I’m preparing for the DH-OER Champions Showcase and Celebration happening next week. You are invited. Click on the above link to sign up.
Spoiler Alert. If you read further, you’ll be able to read my welcome and introduction (still in draft). This is what I’m intending to say at the welcome on the 16th of November.
Welcome and context setting
Dear DH OER Champions
Today is your day. In a ridiculously short 15 minutes, you are going to be showing us the fruits of two (or more) year’s worth of your labour. We can only but scratch the surface of your efforts.
Programme leads and teams will be either playing us a pre-recorded lighting talk. And / or chatting about the experience of developing an OER. You are encouraged to participate. Whether it be on the backchannel (on Zoom chat). Or using the hashtag #DHOER on the platform that is your digital habitat.
This is the first time the South African Center for Digital Language Resources have run the programme. I think that many have discovered that producing an Open Education Resource (OER) is hard work. It has a technical element that requires a deep understanding of copyright law, licenses, devices, platforms. And it has a personal dimension that requires a willingness to be an agent of change and grow one’s own digital capability.
This work is also going to be available on the SADiLaR website. It will refer visitors to your repository and also to the lighting talk video that you made. So readers and viewers will be able to see what your accomplished I am so pleased with what you have produced. Congratulations and well done.
No one should underestimate what is involved. Especially when working in resource constrained circumstances that many South African Universities have to deal with on an ongoing basis. What you have made and what you are about to show us today is a part of a journey. Today we stop and celebrate and showcase your work.
A big thank you to each of the champion leads and the team members. For all that you have done to open up education.
A brief history of this initiative.
In 2022, the South African Center for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) launched the Digital Humanities Open Educational Resources Champions (DH-OER) programme as part of ESCALATOR. The purpose of DH-OER was to stimulate activism and research around the use and/or creation of OER for the digital humanities at universities in South Africa.
The programme provided support and funding for creating or adapting open-learning content and researching the process. The initiative was led by Prof Jako Olivier, previously NWU UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and Open Educational Resources (OER). After Prof Jako left for the Commonwealth of Learning. I stepped in. And offered to assist Anelda and the programme with completing this work.
Lastly
I am so pleased and honored to have been a small part of this open education champion journey with you. Finally, a big Thank-You to Anelda. You opened a door to an alternate world that I’ve been looking to step into for ages. I am so grateful.
Derek Moore’s (draft) welcome speech
The programme is divided into three themes.
- Multilingual Projects
- Opening up Educational Practices & Media Pedagogies
- Foundational Literacies
I will link to the final version of the programme once this is all confirmed.