OER the seas and far away....

I'm packing frantically to travel down to South Africa and onwards to Namibia tomorrow, volcanoes and strikes permitting. My destination is first Johannesburg, and then a short flight onwards to Windhoek, capital of Namibia, where I will be giving an invited presentation to the UNESCO Open Educational Resources Conference organised in conjunction with the Commonwealth of Learning.

I'm looking forward to attending the conference, and visiting another African nation. I learn so much every time I venture out of my own country, and often use the things I see in my writing and presentations. My last trip overseas a few weeks ago was also to Africa, to the Gambia, on the West coast, where I saw a lot of stuff that really opened my eyes to the incredible poverty most of the world's population live in. If you ever get complacent about life, go to Africa. My thoughts about education and its purpose changed radically as a result of my one week's stay, as you can see if you read my post What Price Education?

Namibia is not such a poor country as the Gambia, but I anticipate that I will once again be challenged by the places I visit, and the sights I will see. I had never dreamt I would go to Namibia - it was just another place on the map. But the invitation came out of the blue last month and so I jumped at the chance. My talk, mainly courtesy of Ulf-Daniel Ehlers (and also with thanks to Carmen Holotescu) is based loosely around the question: 'What's so Good about Open Educational Resources?' In it I will try to outline some of the benefits I can see in its use for individual learners, teachers, institutions (schools, colleges, universities), professional networks, and communities of practice. I will be interested to hear the feedback from my audience when I present on Monday.

I will say more about my Namibian excursion when I return, hopefully in time to cast my vote in the UK General Election on Thursday.

(The picture above is one I took of an old fisherman, looking out over the sea in the Gambia).


Learning with 'e's by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.