Image by OEGlobal CC-BY

Twelve Episodes of OEWeek Live Coverage and Conversation

Another successful Open Education Week has zoomed by including hundreds of global events and resources shared. As usual, there is too much happening to take it all in during one week. In our planning suggestions, I proposed a new concept to offer something like a live show, on the internet, that could be some kind of cross between a news report and a talk show.

I’ve always felt a live show adds an element of excitement and I think we achieved it. Plus, given the webinar/presentation formats of many of the OEWeek events, I saw an opportunity for open conversations for guests willing to go live on the internet (ultimately 44 of them joined in).

I am not sure my colleagues fully latched onto my idea, but they allowed me to go ahead with what I called the OEWeek Live show that in the end produced 12 episodes that were streamed to YouTube. They are all available now as a playlist, that’s 11 hours, 33 minutes, 28 seconds of shows, where we offered two shows entirely in Spanish and one in Portuguese.

For a quick show guide:

  • Monday March 6
    • Our Monday First Show included Jennryn Wetzler (Creative Commons), Catherine Cronin (Higher Education for Good, #HE4Good), Maren Deepwell (ALT-C, OER23), and Jennifer Rogers (LibreTexts) all sharing about their projects, plus open discussion on finding joy in learning and differing interests in the open education community [Watch this show]
    • An hour later we offered a special show as A Global Welcome from Andréia Inamorato an opportunity to hear from OEGlobal’s executive director offering her perspective as leading this event [Watch this show].
    • And again one more hour later Andreia returned to host OEweek Live! Segunda-feira em Portugues a most special conversation with colleagues as it was conducted in Portuguese. Guests included Dra. Sara Dias Trindade (Universidade do Porto, Portugal), Dra. Rita Maria Tarcia (ABED, São Paulo, Brasil), Msc. George Bento (ABED, Recife, Brasil), Dr. Luciano Sathler (ABED, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais) and Msc. Carlos Alberto Pereira de Oliveira (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil) [Watch this show]
    • The day was not done as the Monday Final Show offered a conversation with Martin Weller (Open University UK), Florence Devouard (Wiki in Africa) where we heard about GO-GN, Edtech metaphors, podcasts, and many of the Wikimedia and Wiki in Africa climate change activities happening the month of March. That was just one day! [Watch this Show].
  • Tuesday March 7
    • For the opening Tuesday First Show we connected from Canada, Europe, and India with Heather Ross (University of Saskatoon), Terry Greene (Trent University), Bea de los Arcos (TUDelft), Sushumna Rao (KBR & HL Human Development Foundation). We heard about everything from OER repositories and campus OE climates to the Liberated Learners project to teaching Engineering students about OER to the We Like Sharing photo contest to designing of H5P rubrics plus even some perspectives on artificial intelligence [Watch this show].
    • And in Tuesday Second Show we welcomed Nate Angell (Creative Commons), Vidminas Vizgirda (University of Edinburgh), Lauri Aesoph (BCcampus). In rounds we heard about plans for the CC open summit, a GO-GN fellow’s research interests, and the latest on open content from BCcampus. Then we dug a bit into the Open Learning Experience Bingo idea and again, ventured a bit into AI [Watch the show].
  • Wednesday March 8
    • We opened Wednesday with a session in Spanish, OEWeek Live! en Español Miércoles 8 de Marzo with Marcela Morales (OEGlobal), Agustin Huertas (OEGlobal intern), Kristelle Gutierrez (OEGlobal intern), María Soledad (Marisol) Ramirez-Montoya (OEGlobal Board Member), and Diana Hernadez-Montoya (OEGlobal Board Member). Our interns shared plans for new Spanish learning materials and an open survey for the OELATAM node and our board members relayed other relevant projects of interest to our Spanish speaking open education community [Watch this show].
    • And we got into the technology for the Wednesday Second Show with Paul Hibbitts (Hibbitts Design) and Zack Krida (Automattic) where we got to see live demos of the publishing platform of Docsify This and the Openverse media search site, the modern and snazzy descendent of the CC Search [Watch this show]
  • Thursday March 9
    • We went full on experimental in the Thursday First Show with Lorna Campbell, Sheila MacNeil, and Paola Corti representing the OER23 Conference Planning Team whom we brought in to the studio via their Discord meeting space to learn about the upcoming conference in Inverness, Scotland. Then we brought in Rob Farrow (UK Open University) for an in depth conversation about the GO-GN project and his efforts with ENCORE+ research on innovation in OER [Watch this show].
    • Then we offered a second show in Spanish– Conversación informal: Competencias Digitales Docentes del Profesorado Universitário de España en Educación Abierta with Andreia Inamorato (OEGlobal), Dra. Cristina Villalonga (Universidad de Nebrija), Dr. Juan Ramón Lacalle Remigio (Universidad de Sevilla), Dr. Edmundo Tovar (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid – UPM), and Dr Carlos Delgado Kloos (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) all sharing about open education projects and activities happening in Spain [Watch this show].
    • The last Thursday show had grand plans to be in English and French, but that’s how live TV sometimes goes in a different direction. Still we had a fast moving conversation with Todd Conaway  (University of Washington Bothell), Chris Lott (University of Washington Tacoma), Kim Carter, Jane Gravill, and Fatih Yegul (Conestoga College), and Alex Enkerli  (Collecto). The topics ranged from informal learning communities to a new Open Access Teaching Case Journal to Francophone OER, and even a round of what the panel was hopeful for [Watch This Show]
  • Friday March 10
    • Our final show of the week brought to the studio Maha Bali, Mia Zamora, and Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh (Equity Unbound), Bukola James (Wikipedia in the Classroom Nigeria), and Karen Cangialosi (OEGlobal) where we covered teaching with Wikipedia, the MyFEST program, and OEGlobal’s weeklong effort to open up individual memberships. But again we went beyond projects and had rich conversations about challenges and hope [Watch this show]

This format was extremely refreshing for us and we were rewarded to witness so much cross connections happening in an unstructured format. For anyone interested this live show format was done relatively easily with Streamyard which broadcasts from the web directly to YouTube. Participants watching there were able to send comments and questions directly to our studio.

We are interested in continuing with some kind of ongoing live show here at OEGlobal- and please visit us in OEG Connect to tell us your ideas on what might make it valuable to you and this community.

As we hopefully showed this week, going live creates a palpable energy and a conversational format opens much opportunity to emerge. Would you want to go live with us? Reply below.


Featured Image: Television studio HTV.jpg Wikimedia Commons image by Krish Dulal licensed Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 modified by Alan Levine to include the OEWeek Live logo.

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