Open Educational Resources

Learning Registry Accepting OER Submissions via Twitter

• By Leila Meyer
• 02/29/16

Participate Learning now allows educators to submit open educational resources (OERs) to its Learning Registry by tweeting a link with the #ParticipateOER hashtag.

The Learning Registry was created to aggregate information about learning resources available online so educators and students can find them more easily. Through this Twitter campaign, Participate Learning hopes to encourage more educators to submit OERs to the registry and consequently increase its volume of resources.

"The success of the Learning Registry ultimately depends on the volume of submissions," said Alan Warms, CEO of Participate Learning, in a news release. "This new offering minimizes the costs and effort associated with submitting resources to the Learning Registry."

To submit an OER to the registry, people can simply tweet a link to it along with the #ParticipateOER hashtag. Participate Learning and its community of educators and digital resource experts will review all #ParticipateOER submissions before adding them to the registry.

In the coming weeks, Participate Learning will enable educators to provide additional metadata about their submitted resources. After tweeting an OER with the #ParticipateOER hashtag, senders will receive an automated reply with a link where they can add metadata such as the resource's publisher, location, content area and standards alignment. They will also have the option of submitting a review of the resource.

"There is so much trapped wisdom in our schools that could be supporting deeper learning for students," said Robert Dillon, director of innovation at Affton School District, in a prepared statement. "Participate Learning has developed a simple and elegant tool to democratize resources for the benefit of all."

The Learning Registry is a joint effort of the Department of Education and the Department of Defense, with support of the White House and numerous federal agencies, non-profit organizations, international organizations and private companies, according to information on the registry's site. It currently contains curated links to nearly 400,000 open educational resources. Users can search for resources by topic or browse by subject or standard.

Anybody who is interested in following the #ParticipateOER submissions can view a live stream on Participate Learning's site.