Celebrating Una Daly as she looks towards her “rewirement”

After 12 years of dedication to OE Global and specifically as the Director of CCCOER, Una Daly is embarking on a personal and well-earned “re-wiring” (Una’s term for it).

Una Daly has directed the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER), since 2011. CCCOER is a regional Open Education Global (OEGlobal) hub that promotes open educational policies, practices, and resources.

Una played a pivotal role in developing and supporting the 101 member community colleges that hail from 35 states in the USA and two provinces in Canada. Una has driven the CCCOER vision to raise awareness and encourage the adoption of open educational initiatives throughout the region. Una’s stewardship of CCCOER has led to innovative support programs for faculty in their open education application through such initiatives as CCCOER’s monthly webinars and the former Regional Leaders of Open Education (RLOE) program.

Her dedication to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within the community college system has seen the development of innovative programs such as the Open For AntiRacism (OFAR) and the Summer EDI Book Club, among others. She has been dedicated to walking the talk by implementing internal additions to CCCOER’s advisory structures and creating an EDI committee to guide EDI programs.

Collective action, partnerships, and collaboration to activate change towards open education change have been an effective part of Una’s strategy for CCCOER. This has resulted in the California Consortium for Equitable Change in Hispanic-Serving Institutions OER Project, the California Zero Textbook Cost Degree initiative, and the Achieving The Dream OER Degree program.

Listen to the history of CCCOER from Una’s perspective and the thoughts of incoming program director Heather Blicher in the OEG Voices podcast, Looking Back and into the Future of CCCOER with Una Daly and Heather Blicher.

Before joining OEGlobal, Una was director of College Open Textbooks and the ePortfolio Coordinator at the California Virtual Campus and Foothill College, where she taught in the Computer Technology Information Systems department. She holds a Masters in Teaching and Learning with Technology from Santa Clara University and an @One Online Teaching Certificate. Her initial career was in the computer industry, where she was a software engineer and manager at Apple, 3Com Corporation, and Motorola.

We will miss you Una! We know that the CCCOER community will do too!

The CCCOER Community’s wishes for Una

The staff at OEGlobal have set up a KudoBoard to share our experiences of Una and our wishes for her rewired future. Here are a few of the snippets from this board.

“Thanks for being a guiding light in the ever-changing world of OER. You were there facilitating every CCCOER webinar when I first started focusing on open and you grew and developed the community that I depended on to develop my work. Now I’m in the unique position to continue your work and I won’t let you down! Many hugs to you for the times you reached out and offered me the chance to be on a panel, a webinar, or write a blog post. It meant the world to me when you feel so isolated in certain positions. Enjoy your re-wirement and I hope to visit you on the West coast one day soon!”

Heather Blicher on Una’s Farewell KudoBoard

“Una, how will we feel your absence when your presence is so intrinsic to the field of Open Education that you helped to create? The presence of care, consideration, and kindness. The presence of wit and wisdom and whimsy. The creativity that arises from studying math and computer science. The workshops that once attracted single attendees and are now standing room only. The giant leaps that come from dreaming big. The goodness and kindness, as well as the stubbornness and determination, that you embody are so firmly the foundations of the field, that your absence won’t cause a collapse. Your presence will live on in thousands of future students who find a place in education because the door is open more widely, who see themselves in their learning materials, who are welcomed and supported by teachers who co-create with them, and who are inspired to learn their whole lives long. You will be present with us and with future generations of learners, in our minds and in our hearts.”

James Glapa-Grossklag on Una’s Farewell KudoBoard

“You have such a gift of bringing people together to share their strengths – which you did so beautifully in bringing the professional learning network around OER that CCCOER is. The relationships that you fostered, the knowledge you shared and the projects you have led, have created the foundation of much of OER in the community colleges. I feel so fortunate to be able to have worked with you but even more importantly to be able to call you a friend.”

Lisa Young on Una’s Farewell KudoBoard

“It was wonderful to work with you at OE Global! Thank you for all of your support and guidance for the RLOE program, and everything you built for the CCCOER. You have truly set the stage for the CCCOER to move into a bright and creative future!”

Karen Cangialosi on Una’s Farewell KudoBoard

“You have made an indelible mark on CCCOER and the broader open education community. You have been a source of inspiration for so many. I am deeply grateful that I got a chance to work closely with you these last few years on the CCCOER Executive Council. I’m thrilled that we saw one another again in Edmonton. Wishing you all the happiness and fulfillment in the next chapter of your life. With deep gratitude,”

Shinta Hernandez on Una’s Farewell KudoBoard

Share your wishes for Una’s Re-wirement!

Please add your experiences and stories of Una on the Farewell KudoBoard.

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.