Image by OEGlobal CC-BY

OEGlobal Board Announces Andreia Inamorato dos Santos as the OEGlobal Executive Director

OEGlobal is thrilled to announce Andreia Inamorato dos Santos (PhD) as our new Executive Director starting November 16, 2022.

Andreia is a researcher, a teacher, and a champion for open education with over 25 years of experience working internationally with institutions in Latin America, Europe, USA, and Africa.
An established member and contributor to the OEGlobal community, Andreia is well known for her energy, passion, and dedication to open education in all of its forms. In 2016, she spearheaded the development of the European Framework for Open Education as lead author, which gave rise to follow-up projects and initiatives in EU Member States, some of which have been mapped in the Going Open: OpenEdu Policies project, involving 28 Member States. 

In 2019, she was appointed as the European Commission representative in the OER Recommendation meetings at UNESCO headquarters having had the opportunity to follow the OER Recommendation process closely in the regional meetings in Latin America and Europe.
Andreia has made significant scholarly contributions to the field with research focused on OER, open education practices, and policies. She holds a PhD in Educational Technologies and a Master of Science in Research Methods for Educational Technology, both from the Open University. She also holds a Master of Arts in Linguistics and Literary Studies in English from São Paulo University (USP). Thanks to this wide range of knowledge and experience, Andreia has led several impactful projects to reimagine policies related to open concepts and the digital commons.

Born and raised in Brazil, Andreia has long-standing connections throughout the LATAM region and across Europe. A true global citizen, she has lived and worked in three countries and on two continents. She is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, and English.

It has been a joy getting to know Andreia throughout the recruitment process. Her warm energy is coupled with deep intelligence and care for the OEGlobal staff, members, and community. Together, we share a vision for OEGlobal that builds on the strategy set out in the 2021-2030 Strategic Plan, Open for Public Good.

As we enter this next chapter, we extend sincere gratitude to Paul Stacey for his caring and thoughtful leadership over the past five years. You can read about Paul’s next steps here and thank him for his contribution to Open Education here. Thanks also to the OEG staff, members of the Board, our funders, and the community for your support throughout this leadership transition journey. 
Please join us in welcoming Andreia to her new position as Executive Director of Open Education Global! Post your welcome message below. 
 
Signed, with appreciation,
The OEGlobal Board and Staff:

  • Alan Levine, Strategy & Engagement Director, Canada
  • Cathy M. Casserly, Board Member, USA
  • Constance Blomgren, Board Member, Canada
  • Diana Hernández, Board Member, Costa Rica
  • Hsu-Tien (Marian) Wan, Treasurer, Taiwan
  • Igor Lesko, Director of Operations, South Africa
  • Isla Haddow-Flood, Director of Communications, South Africa
  • Jan Gondol, Director of Technology, Slovakia
  • Katsusuke Shigeta, Board Member, Japan
  • Lena Patterson, President of the Board, Canada
  • Lisa Young, Board Member, USA
  • Liz Yata, Manager of CCCOER Communities, United States
  • Marcela Morales, Director of Community Relations, Mexico
  • María Soledad Ramírez Montoya (Marisol), Board Member, Mexico
  • Mario Badilla, Creative Director, Costa Rica
  • Martin Dougiamas, Board Member, Australia
  • Noureddine Zemmouri, Board Member, Algeria
  • Paul Stacey, Executive Director, Ex-Officio Board Member, Canada
  • Perrine de Coëtlogon, Board Member, France
  • Rachel Zhang, Director of Finance, United States
  • Una Daly, Director of Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER), United States
  • Willem van Valkenburg, Past President of the Board, Netherlands

Welcome Andreia Inamorato do Santos on OEG Connect

Post your welcome to the discussions below by clicking on reply on OEG Connect below.

OEG Voices – Latest Podcasts

OE Global Voices

Welcome to the home of podcasts produced by Open Education Global. These shows bring you insight and connection to the application of open education practices from around the world. Listen at podcast.oeglobal.org

OEG Voices 076: Purvi Shah on Storyweaver

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.

StoryWeaver web site with menu items Read, Translate, Create, Resources, and Discover. One of the rotating banner displays a graphic style image of a teacher reading a book to her students with text: ”Storyweeaver in School, For Educators- We've worked with teachers so closely over the years that we've built these resources to be of real help. You'll find this section packed with stories, themes, activities, and more - all carefully ordered by grade and reading level.From language acquisition and reading comprehension, to textbook concepts and ideas, we'll help you nurture the joy of reading among all your students.”
https://storyweaver.org.in/

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.

In This Episode

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.

Key Highlights:

  1. Embracing Openness: Purvi discusses the organization’s decision to adopt open licensing to reach their mission of putting a book in every child’s hand. This shift from a traditional publishing model to an open platform allowed the community to create and translate stories, leading to the birth of StoryWeaver.
  2. The Genesis of StoryWeaver: The platform was launched on International Literacy Day in 2015 with 800 stories in 24 languages. Today, it boasts an impressive collection of 60,000 stories in 370 languages, serving as a vast repository of multilingual and multicultural stories.
  3. Innovative Features: StoryWeaver includes unique features such as “read-alongs,” which combine audio, video, and same-language subtitling to aid language learning and literacy. The platform also offers structured resources for teachers, such as thematic book lists and STEM programs.
  4. Translations and Impact: Purvi shares stories about the extensive translations available on the platform. “Rani’s First Day at School” has been translated into 138 languages, demonstrating the community’s active participation. She also narrates heartwarming anecdotes about how these stories have impacted children and teachers around the world.
  5. Community Contributions: The discussion highlights how users can contribute by translating stories or creating new ones using the platform’s vast library of images and easy-to-use creation tools. Purvi shares examples of innovative projects inspired by StoryWeaver, such as a literacy program developed in Mexico.
  6. Future Goals: Looking ahead, Purvi emphasizes the importance of expanding the depth of stories in each language and leveraging the community’s strengths to ensure that every child can access a book in their mother tongue.

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)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 76

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.

Purvi Shah on StoryWeaver’s milestones


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 was part of a previous version of the StoryWeaver web site, an illustration credited to Measa Sovonnarea.

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 showsWe have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descriptbut our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.