Open Educational Resources, or OER, offer opportunities for systemic change in teaching and learning through accessible content, and importantly, through teacher-led knowledge sharing processes. By developing structures for sharing, the aim for OER is to bring more participants into a more fair and level playing field for learning. Resources on the site can be searched and filtered using a rich set of descriptive data, including terms of use. Teachers, students, and others enrich this "metadata" when they tag, rate, and review materials, and share what works for them.

In the process, OER Commons is helping transform how K-12 teachers and college faculty view their roles in collaborating around the development and improvement of educational materials from kindergarten through college. Teachers are participating in workshops that use OER Commons as a resource for building new curriculum. Many are energized when they find they can download resources for free, modify them however they like, and write reviews and comments about what works best—so other teachers can benefit from their expertise. Through OER Commons, sustainable and innovative approaches to learning are shifting the nature of education as we know it.

We seek to partner with schools, districts, county boards of education, regional and state initiatives, and teacher education centers at colleges and universities to develop and offer training programs and support.

ISKME trains teachers to use, create, and collaborate using OER materials, Web 2.0 social networking processes, while integrating them into generative, interdisciplinary, or socially relevant pedagogies and subject matter.

Please contact us about participation and partnering in knowledge sharing and open educational resources: info@oercommons.org

See us at Maker Faire, May 29th-31st, 2009 in San Mateo, CA!

Why OER? Access to Education is a Right

ISKME’s participation in the global “Open Education” movement over the last four years is rooted in the idea that equitable access to high-quality education is a social right.  Additionally, we believe that enabling teachers and learners to be “makers” and “doers”, including making learning content and sharing teaching experiences, builds needed vital competency skills.

Although there is great deal of content on the Internet, OER provides new freedom of access. With OER, educators are free to use, adapt, remix, and share resources, legally, to fit their needs. Many educational institutions are developing new economic and pedagogical models around shareable and customizable learning content.

Learning More

Click "Why OER?" to view a narrated slide presentation about OER.

The 1.7MB file should load in your browser in about a minute or less before playing.