This document introduces OER Commons Green, a project that aggregates open educational resources on environmental topics. It is a collaboration between Agro-Know Technologies and the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. OER Commons Green currently has over 3,800 resources on topics like climate change and pollution. It is aimed at teachers, learners, and content curators. For teachers, it provides easily accessible materials aligned with education standards. For learners, it allows searching, bookmarking, and sharing of resources. For curators, it uses clear metadata standards and a quality review process. Upcoming training opportunities are also announced.

1. Aggregating Best-in-Class
Green Open Educational
Resources
Madalina Oana Ungur
Agro-Know Technologies (Greece)
October 25, 2012

2. Content
Introducing the authors
Agro-Know Technologies
ISKME
OER Commons Green
OER Commons Analytics
Vision
Green topics & subtopics
Material Type and Format
Openly licensed, free to use
What makes OER C Green different
for Teachers, for Learners, for Content Curators & Metadata experts
Training opportunities

3. Madalina Ungur, Content Expert
Agro-Know Technologies, Greece
MSc in Education, Technology & Society from the Graduate School of Education,
University of Bristol (UK)
mada@agroknow.gr
Dr. Vassilis Protonotarios, Agricultural Biotechnologist
Agro-Know Technologies, Greece
PhD in Agricultural Biotechnology, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology,
Agricultural University of Athens (Greece)
vprot@agroknow.gr

4. Agro-Know Technologies
(Greece)
• Research-oriented SME
• Knowledge-intensive technology innovation for
agriculture and rural development
• Deployment and testing in various fields
education & training, commerce, public
administration
• Active in international standardisation efforts
(AIMS, EU CEN)
• Capacity building and networking events for
agricultural stakeholders

6. Institute for the Study of
Knowledge Management in
Education (U.S)
• Independent non-profit research institute
• Open
– Support of open and distributed knowledge
management and sharing tools and networks
• Study/research
– New frameworks and models to transform teaching and
learning
• Build
– Innovative trainings and professional
development workshops

8. OER Commons
In September, 2012
40,498 Resources
43,670 Unique Visitors
80.18% New Visitor / 40,697 Visits
19.82%Returning Visitor / 10,060 Visits
Visitors/month (avg.) Top countries
United States 55.16%
In 2010 - 34,555
UnitedKingdom 5.23%
In 2011 - 35,737 Canada 4.79%
In 2012 - 38,996 India 4.49%
Philippines 2.58%

9. OER Commons Green
www.oercommons.org/green
Vision: To aggregate best-in-class green open
educational resources on topics like climate change,
pollution, and eco-culture from diverse providers
around the globe.
Joint initiative since 2010
Build on the renowned open learning network OER Commons
Co-design a vocabulary for categorising green learning
resources
Develop all aspects of the site

11. Green topics & subtopics

12. Material type & grade level

13. Openly licensed, free to use

14. What makes OER C Green
different
for Teachers
• 3800+ environmental resources with a teaching focus
for all educational levels in various formats
• Use of open licenses (Creative Commons) enabling
use, share, reuse and remix
• Quick and easy annotation through bookmarking
button for all browsers
• Open Author, online tool enabling teachers to create,
share and download resources
• Rating and reviewing
• Alignment of resources to Common core curriculum
standards

16. What makes OER Commons
Green different
for Learners
• Environmental resources from collections
around the globe (e.g. PBS, MIT OpenCourseWare,
Teacher’s Domain, NASA, Open University OpenLearn,
Association for Biology Laboratory Education etc.)
• User feedback through social bookmarking,
tagging, rating, reviewing; sharing through
popular social networks
• Advanced search option and tag
clouds

18. What makes OER Commons
Green different
for Content Curators, metadata
experts (1/2)
Use of metadata to describe all resources

19. What makes OER Commons
Green different
for Content Curators, metadata
experts (2/2)
Use of clear curation policy and quality assurance
process involving careful selection, annotation and
review of resources:
1. check in relation to the scope of the collection
2. check against curation policy
3. metadata record creation
4. review by education and metadata experts
5. periodic checks of resources

20. What makes OER Commons
Green different
for Content Providers
Visibility for your collection through the
OER Commons Green to >30,000 users
monthly
1. review resources
2. describe with metadata
3. publish and promote on OER C Green

22. Coming up...
Training opportunities
AgEdWorkshop 2012
Pollenzo, Bra, Italy, October 25, 2012
Green learning resources from creation to publication
Addressing teachers, trainers, advisors, content developers,
providers and publishers in environmental sciences.
ONLINE Intro to ICT tools in agriculture
October 29 – January 18, 2013
Use of ICT and Web2.0 tools for agricultural experiments
Addressing under- & postgraduate students and
all professionals in agriculture sciences