This wiki page describes the DIY Design Challenge Activity used during ISKME's Teacher Academy. Design a DIY Project for students that meets the following design principles:The design must meet a need for their school community. The design must use collaboration between teacher, student, and community. The design must be multidisciplinary. The design must use low cost and/or no cost materials. Group examples are included.

Inspired by the Learning to Love You More Project, the goal for these assignments is to incorporate creativity into your daily routine.For a designated period of time (one week, one month, two months) have students choose a different assignment to do each day and post online, in a wiki or blog (Please include the link to your class wiki or blog at the bottom of the page). They may use a camera or sketch pad to document their work and must give the work a title and description. Students are also encouraged to add new assignment ideas that they create to the list.

The Green Design Challenge is to brainstorm, prototype and present a design idea for a social entrepreneurship project focusing on green design that meets the design principles. Photo examples from ISKME's Teacher Innovation Workshop are included.

Maker Faire participants collaborate in ISKME's Design Lab, using digital stories and salvaged materials to design an innovative school of the future. The Design Lab features Makers Mauro ffortisimo Di Nucci's deconstructed piano and INKA Biospheric Systems' Vertical Garden; as well as Student and Teacher project examples that integrate art, science, sustainability, and green design inspire the creation of shareable open-source learning resources. This wiki page showcases photos and video from the Design Lab, open educational resources for teachers, and a step by step guide through the design process.

ISKME's Design Lab 2011: Make an OER Maker Faire participants collaborate in ISKME's Design Lab to brainstorm, prototype, and present new ideas in teaching and learning. This wiki page showcases photos and video from the Design Lab and a step by step guide through the design process used.

ISKME's OER Commons Teacher Training Initiative offers teachers a collaborative professional development model centered on engagement with Open Educational Resources (OER). The OER Commons Teacher Training Initiative is rooted in the idea that equitable access to high-quality education is a global imperative. Open Educational Resources, or OER, offer opportunities for systemic change in teaching and learning through accessible content, and importantly, through embedding participatory processes and effective technologies to engage with learning for all.

This wiki page describes the goals and tenents of improv, as well as four different improv activities (Name Gesture Circle, Yellow Ball, Vacations, and Thank You) used in ISKME's Professional Development Teacher Academy: Teachers as Makers June 15-16 2010 at San Mateo County Office of Education.

An overview of the OER Bulk Import process from the Carribean OER Hub training sessions.

An overview of the OER Create process from the Carribean OER Hub training sessions.

The goals of the International OER Exchange Pilot project are to: facilitate the development and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) by teachers and students globally, track the development and use of the science learning materials and data collection, especially around climate change study, created in the project through OER Commons, and highlight the process and results through workshops and conference presentations.The broader purpose of the project is to support the international exchange of information and understanding through freely available resources among teachers and students, especially in the area of environmental science and climate change investigation.

School librarians play a vital role in curating instructional resources to match the needs of their targeted school audiences. They have long been the experts in how to find resources and make them discoverable by others, and in understanding copyright and its pitfalls. These skills are especially useful when OER are part of a school system’s curriculum development process—where the selection of openly licensed materials depends on careful evaluation of use permissions, and where the outputs of curation may be adapted and shared for discovery by future users. A recent study conducted by ISKME in partnership with school librarians across five states reveals that librarians who are leading the way in OER curation are not just finding and selecting materials, they are collaboratively adapting, evaluating, and re-sharing those materials—all important tenets of open practice. As an example, one school librarian from the study demonstrated how she worked with a district-level content specialist to curate and scaffold openly licensed primary sources for an inclusive social studies unit addressing tribal sovereignty in Washington State. After refining the unit based on classroom teacher feedback, the completed unit was shared as OER in a public OER library. When asked in the study about the factors that have enabled their ability to take the lead on OER curation, librarians pointed to the support they receive from their school and district leaders, and from classroom teachers, as central.