OER Training and Professional Development

Project Start Date: 
2008

ISKME’s Open Educational Resources (OER) Training Program is tailored for K-20 formal and informal educators to support knowledge sharing and continuous improvement of resources used in teaching and learning. The OER Training Team meets educators at their current level of familiarity and builds a program that supports the participatory and collaborative skills needed to effectively engage with OER, as well as the technological tools to do so. Utilizing the dynamic OER Commons (www.oercommons.org) ecosystem, educators collaborate online and face-to-face around the use, evaluation, and improvement of high-quality OER, including a tool for Common Core Standards alignment, and Open Author an easy-to-use digital resource authoring and remixing environment.

Our Role: 

Our OER Training Program leads educators to:

  • Explore new resources and ideas that inspire innovation in their work
  • Collaborate with a diverse global community to expand their learning networks
  • Model and practice teaching strategies that combine design thinking, project and challenge based learning, and the OER process of finding, evaluating, aligning, remixing, creating, and sharing freely available learning resources
  • Strengthen their abilities as researchers, designers, learners, collaborators, leaders, and authors

We offer numerous OER Trainings, which all are customizable as a series or individual trainings from two hours to five days in length:

 

Explore: Find OER that are focused on a theme, aligned to learning standards, and evaluated for quality. (Example: Creative to the Core – common core aligned arts integration OER

Collaborate: Work with fellow educators in hands-on content creation activities. Learn how to use design thinking to collaborate and create in innovative ways. (Example: DIY Design Challenge Activity – Do-It-Yourself project based learning)

Author: Document, remix, license, and share OER using the Open Author tool on OER Commons. (Example: Trees & Rings: Mapping Life Experiences)

Share: Present and exchange best practices as a method to connect with and receive feedback from colleagues. (Example: Teachers as Makers Academy - K-12 formal and informal educators in California, Michigan and New York)

Curate: Create a specific collection of OER for easy access and sharing. (Example: Sun Curve Challenge – OER focused on environmental sustainability, design, and renewable energy)

 

In addition, we offer:

  • OER Fellowship ProgramOne-year program for eight selected OER Fellows to create a specific OER Project that serves their direct communities. Fellows become OER champions as they develop their projects, collaborate with other Fellows, and publicly share with their work.
  • OER Facilitator Training: Customized training to learn and practice facilitating the five components of an OER Training.
  • OER Training Presentation: Customized online or face to face presentation that showcases the OER Training model and shares best practices.
  • OER Design Lab: Interactive hands-on Design Lab where participants of all ages conduct research, brainstrom design ideas, select prototyping materials, build 3-D prototype models, make a video presentation, document and share ideas for teaching and learning. (Example: The 21st Century Educator: Teachers As Co-Designers)

Please contact Megan Simmons, Education Program Manager, at megan@iskme.org or 650.728.3322 to learn more about bringing the OER Training Program to your community.

Image Attribution: 
CC-BY-NC-SA by ISKME
Youtube Video: 
Video Description: 
ISKME's OER Commons Teacher Training Initiative