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Open Education Global and the University of Nantes have published the full multi-lingual program for the annual Open Education Global Conference that will take place online from Monday, Sept 27th until Friday, Oct 1st 2021.

News, OEGlobal Conference

Exciting, multilingual OEGlobal 2021 Online Conference program to contribute to the implementation of the UNESCO OER Recommendation

Isla Haddow-Flood on August 20, 2021

News, OE Awards

OE Awards 2021: Nominations announcement

Nominate your favourite Open Education contribution! Nominations can now be made for the Open Education Awards for Excellence in 2021. For the last 10 years, the Open Education Awards for […]

Isla Haddow-Flood on May 20, 2021

News, OEGlobal Conference

Open Education Global Conference 2021: Call for Proposals

Open Education Global and the Université de Nantes, hosts of the Open Education Global 2021 Online Conference and the Open Education Global 2021 In-person Congress are pleased to announce that […]

Isla Haddow-Flood on May 3, 2021

News

Open Education Global Announces 2021 Board Election Results

The Open Education Global (OEG) concluded the Board of Directors 2021 elections on the 1st April 2021. There were five Board positions to be filled. The results of this election […]

Isla Haddow-Flood on April 21, 2021

News

Open Education Global Receives Grant for the Regional Leaders of Open Education (RLOE) Network Project

Open Education Global (OEG) and the Community College Consortium for Open Education Resources (CCCOER) have been awarded a 2-year grant by ECMC Foundation to fund the Regional Leaders for Open […]

Susan Huggins on February 16, 2021

News, OEGlobal Conference

UNESCO Patronage for Open Education Global 2021 Conference

We are pleased to announce that UNESCO has awarded Patronage for Open Education Global 2021 (OE Global 2021) Conference. OE Global 2021 is hosted by the Université de Nantes, in […]

Susan Huggins on January 22, 2021

News

Congratulations to Willem van Valkenburg, a SURF Education Award Recipient

The Open Education Global congratulates Willem van Valkenburg as one of the recipients of the 2020 SURF Education Awards for his contribution to education innovation. This is an annual award […]

Susan Huggins on December 8, 2020

News, OEGlobal Conference

OEGlobal 2020 Summary and A Look Ahead

OEGlobal 2020 officially concluded…. The 2020 conference officially concluded with multiple “firsts” as well as new records. Necessitated by the global pandemic, this was the first-ever virtual Open Education Global […]

Susan Huggins on November 27, 2020

News, OEGlobal Conference

Université de Nantes will Host the 2021 Open Education Global Conference

Open Education Global is pleased to announce that the University of Nantes will host the 2021 Open Education Global Conference, 5 – 7, October 2021. Université de Nantes is located […]

Susan Huggins on November 19, 2020

News

Open Education Global’s CCCOER Awarded Grant to Support Anti-Racism with OER

The Open Education Global is pleased to announce that the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER), jointly with College of the Canyons received a grant awarded by the William and […]

Susan Huggins on November 4, 2020

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OE Global Voices

OEG Voices 080: Bryan Mathers on the Fabulous Remixer Machine

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Join us for a visit inside to design studio Bryan Mathers, all from a “shed” outside of London, located on an “an island off the east coast of Ireland.” As you will hear in his voice, we are in a playful creative space, where amongst many outputs is the Fabulous Remixer Machine, recognized with a 2024 Open Education Award for Excellence in the category of Remix / Reuse /Adaptation.

The founder of Visual Thinkery, Bryan has an uncanny skill at identifying major ideas and concepts, which he then renders as an illustration, just in the process of an open conversation. This method is openly shared as the Visual Thinkery process of creating artwork from dialogue.

Listening is my superpower, and I love to tune into what people are saying, to capture and translate it visually. What are you trying to say? To whom are you trying to say it? Dialogue provides the viewpoints to explore what it looks like from multiple angles.
https://bryanmmathers.com/about/

Bryan’s illustration style is readily identified in the outputs of the Global OER Graduate Network GO-GN (including penguins), the Association for Learning Technology OER conferences, the We Are Open Co-op, and more.

You will hear in more detail about the idea and wide spread use of the award winning Remixer Machine that allows people to “playfully” remix Bryan’s art for customized graphics, and the impact on its use enabled by the built in Creative Commons licensing of remixed outputs. We at OE Global have made use of the Digital Postcard Remixer for several conferences as well as Open Education Week. Plus we just co-organized a Remixer Challenge for Open Education Week 2025.

Cartoon style hand lifting a cap as a Cap Doff with message ”@bryan h/t for again distilling from a wildly roaming chat into remixablereality.” — Remixed hat tip by @visualthinkery is licensed under CC-BY-SA. Remix by Alan Levine.

As this episode was recorded for talking about Bryan’s OE Award, we brainstormed ideas for generating small scale recognition with an emergent idea of a “hat tip”– this is now a Hat Tip Remixer which anyone can use to create a visual recognition as a gesture of tipping one’s hat (with several hat options).

We could not resist remixing a hat tip (or “cap doff”) to Bryan for creating this Remixer.

Episode 80 Transcript Download

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at Descript.com

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, host Alan Levine converses with Bryan Mathers about the creative and innovative journey behind the Fabulous Remixer Machine, a tool that allows users to dynamically remix graphics for various purposes. They delve into the importance of creative constraints, the impacts of open licensing, and the intersection of engineering and visual artistry. Bryan shares insights from his experiences, highlights the significance of conversation in the creative process, and discusses the broader implications of his tool in education and activism.

Introduction: Alan Levine introduces the guest, Bryan Mathers, and sets the stage for an engaging discussion.
Creative Constraints and the Remixer Machine: Bryan talks about finding the sweet spot between simplicity and creative freedom in the design of the Remixer Machine.
The Power of Conversation: Insights into how dialogue and conversation play a critical role in Bryan’s creative process.
Bryan’s Background: Bryan shares his journey from Ulster to London, his educational background, and how these experiences have shaped his work.
The Role of Humor and Playfulness: A discussion on the importance of humor and playful elements in the creative process.
Recognition and Creative Commons: The impact of open licensing and the importance of attribution in creative works.
Brainstorming on Recognition: Alan and Bryan explore ideas for an ongoing micro-recognition initiative for the OE Global community.

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 80

And that context– context is really important.. I created a remixer, based on the postcard idea, but I created it for a university in Germany. And it was a Field Note. So the idea is that it had a sort of a map that you could manipulate in the background so that it would have a point to a particular part of the world map. And then you’d be able to attach a photograph and basically add a couple of fields in terms of this place and they were into life sciences. They would be pointing out some plant in Chile or whatever else. So there’s different universities collaborating together.
But my wife used the same remixer tool to explore the heritage of her students in her classroom. She’s a primary school teacher. We live in a very multicultural area of London. But it was this idea where you could create a little a little pointer back to part of your heritage and you could see the diversity of heritage in the classroom.
So that worked really, well– same tool but completely different contexts.
Bryan Mathers on context

2024 Open Education Award for Excellence in Remix / Reuse /Adaptation for the Fabulous Remixer Machine (OE Global)
- The Fabulous Remixer Machine Challenge for OEWeek 2025 (OEG Connect)
Bryan Mathers (website)
- Man Loves Potatoes (newsletter issue)
Fabulous Remixer Machine
- Models (Templates to remix from)
- Recent Remixes
- Technologies referenced:
A Typology of Interpersonal Recognition (Bryan Mathers)
- What is Open Recognition? (Doug Belshaw)
- N-TUTORR National Programme

We hope this conversation inspires you to create your own remixes using the Fabulous Remixer Machine and as well explore the many ideas and the popular items and larger archive of “thinkery” on Bryan’s website. And please consider remixing a hat tip for someone in particular and sending it to them.

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Tick Tock (Instrumental Version) from the album The Beautiful Machine by Josh Woodward shared under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

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.

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