Voice 1 (00:14):
Hello, and welcome to OEG Voices, OEG Voices,

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OEG Voices, OEG Voices,

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A podcast bringing to you the voices and ideas of open educators from around the world.

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OEG Voices is produced by Open Education Global, a

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Member based nonprofit organization

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Supporting the development and use of open education globally. Learn

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More about us at oeglobal.org.

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There's much to take in at a global level. We

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Hope to bring you closer to how open education

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Is working by hearing the stories of practitioners

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Told in their own voices. Each episode introduces you to a global open educator,

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And we invite you to later engage in conversation with

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Them in our OEG Connect community.

Alan Levine (01:13):
Hello, out there in Podcast Land. This is your host of oeg Voices, Al Levine. And this is, well, it's, it's number 47, but it's not really episode 47. But, uh, I was gonna write up some reflections on the, uh, end of the new year and, uh, end of the old year, actually, uh, 2022, wrapping up and O e G Voices has been going on three years now. Well, technically our first year in 2020, we started in July, but we've done, uh, 47 episodes with open educators from around the world, and it's been an exciting run, and we're doing a lot more next year. So I wanted to forecast a little bit about that and talk about some ideas and ask you for input. And I was like, why not just record this. I'll make this an episode. It's a podcast, right? I can do it.

(01:58):
So we've been doing a lot of recording, uh, sessions. I have a backlog of, of ones to edit. I may try to get one or two out during the year. I had a conversation with my good friend Antonio of Anto, who is a computer science professor, media professor, open educator enthusiast of many years, and a good colleague of mine who is a professor at Univers of Dad, SDO de Coron in San Juan Puerto Rico. We had a conversation a couple weeks ago, and we used to do a podcast, and it was a long time for me to catch up with Antonio. We had a great conversation. I want to get that out there. Okay. So I had a, a great conversation a couple weeks ago with, um, some interesting folks, uh, Erica Harri, who's been active in a global, and Chris Lawrence, who, uh, I've known for going back to some of the, uh, Mozilla days.

(02:49):
Uh, and so they're working with an interesting concept that, uh, you know, I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around. And that's why, um, they asked for a meeting and I said, well, what if we turned into a podcast? And so, uh, we recorded a conversation about this thing that Eric has been very active in sort of fleshing out the idea. And it's kind of might push you back when you hear it. Web monetization, which is basically the name of a standard. So don't think of it as taking advantage of money or, or that sort of thing. But it's really about a sort of platform and protocol and methodology to be able to, um, give small amounts or large, if you feel like it, of monetary, um, credit or thanks to the people who create open content. And, and it might enable the ability for people to create OERs who necessarily don't have the support of an institution or foundation.

(03:38):
This was just a starting conversation. We hope to explore, uh, more of this in the coming year with Chris and Erica. So I've got those two. Maybe I'll get them out before the end of the year, but also over the last week or two, um, I've done four recordings with our open awards for excellence, uh, award winners. So I've got all these, uh, great conversations ready to queue up. We're gonna release them in January, maybe one per week, so we can give some sort of attention to each one in their topic. But we have, um, the Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Robert Truer. Um, we had a great conversation with him. This man has done so much for open education and a kind, generous, um, spirit. Uh, I got a chance to have another conversation with you and McAndrew, the Wikipedian residence at, uh, university of Edinburgh, who does this amazing work, um, with, uh, all kinds of things across the wiki platforms and open education, um, for not just, uh, the university there in Scotland, but quite, um, quite abroad.

(04:39):
And, and this work with students is really fascinating. Um, a as well. Uh, this week I talked to EBA Osen Nielsen, who won the award for leadership. This EBA does so many things. I know it would take hours to have this interview conversation with all the international program. She is involved in op open education, and we talked about the idea of a social contract for education, and we talked about some of the cultural, um, sort of, uh, inferences about, um, how educators in Sweden see open education. And so we had a great conversation with Emma. Look forward to that one coming out in January. Yes. And so, uh, I also got a chance to talk to, um, a very young energetic professor, uh, Giovanni Zamo, who, uh, is from Italy, but he teaches Spanish language, um, at the university in Iowa City. And he has been doing some fantastic work with OERs for Spanish languages.

(05:37):
And so we get to hear about that and some other interest to him. Um, it was Giovanni, uh, got the open award for excellence in the educator category. And so we have all those ready for you to come in the new season. Uh, but also I wanna get a chance to talk about, I, I got some ideas like, um, my colleagues know that I always come into my meetings with like a thousand ideas, but, you know, I wanna sort of open up some of the formats and put possibilities for what we do in our podcast, cuz um, these conversations are so great to sit down with someone and hear about their influences and interests from another part of the world. And that's what we want to do with, with the show here. So, um, one of the things we, we'll continue to highlight the OE Award winners, of course.

(06:19):
Um, we're gonna bring on more of the, um, community college educators from the community College consortium. One oer. We, um, had, uh, two great podcasts, um, in, uh, the last couple months. Um, and one of those was another format that I'm looking at. We had, uh, three, four reps from community colleges in Arizona. So we took a, a regional look, a geographical regional look at open education. And I have some ideas of other parts in the world, but I would like really to think about bringing together educators, you know, not just from a specific institution, but who are collaborating, um, in a, in a different part of the world. And so it's sort of taken a regional look at, at things. I have my own sort of on the road format, which is one where I do a podcast in someone else's podcast. So we had an interview with Terry Green, who does Git Air, and I had a conversation, uh, with Bonnie Slovak, who does Inside Higher Education, might do more of those.

(07:17):
And I am also looking at, um, the idea about maybe having, um, some kind of sessions that happen live and people can join us as guests or maybe a topic or a particular guest that we're gonna highlight, but we're in a live session, um, uh, online that people can participate in. It'll be archived, but also publish it as a podcast. So that's something that's happening. You're gonna probably see us, well, you're probably gonna see me do a lot, uh, with oeg Voices during Open Education Week. I think I'd like to do like a daily episode, uh, with the highlights or things that are happening in, in OE Week because there's so much going on. It's really hard to, to get your, your head wrapped around it. So we'll be doing that. But I also am eager to hear other people, like who should we talk to?

(08:03):
What sort of things do you want to, you know, hear from, like, what parts of the world do you want us to go to, to bring you another podcast? Or, uh, what particular educators or, um, policy makers or, uh, teachers or even students. We would love to do some more show, uh, featuring students talking about open education. And we're gonna do more Spanish language podcast as well. So, um, come to the website, um, uh, podcast dot oe global.org or voices doe global.org, same thing and see past episodes. Each episode is connected, get it connected to a discussion area. I o EEG Connect. And I'd really like to enhance the sort of discussions to follow up, um, with our guest after we, we do a podcast and that's all built in. Uh, we've been putting some new features onto the website cuz Alan just loves tinkering and WordPress and, and adding new things, things.

(08:55):
So we have a new, uh, dropdown translation menu that will translate the content, not the audio, but at least the webpages you can read it in, in many different languages. And that, that was an easy add-on to do. We have a map where you can see all episodes that we do organized by where they are in the world. So if you wanna see what kind of podcasts that we are doing from Australia or from, uh, from South America or from Africa, we need to get a lot more of those in there. By the way, all those places are ones that I want to take. Uh, you two, um, you can find O e G Voices Podcast, um, organized, um, by region of the world. Um, we are now on, um, you can get the podcast of course on our site. You can get it from, uh, uh, apple Podcast, uh, from Google Play.

(09:42):
Um, you can get it from, uh, we just signed up to get our podcast on Spotify, so we're pushing it out there all, all over the place. And the, the other thing that, um, that I've been throwing into the mix, what is that thing that I'm throwing into the mix? Oh yeah, our music. So ever since we started, I've always used a different open license, uh, music track to introduce and, and close out the show. Um, and mainly for the last two years, I've concentrated on using music from the free music archive. Um, that's free music archive.org. One of the most fantastic resources for finding, uh, creative Commons license music that you can use for projects, not just podcasts for any projects. And so I really love using that. And, uh, I was trying to figure out a way to put together a playlist of all the, um, the tracks that we have used.

(10:34):
And I got in touch with the folks at the Free music archive, and it did more than that. They set up open education global with our own curator page. So we have our own corner of the free music archive where you can find some of our playlists. So we have the Oeg Voices playlist. We have another set of songs that we put together for Paul Stacy, um, on his, um, exit from being executive director of OE Global. And we're looking to be curate other kinds of music lists. Maybe, maybe you can tell us if you've ever used free music archive music in one of your open education projects. We also will be uploading some of our episodes to the free music archive. So we really, uh, wanna support the, uh, free music archive. Uh, we make use of it. And we think that you as educators who are looking for, um, music resources that are, uh, very clear, clearly licensed creative comments that you check out their free music archive.

(11:27):
Well, that's my episode. I've been babbling and rambling a little bit, but I wanna get this all down, uh, for the end of the year. Uh, but more than anything, just, um, let us know of ideas, um, or people again that you want us to feature on o e g voices or if you wanna be on it, I'd love to have you on our podcast. You can also, uh, you'll find a link, uh, in the notes and all over the site. Um, we do this thing where, um, we have the same intro read for each one of the episodes, but we have, um, a little mixer tool that I built that sort of takes sentences from different people and shuffles it around so you get a different, uh, interview. You get a different introduction, uh, re uh, spoken by different people, many of them who have been guessed on the show.

(12:13):
You can add your own voice to the mix, be part of the mixer. We'd love to get more voices in, in that mix as well. So, wishing you the best again for the holidays and the new year, and it's gonna be a big podcasting year for us next year. We hope it's a big year for you in open education. Thanks a lot. And again, I almost forgot I'm talking so fast. You know, the free music archive music for this soundtrack is going to be one that I found on the free music archive, of course. And it is a track called, um, going forward looking back by a artist known as Paddington Bear. And we've used Paddington Bear's music before, and you can find this on the Free Music archive license, uh, creative Commons attribution, non-commercial. And so we wanna support again, the, um, artists who share their music on the free music archive. Uh, we wanna bring you a different soundtrack for every episode. And so we hope you join us, um, for more podcasts this year@voicesingglobal.org and jump over to, uh, connect oi global.org to discuss the op, the episodes, the podcast, or anything else you want. Um, this is the year that we really wanna, um, elevate the amount of community building and connecting that we can do there. So thanks again. Have a great year. This is Al Levine and I am exiting the building. It's time to usher in this new year.