Wayne Mackintosh is the founding director of the OER Foundation established in 2009 and headquartered at Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. He is coordinating the establishment of the OER universitas (OERu), an international innovation partnership which aims to widen access to more affordable education for all.
Wayne holds New Zealand’s UNESCO / ICDE Chair in OER at the Foundation and Otago Polytechnic, and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the OER Foundation. He is a strategy innovator with a passion for open sourcing education.
Wayne is a committed advocate and user of free software for education. He was the founding project leader of eLearning XHTML editor (eXe) project (www.exelearning.net) and founder of WikiEducator (www.WikiEducator.org) – an international community of educators collaborating on the development of free/libre teaching materials in support of all national curricula.
Wayne has extensive international experience in educational technology, learning design and the theory and practice of open and distance learning (ODL). Previously, he was Education Specialist, eLearning and ICT policy at the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), an intergovernmental organisation based in Vancouver, Canada. Before joining COL he was Associate Professor and founding director of the Centre for Flexible and Distance Learning (CFDL) at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. At the University of Auckland, he was tasked with eLearning strategy and leading CFDL’s professional staff team. Prior to moving to New Zealand he spent eleven years working at the University of South Africa (UNISA), an open distance learning institution and one of the world’s mega-universities. Wayne has participated in a range of international consultancies and projects including work for COL, the International Monetary Fund, UNESCO and the World Bank. Previously, Wayne served on the Editorial Board of Open Learning for more than a decade, but now focuses on open access and open education research efforts.
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Podcasts from Open Education Global
The voices for will hear in episode 38 come from nearly antipodal locations but are very much connected as both Florence Devouard and Wayne Mackintosh were recognized in 2021 with Open Awards for Excellence in the Open Infrastructure category.
From one side of the globe, Wayne dialed in from Cromwell, New Zealand to share more about the award winning OER Foundation’s digital learning ecosystem that delivers open learning at scale supported completely by open source software (and at low cost).
And on the other side of this world, Florence Devouard was present from Marseille, France to tell us more about how the infrastructure of Wikifundi provides a way to bring the Wikipedia editing and exploration experience to places in Africa where internet connectivity is weak or absent.
Also joining in the call were Marcela Morales, Una Daly, and Alan Levine from OE Global.
Listen in for more details on how the open infrastructures of the OER Foundation and Wikifundi are making open education available through ingenious uses of open source platforms and content.
As our podcast introduction says, there’s much to take in at a global level, and in episode 38 we literally spanned the earth to bring you to fascinating projects and inspiring collaborators.
The situation is so different that what they need is not technical support but human support to feel more comfortable, more willing to jump in.
Florence Devouard
There are some skills in life that appear simple but are complex to learn, think about riding a push bicycle or learning to swim, you are not going to learn how to swim by reading a book… similarly if you want to learn how to learn on the internet using the tools of the internet it’s important to learn using those tools, rather than a single application like an LMS.
Wayne Mackintosh
The nomination period for the 2022 Open Awards for Excellence has closed and are currently in the process of being reviewed by the awards committee. Look for an announcement in October of the new list of award winners and expect to hear their voices into next year here at OEG Voices.
Web Sites and Moments Referenced in Episode 38
- Wikifundi
- 2021 OE Award for Excellence
- Wiki In Africa
- Vikidia (Wikipedia edited by kids)
- Orange Foundation and Digital Schools Program
- WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique (writing competition) and entries in Vikidia
- Kiwix (download Wikipedia and more for offline reading on mobile devices) – see Kiwix library
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- OER Foundation
- 2021 OE Award for Excellence
- OERu
- OERu Learning Environment
- Example Course Feed (Learning in a Digital Age, LiDA 101)
- OERu Web Services as of August 2022 (OERu Tech Blog)
- Digital skills for OER sharing (DS4OERs, Pacific Island teachers)
- Course reuse combined with local assessment at Western Pacific University, Papua New Guinea
- Samoa – Knowledge Society Initiative
- cOERtc Initiative community of OER as technology cooperative
Our open licensed music for this episode is from the Free Music Archive, a song called Polar Vortex by Parallel Parklicensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.
The introduction was created with the OEG Voices Mixer features voices of Lori-Beth L, Kristin H, Kevin H, Florence D, Patrina L, Clint L, Maren D, Ajita D, Gardner C, Wayne M, and Alex E (learn how to add your voice to the mix).
