Supporting OER Leaders with ISKME's Fellowship Program

Megan Simmons
build, fellowship, OER, training

Applications Now Being Accepted for ISKME's OER Fellowship Program

As we begin our third year of the OER Fellowship Program, I reflect on all of the inspiring collaborations that have taken place with our fabulous Fellows. ISKME began the OER Fellowship Program in 2009 offering eight fellowships to highly qualified Teaching Artists in the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles areas. Our aim was to grow strong connections with educators who served as leaders around arts integration OER in their classrooms, school districts, and communities. During the course of the Fellowship, fellows attended various online and face to face trainings; developed, documented, and shared an OER curriculum project; collaborated with other OER Fellows; and served as an advocate for OER in their education communities. We learned a lot with the first year’s Fellows and were amazed with the innovative OER they shared and their advocacy work in their education communities.

Last year we opened up the Fellowship to K-20 Educators of all disciplines and eight Fellows were chosen from Cal Shakes Theater, Cal Aerospace Academy and Saint Mary’s College in California; the Art Mobile in Montana; Novi Community School District in Michigan; Girard School District in Pennsylvania; and Mt. Zion High School in Georgia. This dynamic and enthusiastic group surpassed our expectations with their creativity, dedication, and ingenuity.

Some Project highlights from the 2010-2011 OER Fellowship are listed below:

  • Teaching Artist Allison McGree with the Art Mobile of Montana beautifully documented her year traveling across the entire state of Montana presenting and teaching hands on art lessons to a variety of K-12 schools with a slideshow highlighting her Watercolor Your World OER and student created School Mural. Her collaborations with teachers across the state of Montana inspired the other Fellows to reach out to members of their own education communities and consider how to scale their own OER Projects.
  • Mt. Zion High School AP Literature, AP Language, Senior English, and ACT Prep Teacher Shekema Silveri shared and remixed her OER on her wiki page and her course blog where she interacts with her students online.
  • This year's OER Fellows shared their projects broadly, from teachers and administrators within their schools to educators in other countries. Girard School District High School Chemistry Teacher Katrina Schultz, for example, gave an interactive OER presentation entitled “Psst! O’ER Here” at the 2011 Connect, Communicate, Collaborate Educational Technology Conference. Check out her slides here.
  • Fellows had multiple opportunities to connect with like-minded educators and leaders in the OER and education fields throughout the year. For example, as part of her fellowship work one Fellow joined several online communities of STEM teachers, where she was able to access additional resources for her class and receive pedagogical strategies for a new course she was teaching. Two other Fellows who participated in ISKME's Big Ideas Fest 2011 networked with contacts who provided professional mentoring and opportunities for future collaboration.

I’m thrilled to see what our next group of Fellows will share this year. If you are interested in applying for the 2011-2012 OER Fellowship Program please fill out this application and send to megan@iskme.org by Friday, November 11. More information is available here. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions at 650.728.3322 or megan@iskme.org.