In this episode we take you to Bangalore, India to hear about a remarkable publisher, Pratham Books and its Open Education for Excellence Award winning platform Storyweaver, core to Pratham’s mission of a book in the hands of every child in the country, published in that child’s mother tongue.

We welcomed in the studio Purvi Shah, Senior Director of StoryWeaver & Strategy to tell use the story of Storyweaver, which was recognized with a 2023 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Open Repository category. At this time, StoryWeaver offers now over 64,000 stories in more than 370 languages spoken around the world, and offers a place for anyone to contribute images, new translations, and also age and subject specific teaching resources. All of this came about from a bold commitment in 2004 from Pratham Books to embrace open licensing for their published storybooks.

Enjoy the enthusiasm in Purvi’a voice as she shares the missions and global reach of StoryWeaver, as well as sharing examples of her favorite titles. And we appreciate the serendipty, than when Purvi offered to read a selection of a favorite story, from among the 60,000 titles in StoryWeaver, the one she chose was What Will Today Bring? authored by someone we know well here at OEGlobal, University of Leeds open educator Chrissi Nerantzi.

We also want to thank Sreemoyee Mukherjee from Pratham Books who joined us in the studio and was instrumental in coordinating this conversation.

at Descript.com

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

In this episode of OEGlobal Voices, host Alan Levine engages in an inspiring conversation with Purvi Shah, a key member of the StoryWeaver initiative by Pratham Books in India. StoryWeaver, a community-driven digital platform, earned the 2023 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Open Curation Repository category.

Alan and Purvi’s conversation encapsulates the essence of open education and the incredible work being done by the StoryWeaver team to foster literacy and inclusivity. The episode concludes with a recommendation to explore StoryWeaver and an acknowledgment of the upcoming Open Education Awards.

Tune in to OEGlobal Voices to dive deeper into the world of StoryWeaver and the transformative power of open education.

(end of AI generated show notes)

How can we work with the communities to increase the depth of languages? So that could be a potential future milestone. We were just discussing this in office the other day that it’s so interesting that while the platform has 370 languages and that’s a milestone in itself, but the real milestone is that for that one child reading the first book in their mother tongue is really the milestone.

We hit that milestone almost every day because every day a child is discovering a book in their mother tongue for the first time. That milestone will never get old, I think. And some of the other sort of milestones [has] been just not being a platform where we allow for stories, but say, when we created this whole different platform, the white label StoryWeaver for Room to Read in Indonesia and that helped kickstart their own platform called Literacy Cloud.

That was a pretty important milestone because whatever we have learned, we could empower other organizations. to build off our investments, our learning, in countries that they work with.

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Fairytale Story by Serge Quadrado  licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

The image of the reading octopus in this episode’s artwork is part the StoryWeaver web site, an illustration credited to Measa Sovonnarea.

Finally, this was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast, part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.

In this episode we hear from two key members of the project team behind the open media search tool Openverse, winner of a 2023 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Open Infrastructure category. Recorded back in late July when we were between the announcements of the shortlist of finalists and the winners of the 2024 awards, we are overdue with sharing this conversation.

Openverse is an essential and recommended tool for open educations, a feature-packed search engine for finding and reusing openly licensed works, currently indexing over 800 million images and audio items from multiple institutional collections. As a successor to the original Creative Commons Search, Openverse is supported as a sponsorship of Automattic, the company that provides WordPress, and who adopted the project from Creative Commons in 2021. Ongoing development is enabled by the WordPress Foundation.

Representing this development team here is Zack Krida, Team Lead for the Openverse project and Madison Swain-Bowden, data engineer. We cover the the origins of Openverse, its relationship with the WordPress Foundation, technical insights into its functionalities, and its contributions to open education. We also spoke the implications of AI and machine learning, the user experience, the search features, and future goals for the platform.

We hope you enjoy this long overdue episode. If you have not done so already try Openverse for your media searches to experience the features and functionality, knowing the open licensed collections from which it sources draws can be credited using the one-click copy and paste for attribution.

at Descript.com

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

AI Underlord, generate a summary of this show including section chapters.

In this episode of OE Global Voices, host Alan Levine sits down with representatives from Openverse, Madison Swain-Bowden and Zack Krida. Openverse, which won the 2023 Open Education Award for Infrastructure, is a vital tool under the WordPress Foundation, providing a search engine for openly licensed media. Madison and Zack delve into the formation and evolution of the project, originally started by Creative Commons as CC Search, and its transition under the stewardship of the WordPress Foundation and Automattic.

The discussion highlights the unique functionalities and recent improvements in Openverse, such as sensitive content filtering, machine learning for better search relevance, and the significance of attribution, making the tool indispensable for educators and creators alike. The guests share their roles and personal journeys in tech and open source, reflecting on how their work with Openverse contributes to the broader mission of open education.

The episode also tackles the ethical considerations and potential uses of AI in managing and improving the search engine. Madison and Zack’s dedication to keeping Openverse user-focused and human-centric shines through as they share delightful anecdotes of user feedback and the joys of seeing their work make a difference in educational and creative communities.

Tune in to discover more about Openverse’s mission, the role of the WordPress Foundation and Automattic in supporting open-source projects, and the innovative ways Openverse is making openly licensed content more accessible and useful for everyone.

(end of AI generated show notes)

This is this is goes to the core of Openverse. It’s one of the things that I really love about it, is the one click attribution that we have. I think that was mentioned in the awards text that we got from OEG last year as a big thing to point out.

One thing I wanted to flag that I think is somewhat underappreciated with Openverse we are fully translated into about 19 different languages. So that’s the entire user interface, all the text on the site itself, um, and then in various stages of partial translation in 40 additional languages. Those are all those are all human generated translations by community contributors in the broader WordPress community, which is really remarkable.

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Infrastucture by Anitek licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Most of our podcast music is found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist) but for this episode it seemed relevant locate the track using Openverse to search audio for the key phrase “infrastructure”.

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.

Join us for a wide ranging conversation with Tony Bates covering his long and on ongoing span of being active in open and distance education. We start from his being part of the very first days of the Open University through his years based in Canada but working globally being integral to the development of online learning through the web. He has long been publishing open textbooks and sharing his perspectives on his own website. We go right up to present day where Tony is active in exploring the role of artificial intelligence.

We were inspired to have these conversation having seen where Tony has been publishing on his blog his “personal history” now up to it’s 26th installment:

I am writing an autobiography, mainly for my family, but it does cover some key moments in the development of open and online learning. I thought I would share these as there seems to be a growing interest in the history of educational technology.

Note that these posts are NOT meant to be deeply researched historical accounts, but how I saw and encountered developments in my personal life.

Listen in for Tony’s insightful energy, critical perspective, and humor as well as his lived stories of experience through a long era of online and open education. Plus, you will find a surprising bit of extra history on how he might have influenced some other students he knew in primary school who went on to be famous.

at Descript.com

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

Podcast Show Notes: OE Global Voices Episode 74: Tony Bates

In this enlightening episode of OE Global Voices, host Alan Levine is joined by the remarkable Dr. Tony Bates, an influential figure in the realm of open education.

Episode Highlights:

About Tony Bates:
Tony Bates has been a transformative presence in education, contributing through teaching, leadership, research, and writing. He’s known for his candid take on the state of education, often sharing personal anecdotes from his storied career.

Get Engaged:
Listen as Tony Bates reflects on a career filled with innovation, humor, and lasting impact. Follow up on our discussions about educational technology and AI.

This episode is accompanied by the musical track “Distance” by Anitek, fittingly chosen to reflect the expansive themes of Tony’s work. Visit OEGlobal Voices for more episodes and join our community discussions at OEG Connect.

Don’t miss this journey through impactful education landscapes with Tony Bates. Subscribe and engage with us for future insights and conversations.

(end of AI generated show notes)

What happened was that I actually saw the internet for the first time in Vancouver when I was visiting a friend. I thought this is the best way to use computers in education, not this, programmed learning stuff, which I didn’t really like because it wasn’t in my view, achieving the higher level cognitive skills that you’d want from university students. It’s all about memorization and so on.

So I thought, yes, we can use computers for communication between students and between students and instructors, that’s great. And a colleague, Tony Kay and I we tried this out on a social science second level course called DT 200.

From very interesting things like audio, we found that generally, you know, this is a generalization, doesn’t apply to everybody. But most people that we researched found audio more personal, that they felt they got closer to the lecturer through listening to an audio, a radio broadcaster or an audio cassette. The other thing was that we found that cassettes, actually changed the design principles because students could stop and start. You could build that into the design of a cassette. And then the learning effectiveness went right up.

We had a perfect laboratory situation where we had exactly the same program in audio and radio and exactly the same as a recording. Then we could look at what students learn as a result. We could then change the design of the cassettes and see what happened then and look at the results. Because we had such large numbers of students, we got very statistically significant results.

My take on it, I’m fairly pessimistic. Mainly because my real concern these days is about the power of the big tech companies. I fear it will be taken over by the big tech companies. We’ll see their share prices and stocks go up and the money will go to the venture capitalists. And we’ll all be worse off as a result.

That’s the negative part about it. Now on the positive side, I think yes, in medical research, in legal affairs, it will be very good. I met a colleague, a good friend of mine actually, who’s trying to do research on whether AI can actually improve on the instructional design process.

We are counting on more blog posts from you, Tony!

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Distance by Anitek licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.

Get to know the influences, insights, and perspectives of two of the current members of the OEGlobal Board of Directors. In this episode we listen to separately recorded conversations with Katsusuke Shigeta, a long time board member from University of Hokkaido in Sapporo, Japan plus hearing from one of our newer board members, Rajiv Jhangiani of Brock University, in Ontario, Canada. This is another episode of our Board Viewpoints series.

Katsu was a guest on our second episode of OEGlobal Voices, published in 2020. And we last had a podcast conversation with Rajiv in 2021 following his recognition of an OE Award for Excellence as an Emerging Leader. Much has changed and evolved for both these open educators who play a key role for Open Education Global.

Each guest shares a bit about the places in the world they grew up, perspectives on school, paths to open education, current interests and projects, plus a little bit about what they enjoy doing outside of work. Listen to the full episode to hear interesting surprises from both Katsu and Rajiv, plus they share a three word description of each other!

at Descript.com

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

In Episode 73 of OEGlobal Voices, host Alan Levine welcomes two members of the OEGlobal Board of Directors: Katsusuke Shigeta and Rajiv Jhangiani. Katsu discusses the importance of understanding and incorporating open educational practices internationally, and shares updates on his OER initiatives, challenges, and his creative project with Adobe Express. Rajiv reflects on his journey into open education, current initiatives at Brock University, and broader discussions on open science and generative AI. The episode concludes with personal stories and insights from both guests, painting a comprehensive picture of their contributions to open education.

This is a point, I focus on to have better skills and knowledge [on] how to create digital materials would be nice for students to show their outcomes and what they learn in the class. This kind of skill could be effective after they graduate the higher education institution. So I try to connect the creative learning creative learning aspects, to show the authentic assessment and show the learning outcomes in the university together.

I think that’s part of the joy to interact with folks like that, who again, like Robin [DeRosa], give you the confidence and support that you can experiment, that you can, improvise, and you can do so knowing that it’s all right. If you fall flat, it’s okay. It’s not a big deal.

And that’s part of that vulnerability of openness. And I think modeling that is important, but it’s a special treat to be able to do it, especially in front of people who you adore so much.

And I think one concern in general, which has already been an issue is just the, it’s like paving over the etymology of knowledge. a core value of open licensing is attribution.

Losing that is damaging, is dangerous. It’s theft. So that’s damaging. The normalization of that, because this is going to happen anyway. You’re denying progress if you’re not serving students, if you don’t equip them to use. What I think is really missing over here is that critical, generative AI literacy.

….

And every time you’re going to get the same kind of little jingle around it’s here and it’s going to hit you. And you can’t bury your head in the sand. But at the same time, I think what you don’t want to do either is to not just not bury your head in the sand, but not just stand there on the shore with your mouth open wide and just swallow the salt water without thinking.

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called The View From The Window by Ian Sutherland licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.

Listen to this episode for a journey through open education history with Martin Weller, who retired in June 2024 from a 30 year career at the Open University. We spoke with Martin in late May to learn more about his educational journey from working class roots to professor of educational technology – starting in 1995 at the OU, in f all things, as a lecturer in artificial intelligence (we honor Martin’s request not to talk much about AI).

You will appreciate Martin’s humble and easy going manner considering also his numerous accomplishments in the field, including an early vision for what the 1990s web could mean for distance education, pioneering one of the earliest large scale open courses before there was an acronym for it, his leadership of the very successful Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN), plus his series of published books, fed by his passion for blogging. And in the episode you might even get a bit about metaphors, dogs, hockey, and sharks.

We were joined in the studio by Martin’s long time colleague, and friend, Clint Lalonde (BCcampus).

An hour conversation could barely cover Martin Weller’s many achievements but this should provide a clear sense of his perspective, and as well, what he plans to do in his “post-OU” career.

at Descript.com

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

In this episode of the OE Global Voices podcast, host Alan Levine is joined by Martin Weller and Clint Lalonde to discuss Martin’s impressive 30-year tenure at the Open University. The conversation covers a wide range of topics from the emergence of web-based learning, Martin’s journey into AI and open education, to the transformative impact of courses like T171. Martin shares insights about the evolution of distance learning, the role of narrative and metaphor in education, and the significance of blogging in his writing process. The trio reflects on the significance of MOOCs, the evolution of social media in education, and the success of the Global OER Graduate Network. This enriching episode encapsulates the milestones in Martin’s career, his contributions to open education, and the meaningful connections formed within the community.

It got rid of the argument about “Can we do teaching online?” That argument had gone– [it] didn’t mean you couldn’t argue that students don’t want to learn this way, or we can’t teach our model now, there was enough demonstration to say “We can do this.” And students were coming out of that module saying, “Where’s the next fully online course?”

I think it kind of pivoted the OU towards online learning quite significantly, you know, jumped us a few years. So it was quite a surprise to me to discover in 2012 that MOOCs were inventing online learning, you know– there we were .

My daughter was in school and I think they were doing IT And the teacher said to them, “Oh, there’s these things called MOOCs you can study.” And she said, “Oh, my dad knows the people who invented MOOCs.” And the teacher went, “I doubt it.” And I was like, “No, I do, I really do. I’ve got to fly Dave and George and everyone else.”

So we have these annual meetings and bring together usually with OE Global, sometimes with the UK OER conference. We bring together a number of PhD students who are studying OER around the world. It’s interesting, when we first started, it was very much kind of OER, people looking at open textbooks, that kind of stuff, and that’s really shifted much more to kind of open educational practice and social justice, which I think has kind of mirrored the kind of shift in the community, and actually been driven by a lot of the GO-GN people. A lot of those people have gone on to become quite significant in the community.

But it’s such a kind of great project to have, you know, it’s like all these people are brilliant in bringing the students together. It’s really meaningful to them.

They make really meaningful connections, and … powerful for them to allow them to finish and then we produce these really good outcomes from it as well.

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called A Journey In To The Great Unknown by Squire Tuck licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.

While nominations for the 2024 Open Education Awards for Excellence are in the committee review process, we continue to highlight last years winners. In this episode, we travel to Toowoomba, Australia for a conversation with Nikki Andersen from the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ), editor of Enhancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in Open Educational Resources (OER).

An OER about diversity, equity, and inclusion in OER, this work was recognized in 2023 with the Special Award in the DEI category.

We get to learn from Nikki about her background, her route into becoming a librarian with a focus on OER, as well her current role as Manager of Digital Experience at UniSQ. Nikki shared how a session at an OEGlobal conference that included Openstax framework for DEI inspired her to develop this resource with an Australian context. She also elaborates on the importance of addressing accessibility and the process she used to edit this important work.

And also this is timely as her university is the host of the November 13-15, 2024 OEGlobal conference hosted in Brisbane. Nikki shared her excitement for the event and as a “local” even some suggestions for places to see.

at Descript.com

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices

In this episode of OE Global Voices, host Alan Levine chats with Nikki Andersen, the recipient of the OE Award for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Nikki shares insights into her journey, including the crucial peer review process, her personal and professional stakes in accessibility, and the impact of her work on open education in Australia. The conversation also highlights Nikki’s contributions to the OpenStax framework and her vision for the future of open education.

I also want to look into reducing some of the heavy textbooks and replacing them with OER. That’s still in my space with the digital experience as well.

And removing limited user licensed books which cause massive access issues here in Australia when there’s not enough licenses for students. OER is definitely still on the agenda as part of my new role. I think it’s, you know, “everyone’s business”, which is the theme of the upcoming conference.

No matter what role you’re in, you don’t have to be in an open education role, to support the open education movement.

I’m actually doing a project now where we are turning the book into an audit tool. We’re going to use that to audit our learning management systems for a few courses in the School of Education. Just converting that kind of framework into an audit tool has made me realize all the things that I’ve forgotten.

I’ve kind of overlooked the cultural aspect, I’ve kind of overlooked some of the refugee aspects. The group of academics and I are going to review that, and hopefully improve it, but also kind of research how it actually works in practice when academics are using it in learning and teaching.

So I’ll be really interested to see the outcome of that research and be involved in that.

We hope you have enjoyed listening to the voice behind an OE Award recognized effort in supporting Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (and Accessibility) in OER. Stay tuned for the August 30 anniouncement of the shortlist of semi-finalists for the 2024 OEAwards, and the live webcast of the winners that takes place September 18, 2024. Learn more about the awards, get inspired to share a nomination for 2025, and explore the current collection of 229 awardees at https://awards.oeglobal.org/.

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Equity by Toussaint Morrison licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.

Three languages spoken in one podcast! ¡Tres idiomas hablados en un podcast! Trois langues parlées dans un seul podcast !

Welcome to another episode of our Board Viewpoints series, where we share conversations with and insights from two OE Global Board Members. Listen in as the studio travels first to Monterrey, Mexico to speak with María Soledad Ramírez Montoya (Marisol) and then cross the ocean to go to Lille, France to hear from our current board president, Perrine de Coëtlogon.

As we ought to as a global organization, this podcast episode is a bit of an experiment in multiple languages. I asked my questions in English to Marisol and she responded in Spanish. While most of the conversation with Perrine was in English, she provided a special request of OEG Francophone community spoken in French. We put our Descript editing tools to task to transcribe all three languages in the main transcript, and then used Google Translate to generate full transcripts and selections here, in all three languages. The translations are far from perfect!

(traducción con Google)

Bienvenido a otro episodio de nuestra serie Board Viewpoints, donde compartimos conversaciones y opiniones de dos miembros de la Junta Global de OE. Escuche mientras el estudio viaja primero a Monterrey, México para hablar con María Soledad Ramírez Montoya (Marisol) y luego cruza el océano para ir a Lille, Francia, para escuchar a nuestra actual presidenta de la junta directiva, Perrine de Coëtlogon.

Como deberíamos ser como organización global, este episodio de podcast es una especie de experimento en varios idiomas. Le hice mis preguntas en inglés a Marisol y ella respondió en español. Si bien la mayor parte de la conversación con Perrine fue en inglés, ella proporcionó una solicitud especial de la comunidad francófona de OEG que hablaba en francés. Ponemos a prueba nuestras herramientas de edición de Descript para transcribir los tres idiomas en la transcripción principal, y luego usé Google Translate para generar transcripciones completas y selecciones aquí, en los tres idiomas. ¡Las traducciones están lejos de ser perfectas!

(traduction avec Google)

Bienvenue dans un autre épisode de notre série Board Viewpoints, dans lequel nous partageons des conversations et les idées de deux membres du conseil d’administration mondial d’OE. Écoutez le studio se rendre d’abord à Monterrey, au Mexique, pour parler avec María Soledad Ramírez Montoya (Marisol), puis traverser l’océan pour se rendre à Lille, en France, pour entendre notre présidente actuelle du conseil d’administration, Perrine de Coëtlogon.

Comme nous devrions le faire en tant qu’organisation mondiale, cet épisode de podcast est en quelque sorte une expérience en plusieurs langues. J’ai posé mes questions en anglais à Marisol et elle a répondu en espagnol. Même si la majeure partie de la conversation avec Perrine s’est déroulée en anglais, elle a fourni une demande particulière de la communauté francophone de l’OEG parlant en français. Nous mettons nos outils d’édition de Descript à contribution pour transcrire les trois langues dans la transcription principale, , puis a utilisé Google Translate pour générer ici des transcriptions et des sélections complètes, dans les trois langues. Les traductions sont loin d’être parfaites !

FYI: This section of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEG Voices. / Para su información: Esta sección de notas del programa fue generada únicamente por AI Actions en el editor de Descript que utilizamos para producir voces OEG. / Pour information: cette section de notes d’émission à elle seule a été générée par AI Actions dans l’éditeur Descript que nous utilisons pour produire des voix OEG.

In this episode of OE Global Voices, hosted by Alan Levine, two OE Global board members, María Soledad Ramírez Montoya from Mexico and Perrine de Coëtlogon from France, discuss their work and passion in open education. The episode features multilingual conversations, with Montoya answering in Spanish and de Coëtlogon sharing insights in both English and French. Topics include the importance of open educational resources (OER), the role of artificial intelligence, recognition in education, and the significance of global collaboration. The episode also highlights various educational initiatives and upcoming events.

En este episodio de OE Global Voices, presentado por Alan Levine, dos miembros de la junta directiva de OE Global, María Soledad Ramírez Montoya de México y Perrine de Coëtlogon de Francia, hablan sobre su trabajo y pasión en la educación abierta. El episodio presenta conversaciones multilingües, con Montoya respondiendo en español y de Coëtlogon compartiendo ideas tanto en inglés como en francés. Los temas incluyen la importancia de los recursos educativos abiertos (REA), el papel de la inteligencia artificial, el reconocimiento en la educación y la importancia de la colaboración global. El episodio también destaca varias iniciativas educativas y próximos eventos.

Dans cet épisode d’OE Global Voices, animé par Alan Levine, deux membres du conseil d’administration d’OE Global, María Soledad Ramírez Montoya du Mexique et Perrine de Coëtlogon de France, discutent de leur travail et de leur passion pour l’éducation ouverte. L’épisode présente des conversations multilingues, avec Montoya répondant en espagnol et de Coëtlogon partageant ses idées en anglais et en français. Les sujets incluent l’importance des ressources éducatives ouvertes (REL), le rôle de l’intelligence artificielle, la reconnaissance dans l’éducation et l’importance de la collaboration mondiale. L’épisode met également en lumière diverses initiatives éducatives et événements à venir.

at Descript.com

Por un lado, tenemos la gran tarea de desarrollar las capacidades, desarrollar todo esta cuestión de creación, acceso reutilización de las posibilidades de la educación abierta por otro ámbito. Tenemos también la gran tarea de las políticas de apoyo para la educación abierta, tanto en las instituciones como en los gobiernos y a nivel global que nos hagan impulsar las actividades y las estrategias de la educación abierta.

Luego tenemos otro ámbito muy amplio y donde es muy retador también, para hacer más inclusivo el acceso más equitativo de esta educación abierta con miras a que lleguen a las diversas poblaciones y atención a los grupos vulnerables. Tenemos también un área es yo creo que de las más retadoras, eh, qué es los modelos de sostenibilidad para esta educación abierta?

Porque en esos modelos es donde está como toda la infraestructura que nos permita seguir creciendo, seguir planificando y seguir realizando más actividades en el ámbito de este tópico. Y sin duda, sin duda, algo muy importante en en el tema de la educación abierta es la cooperación nacional é internacional que establezcamos con redes con diversas instituciones, trabajando juntos de la mano para que se haga posible ese crecimiento de las instancias de educación abierta.

On the one hand, we have the great task of developing capabilities, developing this whole question of creation, access and reuse of the possibilities of open education in another area. We also have the great task of supporting policies for open education, both in institutions and in governments and at a global level that make us promote it, the activities and strategies of open education.

Then we have another very broad area and where it is also very challenging, to make more inclusive the more equitable access to this open education with a view to reaching the diverse populations and attention to vulnerable groups. We also have an area that I think is one of the most challenging, what are the sustainability models for this open education?

Because in those models, is where the entire infrastructure is that allows us to continue growing, continue planning and continue carrying out more activities in the field of this topic. And without a doubt, without a doubt, something very important in the issue of open education is the national and international cooperation that we establish with networks with various institutions, working together hand in hand to make the growth of open education instances possible.

D’une part, nous avons la grande tâche de développer les capacités, de développer toute cette question de création, d’accès et de réutilisation des possibilités de l’éducation ouverte dans un autre domaine. Nous avons également la grande tâche de soutenir les politiques d’éducation ouverte, tant au sein des institutions que des gouvernements et au niveau mondial, qui nous incitent à promouvoir des activités et des stratégies d’éducation ouverte.

Ensuite, nous avons un autre domaine très vaste et dans lequel il est également très difficile de rendre plus inclusif et plus équitable l’accès à cette éducation ouverte en vue d’atteindre les diverses populations et d’accorder une attention aux groupes vulnérables. Nous avons également un domaine qui, à mon avis, est l’un des plus difficiles : quels sont les modèles de durabilité pour cette éducation ouverte ?

Parce que ces modèles sont l’endroit où se trouve toute l’infrastructure qui nous permet de continuer à croître, de continuer à planifier et de continuer à réaliser davantage d’activités dans le domaine de ce sujet. Et sans aucun doute, quelque chose de très important dans la question de l’éducation ouverte est la coopération nationale et internationale que nous établissons avec des réseaux avec diverses institutions, travaillant ensemble main dans la main pour rendre possible la croissance des instances d’éducation ouverte.

So it was in 2020 during the lockdown I was elected as a board member. I was so proud and happy, and I wanted to contribute better to the open education movement. And, I asked Paul Stacey and Igor Lesko, if I could borrow the OEG logo, and, use it, not the trademark in any means, but the mark of OEG and use it to create OEG Francophone.

From scratch with one service provider, we organized a two days event in November, 2020, just before the Taipei conference. And we gathered 638 people from, more than 30 countries. And of course, this, was really nice because from the, end of August until November, I call all my network in open education and everyone gave me other names. And we ended up having 21 webinars with 57 different speakers.

Así fue en 2020, durante el confinamiento, que fui elegido miembro de la junta directiva. Estaba muy orgullosa y feliz y quería contribuir mejor al movimiento de educación abierta. Y les pregunté a Paul Stacey e Igor Lesko si podían tomar prestado el logotipo de OEG y usarlo, no como marca registrada de ninguna manera, sino como marca de OEG y usarlo para crear OEG francófono.

Desde cero con un proveedor de servicios, organizamos un evento de dos días en noviembre de 2020, justo antes de la conferencia de Taipei. Y reunimos a 638 personas de más de 30 países. Y por supuesto, esto fue muy lindo porque desde finales de agosto hasta noviembre, llamé a toda mi red de educación abierta y todos me dieron otros nombres. Y terminamos teniendo 21 seminarios web con 57 oradores diferentes.

C’est donc en 2020, pendant le confinement, que j’ai été élu membre du conseil d’administration. J’étais si fier et heureux et je voulais mieux contribuer au mouvement pour l’éducation ouverte. Et, j’ai demandé à Paul Stacey et Igor Lesko, si je pouvais emprunter le logo OEG, et, l’utiliser, non pas la marque déposée de quelque manière que ce soit, mais la marque OEG et l’utiliser pour créer OEG Francophone.

Partant de rien, avec un seul prestataire de services, nous avons organisé un événement de deux jours en novembre 2020, juste avant la conférence de Taipei. Et nous avons rassemblé 638 personnes de plus de 30 pays. Et bien sûr, ça, c’était vraiment sympa car de fin août jusqu’en novembre, j’appelle tout mon réseau en éducation ouverte et tout le monde m’a donné d’autres noms. Et nous avons fini par organiser 21 webinaires avec 57 intervenants différents.

Pues es fabuloso, maravilloso ver todas las joyas que se dan en el mundo sobre diferentes prácticas abiertas tanto de libros como de portales repositorios, publicaciones, profesores, estudiantes tenemos. En Open Educación Global una amplia variedad de categorías dónde podemos postular en estos premios. Vamos a invitar mucho invito a la comunidad a que se anime a mandar sus postulaciones porque necesitamos tener mape qué es lo que pasa en el mundo y muy en especial que pasa en el ámbito hispano parlante.

Bonjour à tous, il existe chez Open Education Global un formidable appel à candidature pour obtenir des récompenses officielles en tant que leader de l’Open Education ou technicien, ingénieur pédagogique de l’Open Education et bien d’autres titres de… Qui ont été imaginées et conçues par une équipe ouverte et qui sont formidables.

Il faut aller voir déjà les catégories. Moi, j’adorerais les adapter en français et faire un appel francophone. Mais là, avec les outils qu’on a maintenant pour traduire, et Alan qui vient de m’apprendre qu’on pouvait faire une candidature en français, je vous invite tous à venir candidater tous les amoureux de l’éducation ouverte.

À candidater et je ferai passer à tous ceux qui ont participé à mes webinaires notamment cette proposition après il faudra rédiger un peu quand même parce que les candidatures des anglo-saxons sont toujours très impressionnantes et très bien rédigées donc merci à tous les contributeurs de l’Open Education et à très bientôt. Au revoir.

Each OE Global Voices episode features a different musical intro track selected from the Free Music Archive. For this show in our Board Viewpoints series, we choose the track “Enjoy the View” by Lazenbee Industries, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Like most of our intro music, it is from the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.

Cada episodio de OE Global Voices presenta una pista de introducción musical diferente seleccionada del Free Music Archive. Para este programa de nuestra serie Board Viewpoints, elegimos la canción “Disfrute de la vista” de Lazenbee Industries, que tiene una licencia de atribución Creative Commons. Como la mayoría de nuestra música de introducción, proviene del Free Music Archive (consulte nuestra lista de reproducción FMA completa).

Este fue otro episodio que estamos grabando en la web en Squadcast. Esto es parte de la plataforma Descript para la transcripción y edición de audio en texto habilitada por IA; esto ha mejorado enormemente nuestra capacidad para producir nuestros programas. Hemos estado explorando algunas de las otras funciones de IA en Descript, pero nuestras publicaciones siguen siendo escritas por humanos a menos que se indique lo contrario.

Chaque épisode d’OE Global Voices présente une piste d’introduction musicale différente sélectionnée dans les archives musicales gratuites. Pour cette émission de notre série Board Viewpoints, nous choisissons le morceau « Enjoy the View » de Lazenbee Industries, sous licence Creative Commons Attribution. Comme la plupart de nos musiques d’introduction, elles proviennent de Free Music Archive (voir notre playlist FMA complète).

C’était un autre épisode que nous enregistrons sur le Web dans Squadcast. Cela fait partie de la plate-forme Descript pour la transcription et l’édition audio dans le texte activées par l’IA. Cela a considérablement amélioré notre capacité à produire nos émissions. Nous avons exploré certaines des autres fonctionnalités de l’IA dans Descript, mais nos messages restent rédigés par des humains, sauf indication contraire. .

We were fortunate to have Jennryn Wetzler visit our studio during Open Education Week for a conversation about her Open Education Individual Award for Excellence in the Catalyst category. The name “Catalyst” is an apt description for Jennryn’s work at Creative Commons as someone who “supports the ideals of the Open Education movement through their own practices and who creates engagement in Openness within an organization or community.”

This was recorded as an Open Education week event where we offered a seat in the studio for anyone who wanted to be there, which included her colleague Jonathan Portitz.

You can learn in this podcast about Jennryn’s early experience in the Peace Corps, her work in the US State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the catalyzing role she has played for Creative Commons including the highly successful CC Certification program , the Open Education Platform, and new interests in the area of Open Journalism. We were easily able to draw Jonathan into a animated discussion around artificial intelligence and he also reminded us about the definition of catalyst from chemistry as “a chemical which helps other reactions happen without being consumed itself.”

This aptly fits Jennryn Wetzler. Also stick around to learn about her activity for finding a “powerful” sense of balance, and more of what makes Jennryn the type of person the Catalyst word is designed to recognize.

Keep that in mind as the nominations for the 2024 OE Awards opens May 13, and we hope you know of a person in your sphere of Open Education work that ought to be recognized as a Catalyst this year.

FYI: This section of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEG Voices.

Episode 67: OE Award Winner Jennryn Wetzler

In this episode, Alan Levine interviews Jennryn Wetzler, winner of the Catalyst Award at the Open Education awards for Excellence. They discuss Jennryn’s background, work at Creative Commons, involvement in Open Journalism, and perspectives on open education and AI. The conversation touches on the impact of OER in various contexts, the importance of human connections in the face of challenges, and the power of community collaboration in education.

at Descript.com

I oversee our training and learning efforts writ large, and then our consulting efforts trying to use the certificate, kind of foundational learning and apply it in different contexts for different audiences and reimagine it in different settings, too.

So one of the things that we are really hoping to announce possibly today, is this micro credential program with the University of Nebraska Omaha, which came about through the certificate program. So this is one example of how the learning and training program finds new partnerships and pathways to keep bringing open licensing expertise to new communities.

So as a connector across cultures, as something to open access to more education in a time of war, and as a something to point to so other people know, if it’s possible here in this really challenging set of circumstances where people are losing access to, electricity where they have, bomb sirens going off regularly, interrupting meetings and workflows and so on.

If they can make it work in a place that’s in the midst of war, then this can be done anywhere, this kind of collaboration and translation and the cross cultural understanding that goes with the translation can be done anywhere. So they did it.

Once again we urge listeners to make nominations for the people, projects and resources deserving a 2024 OE Award for Excellence — all of which will be future voices on this podcast.

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Catalyst by Anemoia licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Like most of our intro music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.

As a special event during Open Education Week 2024, we opened up the podcast studio for anyone to join us in conversation with Maha Bali, professor of practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at The American University in Cairo (AUC). This episode is part of our series honoring winners of the 2023 Open Education Awards for Excellence, in which Maha was recognized with an Individual Award in the Educator Category.

As always, Maha fills the room with her dedication to educating at all levels and demonstrating the practices of critical pedagogy and Intentionally Equitable Hospitality. She shared a description of what we’d see and experience in her teaching environment, how she supports her visually impaired students, critical AI literacy, her engaging style of facilitation, the idea of “iterating towards justice”, and much more.

Maha enlightens us about learning in every way possible, including what she learned and teaches us about “being brave enough to be bad” at crochet.

We hope you enjoy this wide ranging conversation. Thanks as well to Jonathan Poritz and Nate Angell for being there in the studio with us.

FYI: This section of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEG Voices.

This episode features a rich conversation between Alan Levine from Open Education Global and the OE Award for Excellence winner, Maha Bali. They discuss intercultural elements in education, the integration of technology in learning, and the importance of accessibility and equity in educational environments. Maha shares insights into her teaching practices, the dynamics of her classroom, and her advocacy for visually impaired students. The discussion also touches on the challenges and possibilities offered by AI in education, the evolution of Maha’s courses, and her approach to fostering an inclusive and engaging learning environment.

Audio Note: Unfortunately we lost brief bits of the recording with network issues, note that at around 8:24 where Maha mentions the name of her course, the correct name is “Digital Literacy, AI Literacy and Intercultural Learning.”

at Descript.com

I add also coincidentally, four of my students are visually impaired this semester. So it’s like really out there, like I’ve never had that many in one semester. And I have this point though, it becomes really noticeable that first of all, it’s not like you have one, you have four. And it becomes a thing, like they’re not a minority in terms of numbers in my class, they’re really noticeable and they make a huge difference just being there. And it makes everyone in the class become more aware and everybody has a role.

And one of the things that we’ve been talking about in terms of like, when we used to talk about Intentionally Equitable Hospitality, we used to focus a lot on the facilitator’s role of making sure equity is intentional and making sure everyone’s welcome.

But actually it’s everybody’s role.

And when it’s collective and how all these things feed into ecosystems of care. How that helps us move towards more social justice. I don’t know if we talked about this before or during the recording, but it’s like distributed responsibility for being equitable. For that to happen, everyone needs to have a sense of what it means that there are inequities here and to notice the inequities and then to be willing to address them and wanting to address them.

Let’s step back a second. So AI exists for a really long time. And Machine Learning has existed for a really long time. And, when I was an undergrad 20 years ago, I created a neural network that used machine learning to do something, right?

This has existed for a long time. It’s been used in medicine. It’s been used in a lot of different fields. if you understand the basic way it works, it helps explain a lot of things.

So whatever is changing, we’re still basically pretty much the same kind of technology, or elaborate, but it’s, if you understand that, that helps you understand a lot why it will always hallucinate, because it’s not meant to not hallucinate. We’re talking about machine learning and not expert systems that are trained to think like a particular expert, it’s trained to learn randomly, and then probabilistically, and so on. Yeah, the statistical model.

So when you do something and they do it wrong and then you have to undo it and then you have to redo it again. And someone was talking about how important it is to be comfortable being bad at something new. We’re always bad when we’re new. if you were good at everything you’re new at, like that would be weird. Then what would be the point of experience? What would be the point of doing something for a long time, right?

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called I Dare You by Little Glass Men and is licensed under a Attribution License. Like most of our intro music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.

Our newest episode takes you to Vancouver, Canada, where the voice Julia Alards-Tomalin, faculty at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) describe the inspiring story behind the award winning Buds, Branches, and Bark, recognized with a 2023 Open Awards for Excellence in Open Pedagogy.

We can trace the path from Julia’s childhood curiosity about the natural world growing up in Gimli, Manitoba to her studies as an undergraduate at BCIT. Her observation then that the primary time of year, in winter, when students learn to identify plants and trees is a challenge given most guidebooks contain photos and descriptions from full summer display. This experience literally planted seed germinated as an idea when Julia, as an instructor at BCIT, decided to develop an open educational resource winter identification plant guide.

Inspired by a presentation (we guess it might have been one by Robin Derosa), Julia adopted an open pedagogy approach by having her students collaborate in researching, writing and illustrating the first edition of Buds, Branches and Bark. Presenting this work at BCIT initiated an expansion of its open pedagogy approach via a conversation with colleague in the media design program, who suggested having their students provide design support. Since then more than 200 students from three different academic departments have been part of this continually growing resource.

You will hear in Julia’s voice the excitement and enthusiasm for the the newest third edition released in December 2023. The production level of Buds, Branches, and Bark rivals commercially published guides. Listen in to our conversation to appreciate this award winning example of open pedagogy in practice.

FYI: This section of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEG Voices.

In the journey of open education and passion for natural world, Episode 65 unfolds the captivating conversation with Julia Alards-Tomalin, an open education enthusiast and instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Featuring her remarkable open pedagogy project ‘Buds, Branches and Bark,’ the episode delves into Julia’s roots in Manitoba’s woodlands, her educational path through BCIT, and her innovative approach to creating an open educational resource (OER) on winter plant identification. Host Alan Levine and co-host Marcela Morales engage in a rich dialogue about the inception, challenges, and triumphs of Julia’s project, highlighting how open education, collaboration across disciplines, and student involvement have been key in crafting an accessible, evolving guide for learners worldwide. The conversation also explores the broader impact and future possibilities of open educational resources in fostering a more equitable and connected learning environment.

at Descript.com

So the time of year when you’re a student, like it’s not ideal for looking at plants. Courses start in the Fall and they go from September till May. And in that time period, it’s mostly the winter here. It’s really hard to learn about the natural world when all of the resources that we had were focused on looking at plants during the growing season when they have leaves.

I remember standing outside in the forest looking at little trees and trying to figure out what the heck they were. And all we had was our book that only has pictures of leaves and things in it. And I was so frustrated.

I remember talking to one of my instructors about it being like, well, why aren’t there any resources? And he was like, well, you’ll just have to make one. I guess that kind of where seed was planted. I really wanted there to something to help me.

I was so honored. I was like almost in tears really. And when I went to school the next day and told students like they just burst out into a round of applause. People were hugging each other. I was so proud to see people working together, using each other’s different strengths, collaboratively. It’s just really touching to see what we can do when we work together.

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called  I Don’t See the Branches, I See the Leaves by Chris Zabriskie and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Like most of our intro music, it was found originaly from the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist) – since the time of researching, this track is no longer available at the FMA.

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.