OER Commons GreenA Unique Lens on

Open Environmental Education

Madalina Ungur Agro-Know Technologies

mada@agroknow.gr

“meaningful services around high-quality

agricultural data pools”

wiki.agroknow.gr

Supporting environmental sustainability, sustainable living and sustainable agricultural practices (school, adult/vocational and academic)

o   lesson planso   educational gameso   assessmentso   school exercises/drill and practiceo   recorded lectures and podcastso   lecture noteso   ‘how to guides’ (downloadable texts, videos, animations, simulations, etc.)o   online courseso   academic papers (journal articles, bibliographies, thesis, dissertations that address sustainability, sustainable practices in natural resource management, agriculture, health, medicine, etc.)

- use of data pools

- share metadata

The story of OER Commons Green

Goal: Support knowledge sharing and continuous improvement of environmental and sustainability educational resources

A joint initiative

supported and enriched by GLN collections

using ISKME experience and built on renowned OER Commons network

Part of the OER Commons network

Visitors/month (avg.)In 2010 - 34,555 In 2011 - 35,737In 2012 - 38,996

Top countries (visitors)United States 55.16%UnitedKingdom 5.23%Canada 4.79%India 4.49%Philippines 2.58%

Teacher training opportunities to create, share and collaborate using design thinking, online resources and collaborative tools

Teachers have the opportunity to use, create and share own online resources

Challenges we answer

- Reconnect learners to nature e.g. school/ urban garden- Find reliable sources to teach students about topics like climate change, pollution, sustainability etc.- Engage students in hands-on activities, encourage experimentation with innovative practices e.g. aquaponics, vertical gardens- Provide access to high quality, updated and low-cost (free?) teaching & learning materials- Support diverse communities of learners and teachers around the globe

An example: Sun Curve Challenge Design

How can you grow food using sustainable processes, following the design principles:

- meet a need for your school community- make use of affordable/recycled/repurposed materials- support plants and animal life (insects, fish)- use renewable energy (wind, solar)

An aquaponic garden and laboratory for teachers and students involving use and production of OER materials  

An example: Sun Curve Challenge Design

How can you grow food using sustainable processes, following the design principles:- meet a need for your school community- make use of affordable/recycled/repurposed materials- support plants and animal life (insects, fish)- use renewable energy (wind, solar)

=> An aquaponic garden and laboratory for teachers and students involving use and production of OER materials  

An example: Sun Curve Challenge Design

How can you grow food using sustainable processes, following the design principles:- meet a need for your school community- make use of affordable/recycled/repurposed materials- support plants and animal life (insects, fish)- use renewable energy (wind, solar)

=> An aquaponic garden and laboratory for teachers and students involving use and production of OER materials  

From Challenge Brainstorm & research Design a solution Test Evaluate Build prototype

Document experience Make use of resource available online as OER Revise Reuse Comment/tag/give feedback

Access to teacher and learner high quality generated content

Access to green OER from collections around the globe, such as PBS, MIT OpenCourseWare, Teacher’s Domain, NASA, Open University OpenLearn, Association for Biology Laboratory Education etc.

K-12 to College

Openly licensed, free to use

Social features

• Quick and easy annotation through bookmarking button for all browsers• User feedback through social bookmarking, tagging,

rating and reviewing • Sharing of resources through social networks

Summing up…

The OER Commons Green story illustrates of how using high quality data pools from global OER content providers we create targeted services to answer the educational and professional needs of different communities: learners, teachers, researchers, agricultural professionals and policy makers etc.

How to connect to GLN?

Various ways available:

1. Harvesting of metadata

2. Ingestion of metadata

3. Creation of metadata

Curating policy & Quality Assurance

Use of clear curation policy and quality assurance process:- Each resource must be accessible via a unique url- Providers who ensure stability for the urls they share- Clear license status – Providers should state clearly on their website

what users are allowed to do with the resources (share, remix, etc.)- Resource not advertising commercial products- Resources that do not advocate participation in a specific religious

institution as part of its educational content- Resources available in more than one language are particularly welcome

although not required- Highly preferred for the metadata to be in English along with any other

language of the resource itself

Thank you!