Episode 93: Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin === Intro Music and Highlighed Quotes --- [00:00:05] Laura Czerniewicz: We know that in the midst of the chaos and collapse, there are people doing good things and soldiering on. That's still true today. When we had this conversation about this possibility, that is exactly what we hoped for, that we would capture that dogged insistence on doing good in the face of what might feel intransigent obstacles. [00:00:35] Catherine Cronin: In terms of leadership, I'm thinking a lot about it this year. I just think of the words "humanity" and "courage" because I think of the leaders that have inspired me and that I see now in all realms, not just in higher education, are people who really have the courage to speak to principles and call out. Like we say in our manifesto, naming and analyzing the problems- clearly naming them, not being afraid to do that. It was a lot of the work that Laura and I have done in Open Education and in the book was with respect for and honoring humanity as the focus. Podcast Introduction --- [00:01:14] Alan Levine: Hello from the podcast studio and it's September 11th, 2025, recording another episode of OEGlobal Voices. This is the podcast we produce right here at Open Education Global. Like right here in my house. Each episode we share with you conversation style, people, practices, and ideas from open educators around the world. [00:01:35] I'm your fortunate host, editor, and button clicker Alan Levine. [00:01:38] And my fortune is because today is an opportunity to catch up with two very special colleagues who last time we talked was at a dinner, April 2024 in Kinsale, Ireland, at the OER 24 conference. [00:01:52] The magnificent rainbow, do you remember that rainbow? [00:01:55] Laura Czerniewicz: Mmmm yes, definitely. [00:01:57] Alan Levine: So Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin-- that was supposed to be a comma there where I say your names. You can see how well I do with the script. Reflections on Leadership and Awards --- [00:02:05] Alan Levine: But besides catching up, the reason I wanted to do this is to have a conversation with Laura about winning a 2024 Open Education Award for Excellence in Leadership. And then at the same time, Laura and Catherine were recognized for the Collaboration Award that same year, that was given to all the authors, artists, editors, reviewers from Higher education for Good. which I feel like I don't have to explain what it is because if you don't know about it, like you've been under a rock. [00:02:36] But where did the time go? The awards were 11 months ago, that the 2024 awards were announced. The timing works well because right now, as we speak, the review committee is combing through this year's nominations to see who's gonna win the 2025 awards. [00:02:53] Maybe we can talk about this. The idea of the awards is always focused on the winners, and I'm trying to make it about everybody who is recognized. We're gonna try to celebrate there. [00:03:04] So again, I'm talking way too much. Let's open up the microphone, for I know what's gonna be an engaging conversation. [00:03:11] Hello Laura and Catherine. How are you today? [00:03:15] Catherine Cronin: I am so happy to first of all be in the virtual room with two of my friends, Alan and Laura, and sitting in my home office space in Galway in the west of Ireland. It is a wild, wet, windy day, so I'm just looking out at that. The seasons are definitely changing from summer to autumn here. [00:03:38] But yeah, looking forward to the chat. [00:03:40] Laura Czerniewicz: And here I am in Cape Town where the seasons are changing and it is also a wild wet but sunny day. [00:03:48] Alan Levine: Fantastic. Like you followed my, my, my lead for my introduction, 'cause I always like to have people describe where they are, especially again, 'cause it's a podcast and I really like it when you can have that picture of where, people are sitting. [00:04:04] Catherine Cronin: In the green room before the podcast started, Alan mentioned the early online days, which is how we all met. But do you remember when there was a real phase, you used to be good at it, Alan, of the view from out your window or the view of your screen or whatever. [00:04:19] That was really nice, just giving people a sense of where you were. [00:04:22] Laura Czerniewicz: The view out of my window right now is a whole bunch of succulents with some sunbirds. There's no point turning the camera because we're on a podcast, but it's pretty beautiful and green and you might be able to hear the birds if you're lucky. [00:04:38] Alan Levine: That's really good. And you, might see a dog pop it's head up. And my latest edition, I have a cat, who likes to walk on the screen during my video things. [00:04:49] But anyhow, I, I wanna get started. Personal Histories and Early Influences --- [00:04:52] Alan Levine: Tell us each where on the globe did you live as a child? I like to ask, what did you think of school and what kind of student were you? At the OER 24 conference I loved in your keynote how you did the introduction, where you had the photos of you at different stages in your life, along the timeline of the global levels of carbon dioxide as the background. [00:05:15] As a wee little one, Catherine, and I know the answer, but, where did you grow up and what did those early years in school, what did you think of that? [00:05:26] Catherine Cronin: That's a great question. I grew up in the Bronx in an apartment building, very urban setting. My father was a firefighter in the FDNY in New York. And my parents' parents were immigrants, all from Ireland. We didn't have a lot growing up. We didn't go on summer holidays and that kind of thing, but a huge focus in the family was on education. [00:05:54] So I have one sister and one brother. For all of the three of us, all of the resources of the family were really focused on education. That was the thing that was important. So I really imbibed that. And I enjoyed school. I loved school. [00:06:07] Myself and my two siblings are the first in our family to go to university. We grew up, I had a lovely kind of full circle moment last year because, I grew up just across the street from what was called Lehman College, which is now part of CUNY and I spoke there last year. Literally, you could throw a stone to the building that I grew up in. [00:06:27] I left when I was 14. We moved out of the city. Stacy Katz invited me and it was amazing because my father used to take us for walks with our family dog on the green grass of Lehman College. That was our play space. And just never imagining that I would go back and be speaking about Open education and equity and all of the wonderful things that we all do for work, in, in that same space. [00:06:53] I think it was about the same time as you grew up in, was it Baltimore Alan So it was a really like similar to now is a time of great political unrest, political assassinations, and politics was bread and butter in our family. We talked about it at the kitchen table. We talked about it with teachers in school. [00:07:11] So I grew up really, aware and talking about all those kinds of issues. [00:07:17] Alan Levine: Did you go back to the building? Did you look at front of it? [00:07:20] Catherine Cronin: I have gone back to the building. Last year with my sister and her daughter and my son, we walked up to the apartment, just to get that embodied experience. Yeah, amazing. There's all kinds of families still living there, a lot of immigrants still. [00:07:35] Alan Levine: It just reminds me-- I'm already going off on tangents of that, that website Dear Photograph, where you take like a print photo of like a place you grew up and you superimpose it to try to line it up. Then you write a post that's like a message to what's in that scene? [00:07:52] And it, it is just always, to me it was like, what a fabulous, storytelling assignment. [00:07:57] Catherine Cronin: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. [00:08:00] Alan Levine: Laura, where did Laura spend her life as a child and what was your first years of school like? . [00:08:06] Laura Czerniewicz: Who thought that it would be such a generative question? I've been working with Catherine all this time and I've just heard things I've never heard before. [00:08:16] So I grew up in Cape Town. My parents were immigrants from Europe, post Second World War. My father left school after primary school and my mother spent most of high school in hiding. [00:08:30] Formal education wasn't part of their background. They were absolutely committed to education, so there wasn't any money except for a book. And it's really interesting what you were saying about politics because what happened to me was that as I went through schooling, my formal education fell away more and more, and my political education grew increasingly so. [00:09:01] I was a star student in primary school and then less of a star student in high school. And then when I got to university in Cape Town, it was 1976 when everything just blew up in South Africa. The formal part of the education was really secondary compared to the politics of the day. [00:09:20] Even though I grew up in South Africa, it was very much with a global sensibility given that my parents-- my father died by then. Given my mother's connection with Europe and what had been going on there, which I suppose has stayed with me to this day. [00:09:39] Alan Levine: Both of your stories, like there, there's no surprise in it, says a lot. [00:09:45] I just was thinking like when you think about how, rich and actually in some ways, not, small, but so contained the world was, 'cause I used to ask my mother, because she grew up in the depression, what it was like, and she says, "I didn't realize it was going on. I was playing with my sisters and my friends." That's so different where now we're just blasted everywhere by what's going on in the world. [00:10:10] Laura Czerniewicz: Even now, you don't realize what's distinctive about the period you grew up in. I didn't realize that the politics of the time were so distinctive until much later, obviously, because that was what was normal. [00:10:27] Alan Levine: And at the same time I was in town on an errand. I saw this family crossing the street and this girl like maybe seven or eight or nine. She was skipping with joy. Skipping and it's that still happens. That's reassuring. [00:10:45] Catherine Cronin: Yes. Lovely. Challenges and Changes in Open Education --- [00:10:47] Alan Levine: Let's talk about some of the award things. Laura, you got a leadership award, a lot for the work that you did at University of Cape Town. How do you see the things that you were really involved with looking back now? Where is the university at with some of those initiatives? [00:11:03] Laura Czerniewicz: I can answer the first part, but not the second because I am a professor emeritus now, which is means that I'm not actually directly in that role anymore in the same way that I used to be. But I think it was simpler. It's funny, my kids say to me now that anti-apartheid days were easier, which of course I go, what do you mean? [00:11:25] What they mean is "there was a clear enemy." You could be comrades with all sorts of people against that clear enemy. And now the enemy's much less clear. [00:11:36] And so with Open Education and Open Access. I think it was clearer then, there was an opportunity when the internet kind of became mainstream and all of those original sayings about, "here's an opportunity for sharing." [00:11:54] Now sharing doesn't mean more cost. It means no cost. Breaking open the proprietary systems was much clearer. I think the argument to be made was much clearer. I'm not saying it was easy, but I think someone starting out in education now would have a more tricky time around what is open, what's the agenda? [00:12:23] I think all along the way I had a pretty clear agenda. It was obviously linked to a kind of values based approach. It was familiar to many people in South Africa, especially people who'd come out of anti-apartheid struggle and so on. Social justice agendas here are familiar. They're not as mainstream as they should be, but they are known. [00:12:49] So Open Education was tied up with all of those kinds of ways of seeing the world, and now it's much more difficult. I've got to the point now that I'm nervous to speak about being an open advocate. You almost have to go in with subtitles. I mean this and I don't mean that. [00:13:11] Sorry, I'm going off it a bit of a tangent. I'm ranting and let Catherine speak-- but do you want CC BY? Do you want fully open? Who's gonna appropriate your knowledge if you go fully open? Is it a little bit more careful. When you are being an advocate, you need to have a much clearer message. [00:13:29] Now, I think the message is, "It's complicated." That doesn't make for easy messaging. [00:13:35] Alan Levine: Yeah, like Openness means like "I'm gonna take all your content and repackage it and sell it and not give you credit." [00:13:42] Laura Czerniewicz: And it depends who you are and what you're gonna do with it. How about AI and and and and, which means that organizations like Creative Commons are in quite a tricky situation in terms of what they are stating. [00:13:57] So I'm not saying I had an easy time of it over my career, but I do think it was clearer what the end goal was. [00:14:06] I suppose the end goal is still clear, but how we get there is much more difficult now. [00:14:11] Alan Levine: Leadership is a word. Like we know what it means and we have our understandings of it. But both of you, because you have both been leaders in, in many ways. And as those kids growing up in those environments, I don't know if you aspired to say like, "When I grow up, I wanna be a leader." [00:14:29] And so what is leadership-- what's some of the more nuanced and important elements of it these days? And the work you do... people tend to think about, "oh, those are the people who run the organizations and they make all the things work". [00:14:40] But leadership, especially what you both have demonstrated in the last couple years is so many different things. [00:14:47] Catherine Cronin: I guess I'll speak first 'cause I wanna piggyback on what Laura was just saying. When I first got into and became aware of Open Education, my background was originally Engineering and then I did a degree in Women's Studies. So I did a lot of community education and studied critical pedagogy and feminist pedagogy and so on. [00:15:07] So when I saw what was happening in the open space, I found the work that Laura and Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams and others were doing in those years, and was really attracted to that more so than a lot of the work that was coming outta the US, which was very focused on OER and open licensing. [00:15:25] Just that social justice focus and personal focus was what attracted me and really inspired me and learned a lot from Laura and Cheryl and, so many others. And then, tried to ground that in the work I was doing in Ireland. They were leaders and inspirations for me, when I first got involved in Open Education. [00:15:47] In terms of leadership, I'm thinking a lot about it this year. I just think of the words "humanity" and "courage" because I think of the leaders that have inspired me and that I see now in all realms, not just in higher education, are people who really have the courage to speak to principles and call out. Like we say, we will talk about Higher Education for Good in a few minutes, but like we say in our manifesto, naming and analyzing the problems- clearly naming them, not being afraid to do that. And focusing on the human, and I know we'll talk about AI as well, but again, it was a lot of the work that Laura and I have done in Open Education and in the book was with respect for, and honoring humanity as the focus. [00:16:34] And this sounds simple, but you don't see it everywhere. It's increasingly obfuscated and not mainstream. For me, it's very sad. I think that we need more courageous leadership that respects humanity, that holds hope, that can paint a vision so people can see the difference from where we are now to what might be, what could be, more humane and socially just futures. [00:17:02] And then help and encourage people to step towards that. So I dunno how I got there, but that's my raw thoughts about leadership today. [00:17:10] Laura Czerniewicz: Some of the things that you're saying Catherine pertained to this moment. Because at this moment-- there was an old saying back in the day about speaking truth to power. it's really, it requires a particular kind of courage now, even more than before. [00:17:32] Catherine Cronin: Yeah. [00:17:32] Laura Czerniewicz: But the one thing that hasn't changed about leadership, I think is, listening. And that's always been true. I think people associate leadership with decisiveness and maybe it's a, I don't know, maybe it's a male version of authority and so on. Whereas actually to have the confidence to listen and hear and be wrong, that's a very particular kind of confidence. It's harder than ever now, actually, [00:18:12] I have to say that Zohran Mamdani at the moment is being pretty good at going out and listening to people and shifting his responses. I don't see that kind of single stance, fixed ideas approach to leadership as being a sign of leadership. I think that kind of inflexibility is a real problem. [00:18:38] That's not leadership. [00:18:39] Catherine Cronin: Yeah. [00:18:40] Laura Czerniewicz: [The] ability to be flexible and take responsibility. I don't think that one is escaping from that. [00:18:48] That actually listening and taking into account what is being said is a really difficult thing. It always has been and it certainly is at the moment. [00:18:59] Catherine Cronin: Yeah, I agree with that, Laura. And you're just reminding me when I'm listening to you speaking, , it sounds part of what you're talking about is humility, the humility of saying, "I could be wrong and I'm willing to change your view", and so on. And I remember years ago, [00:19:14] I used to talk about that, in speaking with people in early days about Open Education because oftentimes when people would first encounter someone who's openly sharing or what might be called an open scholar, it could be viewed as hubristic, "you're just out there putting your stuff everywhere." People would say those things. [00:19:32] I always viewed it as the opposite. And I think a lot of open scholars do that. It's actually humility saying, "I'm gonna put this out there. It's just what I do. It might not be perfect," That's the cape that you wear as an open practitioner. It's just the opposite of what it might appear to be. [00:19:51] And and that's, as you say, Laura, that's leadership as well. [00:19:55] Alan Levine: We're looking for, like these superhero leaders who are gonna fix things and we looked for that politically. We looked through it in the work that we do. The characteristics that you're describing are the things that, sense of human, et cetera, the humanity of it. [00:20:12] We had a great conversation about a year ago with Maren Deepwell and Amanda Coolidge from BCcampus who recently, stepped down into a new adventure. It's really interesting to watch their transitions from organizational leadership to doing the kind of leadership that I see both of you as being practitioners and outspoken critics and positivists about what Open Education can mean. [00:20:40] So I'm just celebrating both of you again. [00:20:44] Catherine Cronin: Thank you. And Maren and Amanda, just two amazing examples of kind of what we're talking about. Higher Education for Good: Collaboration and Impact --- [00:20:49] Alan Levine: Let's talk about Higher Education for Good. I'm not gonna ask you to tell the whole story again, but I wanna focus on how the collaboration came into that book. Did you envision that from the beginning? [00:21:00] What was the hope for the way it would work when you put the call out? [00:21:05] Laura Czerniewicz: The elevator version. [00:21:08] Funnily enough, we did envisage it the way it turned out. That sounds strange, and rare. Except it was even better than we imagined. There was this "Could we make this happen?" But of course, you can only make things happen that are nascent and ready to happen. [00:21:29] So it was also capturing what I think people felt and needed. Both Catherine and I had stepped down from formal roles where we had been in positions of leadership. [00:21:41] I can't speak in general, we were both pretty exhausted and the world was a real mess and it's still a real mess. But we were at that moment where you say to yourself, "Oh my God, is anything I did of any use?" It just looks so dire. [00:21:59] And neither of us are those kinds of people. We know that in the midst of the chaos and collapse, there are people doing good things and soldiering on. That's still true today. When we had this conversation about this possibility, that is exactly what we hoped for, that we would capture that dogged insistence on doing good in the face of what might feel intransigent obstacles. [00:22:31] And it happened. It's amazing and astonishing and bigger than we ever thought, but it's a real celebration of the fact that, in the midst of everything and something we have to all remind ourselves now, when we watch what's going on in the world, that there are good actions and people, no matter what. [00:22:51] Catherine Cronin: Yeah. And the, human again. Laura and I collaborated initially, like we knew each other through Open Education work over the years from like 2011 or 2012 or something online, and then involved in a few projects together. We co-chaired OER19 in Galway. [00:23:10] We have these relationships in our lives that you work with someone and it just clicks. Someone says, "what if?" And the other person finishes the sentence. Or someone says, "let's...", and the other person knows what you're thinking. We had that experience and we thought, we'll definitely have to do something again together. [00:23:27] As Laura said, we emerged from organizational positions at about the same time, staggering and exhausted but angry and fierce, just saying, "It doesn't have to be like this." We knew lots of other people who felt like that as well and knew that there must be many more. [00:23:47] We didn't wanna just rely on our friends. So that collaboration that you asked about, Alan, it started out with two of us. We spoke for about six months together every couple of weeks until we put out the call for papers. And we just asked, " what if, what about, could we." [00:24:03] We realized that we weren't encumbered by a journal's rules. This was gonna be an open access book. We weren't encumbered by our institutional constraints. So yeah, it could have poetry. Yeah, it could have artwork. Yeah we could partner with people. Yes, we could look for early career scholars and offer them mentoring and just everything we thought of. [00:24:23] We just thought, yeah, let's do that. Let's remedy lots of the pain points that we had experienced ourselves. So it was really healing as much as anything, for us. And we know from feedback from the authors that most of them appear to believe it was a good experience also. We really wanted it to be, it wasn't really by accident. [00:24:44] Alan Levine: And the, moment when it was like, okay, it's going into the publishers "we're done." Did it feel like you were done or were you thinking about, oh, we should have done this? Or did we leave this out? Or, oh my God, do I have to worry about typos? what was that feeling like when you finally said that, I think this is it. [00:25:04] Catherine Cronin: You called me that night and you were going for a swim. [00:25:09] Laura Czerniewicz: I'm always about to go for a swim. [00:25:10] Catherine Cronin: You were always about to go for a swim. And, remember both of us just said, we really miss each other right now. Like we, it would've been great if we could have physically been together then. [00:25:19] Laura Czerniewicz: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So there's two things I wanna say. The first thing is that we have fantastic publishers. It was so important to have publishers who shared our values and principles. And we found these open book publishers don't require article processing, book processing charges. [00:25:40] They make decisions on the basis of the quality. They cross-subsidize. Their whole publishing model is designed to further the principles of openness, which is fantastic. It's been great to see other books follow in our paths since then as well. [00:25:57] Then the other thing is that the book was always only ever part of the journey. So yes, getting the book into the product was one thing, but it's had a life of its own. What's been such fun is to see how the authors of different chapters have been popping up on panels together. People we know didn't know each other before. there's been ongoing projects. and that's just so happy making. [00:26:26] Catherine Cronin: Yeah. [00:26:26] Laura Czerniewicz: The collaboration is lived on. [00:26:28] Alan Levine: It was expanded and the challenge put out there in your keynote. Current Projects and Personal Reflections --- [00:26:35] Alan Levine: And I wanna talk a little bit about where we are in terms of those crossroads. [00:26:37] But first of all, I understand there was like this movement to make some regional activity hubs because I know that Catherine and I we've been talking with Heather Ross for something in Canada, and North America. [00:26:52] How is that approach working where you're trying to distribute out carrying on this work? [00:26:59] Catherine Cronin: In a sense, our job as co-editors finished when the book was published. We intentionally, as I said, created a community and tried to support that community and everything. And as Laura said, all kinds of different collaborations have happened since the different kinds of things, as you mentioned, like a regional hub, just different collaborations going on to write together, friendships across author groups. [00:27:27] A number of people have asked us, what about a sequel? Both of us feel, and Laura, you can follow on after me and to say it clear if you want, but it's not our work about what comes after that. This was our contribution to the pool of knowledge. And things are moving very quickly now. Part of a role of a leader is to step aside and make space for the next people that want to pick up that and combine it with their experience and other collaborators and so on. And that's would be I think, a much more generative way for the work to go forward. [00:28:02] So we don't have any ownership or intention about needing to be involved about anything at this point. [00:28:09] Laura Czerniewicz: And the interesting thing was that the book went to the publishers and then the next month ChatGPT hit higher education. [00:28:19] Catherine Cronin: Mm-hmm. [00:28:20] Laura Czerniewicz: it was like that. And I remember having this conversation with the author of the one chapter, which is about AI and saying, you can't possibly rewrite this chapter. And luckily the chapter was really about principles. [00:28:36] We looked at it again and those principles stand. [00:28:39] Catherine Cronin: Yeah, [00:28:40] Laura Czerniewicz: But if there were to be a sequel, it would be so embedded in AI and in the way that AI is embedded in higher education today, it would be different. [00:28:51] Alan Levine: Embedded or intruded to use a geologic reference. But, and I'll let you know, there was another nomination this year for another collection of Stories of Hope. And it says oh, someone did the sequel. I, knew not to ask and I wouldn't expect a sequel , [00:29:09] Your keynote in Cork was just so unkeynote-like in terms of the excitement and the idea about what do we do now. That was like a year and a half ago and oh my God, it feels 10 years ago. So if the crossroads were here, where are we now, in terms of being at the crossroads for Open Education? [00:29:36] Catherine Cronin: Go ahead, Laura. Yeah. [00:29:38] Laura Czerniewicz: I hate to say this because I'm an optimist, but in many ways I think things are so much worse. We've got Trump, we've got Musk, we've got big tech has just intruded, not just into higher education, but into everything. [00:29:56] And some of the gains have been rolled back. The way that Big Tech is infiltrated. Some of it's been exposed, it was already happening before, but some of it has just been sickled to the point of extracting would be really difficult. [00:30:13] From that point of view, things we were warning of have happened in that way. You wish they hadn't? And that's really scary. [00:30:26] Catherine Cronin: So the book was published in October of 2023. That keynote was, as you said, spring of 2024. we were still in the flow and, it was a lot about the book, but we wanted to stretch it and make it more than just about the book. [00:30:40] We intentionally didn't want to present a list of suggestions. It was presented as questions. These are the big questions that we think are being faced by the open movement and higher education at this moment. That really spawned a lot of conversation at the time. [00:30:54] And then six months later was the OpenEd Conference, which was about a year ago. We did a workshop at that and then invited people to address some of the questions. We had a big Google doc and so on. Then we went away and clustered that. And that's where, as you said, this kind of idea of regional hub came up. That was a lot of North American participants with some brilliant ideas. And a few people involved in that said, "yeah, I wanna be involved in taking some of these forward." [00:31:18] So that's going off in that direction. And then Helen Beetham published a book review, which was much bigger than book review. [00:31:27] It was like a follow on conversation, talking about democracy and authoritarianism and so on, in relation to Higher Education for good. And then Laura and I partnered with Helen and did a keynote at OTESSA this year about addressing the challenges to open education in an era of authoritarianism and big tech. [00:31:48] Like Laura said, the conversation is just evolving and we're still are happy to be a part of it, involving other people, bringing it different places and listening to what other people are saying as well. But authoritarian and big tech are just-- they're the rocks in the road, aren't they? [00:32:06] These are the big challenges. [00:32:08] Alan Levine: And knowing that same feeling of oh my God, the state of the world right now, and at the same time, like when I have chances for this scale of conversation or in organizational work as you're trying to , work with many people, but when you get individual, messages back or from people you've never met before, like to me, that always sends a spark of that little bit of optimism when you have a short but meaningful, connection. [00:32:39] Heather started the thing, because, and this happens a lot-- we're so busy and we're doing many things. Where are the times when you just get together like at a conference and you meet up and just have that unstructured conversation. And so that's where we're at right now. But we're on a monthly schedule now. It's so reassuring to be in a group of, sometimes it's eight, sometimes it's 15 people who can just, relax for a moment and then really just be human with each other, instead of trying to like, change the world and, do everything. [00:33:17] So I'm wondering if you find that in your work too, 'cause we talked some, Catherine about I see people retreating from being the public personas, to taking care of themselves or enjoying their gardening or their family, all such healthy attitudes to have. [00:33:37] Catherine Cronin: This year has been a different year for me. Some years, a lot of things happen in your life-- illness and bereavement and a lot of support needed, across my family. So work was busy in the spring semester and I decided to take some time off in the summer. [00:33:54] And that was good. In that space, some opportunities came up in the community, in the beautiful community of Kinvara that I live in, that wouldn't have happened if I was working at the pace that I was working at before and if I was online as much. [00:34:11] For example, on inauguration day, I had put up a post on Instagram. We all talk about we make these compromises about the tools that we use. I've never used Facebook, but I did start using Instagram and then it was bought by Facebook slash Meta. I didn't use it for a while, but I'm connected with a lot of nieces and nephews all over the world, including Antarctica with their posts on Instagram. [00:34:35] So I just put up a post on January 20th after seeing all those guys sitting in the front row saying, I'm really tortured about what I'm gonna do about staying here or not. Maybe you are too. And, if you wanna have a conversation or here's a list of some references, like Maria Ressa, Laura wrote a series of blog posts about using WhatsApp. [00:34:57] I put a few resources for people. I think like a lot of us working in critical approaches to tech. The personal and professional have collided a lot this year. ' Everyone in our life is now dealing with, "oh my goodness, I'm using these things and they're taking my data" and so on. [00:35:11] I've gotten involved with a couple of groups in Kinvara, one involves artists and parents and teachers and therapists about creative avenues of activity for children, young people, but also for adults. Not about "no phones", but just about addressing this issue of big tech in our lives and alternative ways of being creative. [00:35:34] We're using Signal so I can bring some of my skills, background and knowledge in a really gentle way and in a really collaborative way that we're all equals. And I'm learning so much. And my goodness, working with artists is so wonderful. It's just amazing. [00:35:50] So I've really been like feet on the ground, doing a lot of face-to-face stuff in the last couple of months that's combining a lot of parts of my life. That feels good. Still reading and responding and collaborating with people in this field that we all work in, but a little less time doing that and more time locally. How about you, Laura? [00:36:12] Laura Czerniewicz: So I can I talk about what I'm not doing? [00:36:14] I'm still doing bits and pieces. I, think I probably always do bits and pieces. It's very difficult to be in this field because it's all around us all the time. From that point of view, I suppose I'm doing both formal and informal mentoring, which is, great. [00:36:33] But the wonderful thing about not being in a formal role is the liberation of mental space that I have found. All that time that you spend on proposals, institutional and regional and network politics and is intellectual space being taken up. I am reading at the moment, I don't think I've read since I was a teenager. [00:37:09] I'm reading so widely on so many things. I've just ordered three books. One is on Palestine, one is on India, and one is on Mars. And they're all really interesting in different ways. I can now see how they all interconnect. You might ask what are Palestine, India, and Mars have got to do, but they actually do. [00:37:37] It's this wonderful place and space to have the head space to read in that kind of way. So it's ironically a fantastic moment for me personally to be able to do all of that sense making, not being caught up with all that other stuff, which is all important and necessary and part of the journey, but you don't have time to reflect. [00:38:05] Catherine Cronin: Yeah. [00:38:06] Laura Czerniewicz: You're in meetings all day and then you spend the evenings doing emails. I still see that. I still see people sending me emails on the projects that I am doing. They're sending me emails at 11 or at three or whatever, [00:38:19] And I'm on a podcast listening to something really interesting while I'm probably making something at the same time. [00:38:28] Alan Levine: Oh, I'm still like, like with the Palestine, India, Mars connection. I'm looking forward, and I know, I, I know there is one. [00:38:37] You've talked about some of this, but one of my favorite questions to ask people is what really brings you joy and hope away from the work? [00:38:45] I know some of the answers ahead of time, but I think it's really good to hear you share. I'll go back to you Lauta 'cause I think I know what it is, but you may have a surprise answer for me. [00:38:54] Laura Czerniewicz: You mean other than swimming? [00:38:56] Alan Levine: You can talk about swimming. [00:38:58] Laura Czerniewicz: That was one of the bizarre silver linings of COVID, I moved right near the seaside. I swim pretty much every day, winter or summer. And it's just life changing. And when you're in the ocean, it's really hard to think about anything else. [00:39:19] Alan Levine: How cold is the weather right now? [00:39:21] Laura Czerniewicz: At the moment it's about 13 degrees. It's not too bad. [00:39:27] Alan Levine: Is the water there, do you have a lot of waves? [00:39:30] Laura Czerniewicz: It varies. , It depends. I'm not a surfer, but every day it's different, so it's, endlessly interesting. You never get tired of the ocean. [00:39:39] Alan Levine: And what about you, Catherine? [00:39:41] Catherine Cronin: Yeah, I, go swimming in the sea, but not as religiously as Laura does. But I really relate to that when I do swim in the sea. It really gets you back into your body. I used to love that feeling 'cause you just have to be, especially when it's cold. [00:40:00] I am working less and as Laura said, making space in my life for being with family in different ways that I haven't been able to be, spending more time with family that are in different places, reading, Just getting healthy again. [00:40:22] The there's a real toll that the way that higher education has us working, takes on a body. For different people that plays out in different ways. But I don't feel utterly exhausted. I feel healthier and happier just to have that little bit more space and also reading more poetry as well. [00:40:44] So Higher Education for Good was just so great for that. We dug into that. I'm taking a short five week poetry class at the moment. The first was just the other night, just discovering, all different kinds of poetry, [00:40:57] Alan Levine: I could talk for hours to both of you. This is so enjoyable. Closing Remarks and Future Plans --- [00:41:01] Alan Levine: Thank you again and I wanna let people know that like we're getting to the part where we take, there are like close to 200 nominations this year for the awards. We have our committee, which are former award winners who help go through them. We come down with our short list, which will be announced at the end of September. [00:41:19] But a lot of the shift has been like away from the winners to everybody. I'm getting ready to post a list of everyone who was nominated. You don't just get to see who they were but I have the information that was in their nomination. And this theme this year it's the gardening thing-- i'm stuck on gardening-- about nominating someone is like planting a seed. You watch it grow, you cultivate it. We're hoping that's what happens in terms of all the people that we're trying to recognize. [00:41:50] So that's the plan. And then, mid-October we're just getting together october 13th to 15th, I think it is, we're doing this OE Global Snapshots of Open education around the world. We're gonna do a day on Europe and Africa and try to get just those pictures about what's going on. And then another day on Asia and, yeah North America gets in there somewhere. [00:42:15] The closing to that is gonna be the last day. And the award winners are gonna have a chance to be part of all those things, doing some lightning talks or sharing their work, and not just the winners, the nominees. [00:42:27] Then the last day will be the announcements of the winners, which is always very exciting. I hope you have your eyes out, for that. But there's another thing that I've been trying to do, I've been thinking about This idea about doing small bits of recognition. You know what it means when, out of the blue someone just says "thank you for doing that", or "this meant so much to me." [00:42:52] I've been doing this thing with one of Bryan Mathers Remix and it came up into the podcast I had with him. We call it The Hat Tip. I'm trying to get people to do one of these-- and there's some problems with the hats 'cause honestly they're a little bit male and whatnot, but it doesn't matter. [00:43:06] It's just go in there, take five minutes. Think of someone who did something for you. And just maybe send it to them not publicly, but privately, just to say thank you. And I'm trying to encourage that because the idea is like, if Catherine sends me a hat tip, I'm like, oh my God, this feels so good. I wanna do it to someone else. [00:43:26] Catherine Cronin: Alan, that is beautiful. I love that. And we're just gonna come full circle to what we talked about at the start, about leadership, humanity and everything. And for me, and I think for lots and lots of people, you just embody that so wholly. Like you're always about the human in open and that you've always modeled that since I first knew you. [00:43:46] That's probably at least 15 years ago since we encountered each other on Twitter, and you're still doing it. And thanks to you and to OEGlobal. As we've said about a lot of things today, it's more important than ever. [00:43:58] Yay for all of the things that you just mentioned. And if you need help, you know who to reach out to. [00:44:03] Laura Czerniewicz: You know what I also really like about these awards and the way you're framing them is they don't feel performative. There's so much of the social media kind of life now. There's a real danger, even open stuff, of it becoming performative. Hanging onto that sincerity and catching, people doing it right, so important. [00:44:27] Alan Levine: Aw. thank you and thank you for folks who are gonna be listening to this when it get published. This episode of OEGlobal Voices, the podcast from Open Education Global. I do something wrong with this. I don't have theme music that I use on every show. Every show I pick a different musical track that I, find in the Free Music Archive. [00:44:46] The fun part is trying to find a track that has some connection to what we're talking about. Actually today was easy. When I searched for "hope", there were like pages and pages of results, for open licensed music about hope. But, the one I picked was by an artist named Xenial (with an X) shared under Creative Commons attribution license. [00:45:08] And, I think you'll like the song, Catherine and Laura. And, you'll have to wait till I edit to see what the song is but the genre that's listed on this track is "uplifting gospel instrumental". So see that's almost like Palestine, India and Mars. [00:45:28] Laura Czerniewicz: And Mars. [00:45:30] Alan Levine: You'll find this episode at our site voices.oeglobal.org. And we try to get conversations going in our OEG Connect space or wherever you find us in social media or just send out to all your friends on Signal and other platforms. And I'm always really interested to hear suggestions for other people we should have on our show and. [00:45:52] Oh, my, my heart is warm on this morning, just uplifted my whole day by having this conversation. [00:45:58] Catherine Cronin: Likewise. [00:46:00] Thanks, Alan.