ISKME Named a 2007 Awards Laureate by The Tech Museum of Innovation

Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) 

Named a 2007 Awards Laureate by The Tech Museum of Innovation:

ISKME is One of Five Innovators Selected from Around the World for Applying Technology to Benefit Education

(SAN JOSE, Calif. and HALF MOON BAY, Calif.) Sept. 19, 2007 – The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), a leader in education research and innovation, was today named one of five innovators from around the world to be honored for achievement in education by this year’s Tech Museum Awards: Technology Benefiting Humanity. Sponsored by The Tech Museum of Innovation and presented by Applied Materials, Inc., the Awards honor organizations that are applying technology to benefit humanity and spark global change. ISKME was selected from hundreds of nominations sent from 68 countries.

ISKME received this honor for its leadership in developing OER Commons (www.oercommons.org), a teaching and learning network that expands educational opportunities for all by increasing access to high-quality, freely available educational materials online. OER Commons is the first comprehensive network that aggregates free teaching and learning resources from around the globe and enables teachers and students to add their own ratings, reviews, and strategies to the materials.

“There’s a quiet revolution about how educational materials are developed, shared, accessed and improved, and OER Commons is helping to lead this transformation,” said Lisa Petrides, president of ISKME. “We appreciate this recognition of our work, and we will continue to use research in innovative, practical ways to impact classrooms, educational systems, and learning worldwide.”

“The Tech Awards are an incredible honor, recognizing individuals and organizations whose vision and execution are changing the world,” said Mark Milliron, board chair of ISKME. ”What’s truly exciting about OER Commons is the door it opens to the future, where the resources of education and knowledge are more freely available to all.”

“The Tech Awards are an opportunity to showcase how technology and innovation are addressing global challenges,” said Peter Friess, president of The Tech. “ISKME has made remarkable contributions toward significantly improving the human condition.”

OER Commons (www.oercommons.org) has brought together over 15,000 high-quality educational resources available for anyone to use. The site has over 3,000 registered users, averages about 40,000 visits a month during the school year, and has visitors from 193 countries.

By aggregating resources from around the globe, OER Commons makes it possible to find educational materials quickly. OER Commons adds social networking features to the resources, which allows teachers, students, and others to tag, rate, review the materials. In the process, OER Commons is helping to 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.

“Open source technologies and social networking transformed the music industry by making it easy for users to download, share, remix, and reuse music,” said Amee Godwin, director of OER Commons. “Can faculty, teachers, students, and others collaborate to share, remix, translate, and improve curriculum, lesson plans, and assignments? It’s already happening at OER Commons. Teachers are energized when they find they can download resources for free, modify them to meet their students’ needs, and write reviews and comments about what works best—so other teachers can benefit from their expertise.”

About the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) ISKME is an independent, nonprofit research institute that helps schools, colleges, universities, and the organizations that support them expand their capacity to collect and share information, apply it to well-defined problems, and create human-centered, knowledge-driven environments focused on learning and success. ISKME achieves this goal by conducting social science research and evaluation, developing research-based tools and innovations, and facilitating knowledge sharing and field building. OER Commons, a project of ISKME, was developed with support from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

About The Tech Museum Awards: Technology Benefiting Humanity The Tech Museum Awards: Technology Benefiting Humanity, presented by Applied Materials, Inc., is one of the premier annual humanitarian awards programs in the world, recognizing and supporting innovations that benefit humanity and address some of the most critical issues facing our planet and its people. Established in 2001, The Tech Museum Awards recognize 25 Laureates in five categories: Education, Equality, Environment, Economic Development and Health. Laureates are selected by a prestigious, independent panel of international judges organized by the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara University, and made up of Santa Clara University faculty as well as leaders from educational and research institutions, industry and the public sector around the world. The 25 Laureates will be showcased at The Tech in San Jose and featured on The Tech Award’s official Web site, www.techawards.org. One Laureate in each category will receive a $50,000 cash prize, announced during the annual Awards Gala, which takes place this year on November 7th.

Key partners supporting The Tech Museum Awards include Santa Clara University’s Center for Science, Technology and Society, presenting sponsor Applied Materials, Inc., and global outreach partners the United Nations Development Programme, the American Council for The United Nations University, the World Bank Institute, and Catholic Relief Services. Category sponsors include Applied Materials, Inc., Intel Corporation, Accenture, Microsoft and the Swanson Foundation. Program sponsors include Wells Fargo, Genentech, eBay, KPMG, Cadence, Celerity, The Frank and Denise Quattrone Foundation, NASDAQ, HP and Google. In-kind sponsors include American Airlines, Forbes, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Hotel Montgomery, Fairmont San Jose and Siltronic.

The Tech Museum of Innovation is a hands-on technology and science museum for people of all ages and backgrounds. Located in San Jose, California – the Capital of Silicon Valley – its mission, as a public-benefit corporation, is to inspire the innovator in everyone. For more information about The Tech Museum of Innovation, visit www.thetech.org.