OurLessons is still in planing stages and it not yet active. Below is a brief outline of the general concept.

Global Community of Teachers and Lesson Providers (OurLessons)

OurLessons is another initiative of Polder. The OurLessons Web site is similar to eBay, MySpace and YouTube. Each of these Web sites consists of self-organizing communities that bring people together. eBay matches people offering goods with people who want to buy those goods. MySpace helps people with their social needs. YouTube connects people who have video they’d like to share to people who want to watch video. Each of these networks grew rapidly, as complex systems and patterns arose out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. This process is called emergence. These networks formed and increased order, despite the lack of command and central control. This is possible because open systems can extract information and order out of the environment.

OurLessons is based on the same emergence process. It is an audio- and video-sharing site, similar to YouTube. OurLessons matches the lesson needs of teachers in developing nations with teachers, writers, narrators, redordists and editors in developed nations who wish to share their educational content (lessons) with them. In other words, OurLessons allows people with teaching or media creation skills in the developed world to collaborate and share lessons via media files with teachers in the developing world. The OurLessons network allows teachers and content creators to categorize lessons into a knowledge base.

Another feature of OurLessons is a Myneeds page. Myneeds pages are places where teachers can itemize the equipment they’d like to have, such as digital files or media players. More importantly, Myneeds pages will include a teacher’s specific audio or video lesson requests. In addition, a teacher can post the supplemental teaching aids needed to help with those lessons. Teachers in developing countries need content, but they also need the building blocks of content, including scripts, storyboards and lesson plans. A teacher can outline all those needs on a Myneeds page, in hope of connecting with teachers who have resources to match those needs.

OurLessons is not limited to schoolteachers. Anyone involved in teaching can participate. Heath care workers, agricultural advisors, theologians and non-government organization (NGO) field staff can create a Web profile or a Myneeds page, where they can list the teaching aids they need to help them be more effective educators.

The result of OurLessons ultimately is a Global Repository for Shared Educational Content. When appropriate, Polder participants can share podcasts and vidcasts from neighboring villages or opposite hemispheres via OurLessons. It’s like a YouTube for the development community. In addition to sharing content, participants can share the planning tools for creating podcasts and vidcasts, with scripts, storyboards and lesson plans available in several languages.