Terry Greene has been producing the Gettin’ Air podcast since 2018, with over 170 episodes described on his site as “30-ish minute chats with those working in open and technology-enabled learning.” from people in technology, libraries, educators. It’s main value is making the ideas and motivations of people evident in a very relaxed style, while at the same time opening up discussions on topics across the field.
In a way, this is as much a form of recognition as this awards program, that the work and efforts people do in the field of education are honored. Terry has been doing this in the side of his primary jobs, first while he was at Fleming College and now at Trent University. This kind of work to celebrate the people of open education can be overlooked in the focus on content, technology, and procedure.
Listen to Gettin’ Air
Follow Terry Greene on Mastodon and see his blog posts about Gettin’ Air.
Terry does an impressive amount of prep work before an episode, but its not readily evident in his casual style. I have known this is because he will often reach out to colleagues to ask for any special insight or fun fact about a future guest. I really felt that I could have nominated Terry for a catalyst award, but truly, Gettin’ Air is a wildcard kind of production, fueled by human interest. Just sample any of his episodes for an understanding why Gettin’ Air is award worthy.
Award Nominator
I do appreciate the way Terry does indeed crowdsource ideas for questions to particular guests from people close to the guests. I have to admit to a bias here – I love Terry and have been on one of his podcasts as a guest once or twice and he really is a gifted podcaster. To retell stories of openness this way can make it easier for many of us to share with non-believers in our institutions and help us build allies and momentum.
Award Reviewer
Getting Air’ is a podcast that exemplifies openness at its core, covering a wide range of topics while consistently connecting them to open pedagogy, learning, teaching, and education as a whole. With its extensive repository of knowledge and available episodes, it stands as a valuable resource in the field. As a reviewer, I shall continue to follow this podcast closely.
Award Reviewer
From the Awardee
For an awards session at the OEGlobal24 conference in Brisbane, Australia, Terry recorded a special episode of Gettin’ Air as his “acceptance” speech.
Explore more about this awardee…
It’s very appropriate for the first episode of Gettin’ Air after receiving this award, Terry has published a new episode with Kimberlee Carter, winner of a 2024 Catalyst Award.
See Also
Podcasts from Open Education Global
As part of our putting the podcast on the road series we recorded this episode at the podcast studio of Terry Greene, Senior E-Learning Designer at Trent University Online in Peterborough, Ontario. Terry is host of Gettin’ Air “The Open Pedagogy Podcast” that each week features a conversation with practitioners of “technology-enabled and open learning practices in Post-Secondary Education.”
Terry describes himself as an “Enthusiast for digital, open pedagogy.” In addition to his work at Trent University, he is teaching an Instructional Design course at Lambton College.
The Gettin’ Air show was an inspiration for OEG Voices and Terry has been part of the OE Global circle, having earned a 2019 OE Award for Excellence for his Open Learning Patchbook projects and also a previous presenter at OE Global conferences. I had collaborated with Terry on the eCampusOntario Ontario Extend (for faculty) which was an impetus for Liberated Learners (“how to learn with style”) a multi institution, student led project the Terry organized. We will talk much about this fantastic project in the show.
Mainly this was a chance to turn the microphone tables on terry and interview him on his own show. This episode will also appear soon as a Gettin’ Air episode.
Let’s get some air with Terry. And we were joined by his adorable daughter who herself attended the OEGlobal19 conference in Milan.
Web Sites Links and Quotes for Episode 41
“[Course building at Trent University] is the opportunity for many people to work on them and gave a lot of people the chance to taste the creation of open educational resources. Then we are proud of it, we promote it in webinars. Every time we build a course we are trying to infuse the use of OER that are out there.”
Terry Greene on his work at Trent Online
- Learning Nuggets (Terry Greene’s Blog)
- Gettin’ Air Podcast
- The theme song “Gettin’ Air” by Calgary band Chixdigit
- VoiceEd Radio
- Opportunity to review pre-release versions of books:
- Martin Weller’s Metaphors of Ed Tech (Gettin’ Air episode)
- Hannah McGregor’s A Sentimental Education (Gettin’ Air episode)
- Audrey Watters’ Teaching Machines (Gettin’ Air episode)
“For anyone listening I think it’s great, I hope they get to know all these people, take these great ideas and run with them, and hopefully get some inspiration from the work all these people are doing”
Terry Greene on Gettin’ Air
- The Liberated Learner Project
- Wicked Problems (“the wicked problems that learners face every day”)
- Liberated Learner Chill Beats (music to study by created by students at Seneca College)
Ontario Extend was designed for empowering educators to teach in modern digital age. Lena Patterson, then project director at eCampusOntario always said we should do this for students some day.. This was one of the projects we got to do this under an eCampusOntario grant, with involvement from seven universities– it is a mirror image of Extend. Because the original was ‘by educators for educators’ we wanted to re-create that having it ‘by learners for learners.’ We got to hire students as co-designers. We used Wicked Problem to allow students to identify the content to be included in the modules all that help students to become more independent online learners.
Terry Greene on the Liberated Learner Project
- The Open Patchbooks (2019 OE Award For Excellence in Open Pedagogy)
- Institute for Emerging Leadership in Online Learning (Online Learning Consortium)
- The SUNY Online Course Quality Review Rubric (OSCQR)
“I hope we can build real robust online options that will add to the flexibility of the experience… I hope she will have the choice to do it in a high quality environment in person or off or both, and where there’s less of a stigma about online being lower quality.”
Terry Greene on what he hopes his daughter’s university experience will be like.
Since Terry’s theme song is licensed for use only on VoiceEd radio, we found our own open licensed music for this episode in the Free Music Archive, a track called
Free As Air [Original mix]by mildtape & Ebsa licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.
The Gettin’ Air logo was created by Bryan Mathers / Visual Thinkery licensed likely CC BY-NC and hopefully used with permission by Terry Greene.
The introduction was created with the OEG Voices Mixer featuring voices of Gardner C, Terry G, Maren D, Lena P, Nicole N, Judith S, Ajita D, Jöran M-M, Werner W, Lori-Beth L, and Clint L(learn how to add your voice to the mix).
- Tech Talk: E-learning Designer Wins Award for Innovative Podcast (Education news Canada)
Podcasts from Open Education Global
Tune in to our newest podcast episode which features… a podcaster! We bring you the voice of Terry Greene from Trent University, whose Gettin’ Air podcast was recognized with a 2024 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Wildcard category.
There is a bit of overlap at play as our host Alan Levine opens with the announcement style of Gettin’ Air followed by Terry voicing the usual opening to OEGlobal Voices. Listen as well for a different twist on the Gettin’ Air theme song. Plus this same episode is going to be cross-published simultaneously as an episode on the Gettin’ Air show.
Described as an “open pedagogy podcast” the 180+ episodes of Gettin’ Air features 30 minute conversations with practitioners in open and technology-enabled learning. Terry’s forte is his prior planning that includes insightful questions about their work, but also key questions in a relaxed format that bring out the human side of Terry’s guests. You can easily see that Gettin’ Air is an inspiration for our own OEGlobal Voices podcast.
Listen in to learn about Terry’s influences growing up in Banff, Alberta, how he got started in podcasting insights into his approach to interviewing his guests, his interests in hip hop music as a metaphor for creating online learning materials, his experience in creating “audio books with beats” as well as supporting the creation of audiobook chapters for Higher Education for Good. Terry’s enthusiasm is contagious and you will discover how he lives up to the recognition as a “wildcard.”
This episode was recorded back in June 2025 during the open nomination period for the Open Education Awards for Excellence– the intention was to ask Terry to give an incentive for others to submit a nomination. Of course we are now past the point since the 2025 Award winners were announced last month. But let Terry’s answer to “why nominate” seed your thoughts for 2026!
It’s not about creating flashy stuff, it’s about creating stuff with heart…. And everybody deserves some recognition for that. It makes me think of Kimberlee Carter from last year, Open Catalyst. She’s not doing flashy stuff, but she’s working her *** off to get people to be aware of OER at Conestoga in in Ontario.
Terry Greene on why you should nominate someone for an OEAward
at Descript.com
In This Episode
FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.
Turning the Tables: An Interview with Terry Greene
In this episode of OE Global Voices, host Alan Levine interviews Terry Greene, host of the Gettin’ Air podcast and Senior E-Learning Designer at Trent University. They discuss Terry’s journey into open education, his approach to podcasting, and his inspirations, including the influence of DS106 and his connections to the hip hop world. Terry also shares his thoughts on balancing work and family and offers insights into his favorite projects and aspirations for an advanced degree. Throughout, they emphasize the importance of community recognition in open education and encourage nominations for the 2025 awards.
- 00:00 Intro Music and Highlight Quote
- 00:43 Welcome to the Podcast
- 00:57 Flipping the Script: Alan Interviews Terry
- 01:44 Terry’s Background and Achievements
- 02:55 Podcasting Journey and Inspirations
- 05:06 Life in Banff and Early Education
- 07:23 Discovering Open Education
- 09:01 The Art of Podcasting
- 15:55 Hip Hop and Online Learning
- 18:10 Creating Audio Books with Style
- 25:29 Future Projects and Aspirations
- 29:48 Encouraging Nominations and Final Thoughts
(end of AI generated show notes)
Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 87
I don’t overthink the quality of the audio. I just go by good vibes. And the vibes come from finding fun background music, finding interesting stories to talk about. Think of how fun it must be, I assume for Nardwuar to track down Kendrick Lamar’s childhood friend and find out what his silly nickname as a throw back. So digging and finding those fun stories to connect and make someone excited to talk to you is what I enjoy.
Just tell the stories you’re interested in telling. For me, the Gettin’ Air concept just happened when that song came on. This was when Stephen Hurley said, “you should start [a podcast].” And I wasn’t sure how to do it or what it should be about. And the song “Gettin’ Air” said get some airtime for people to share what they do in open education.
Terry Greene advice on podcasting
- 2024 Wildcard OE Award Winner Gettin’ Air With Terry Greene
- Learning Nuggets (Terry’s blog)
- Gettin’ Air The Open Pedagogy Podcast
- Gettin’ Air (song by Chixdiggit)
- Gettin’ Air with Terry Greene (Hurley in the Morning Podcast)
- Gettin’ Air Episode 1 Jenni Hayman
- Gettin’ Air Episode 177 Dave Cormier Gets COLD
- Gettin’ Air Alan Levine: OEG Voices (this same episode!)
- Banff Centre
- DS106 (Open Digital Storytelling Community)
- Terry’s Recommended Podcasts and Influences
- Steez-Based Learning (Learning Nuggets blog)
- You Know My Steez by Gang Starr (YouTube)
- EZ Learning – Audio Books with Beats
- Check the O.L. podcast (Terry Green and Anne-Marie Scott)
- Song Exploder (Podcast)
Listen to Gettin’ Air
Listen to more from our series of episodes recorded with Open Education Awards for Excellence winners.
I think I noticed a connection or a comparison of it between the work I do as building online courses with subject matter experts. And what you’re doing is curating different technologies and resources , putting it into a module. But you’re building a rhythm of each module. And it I think feels like hip hop, which is also technological– it started because they messed with how a turntable works. They stopped it with their hand instead of just letting it play. And that was scratching and sampling.
I can see what we’re doing in online learning is sampling things and we’re trying to make the most out of the technology we’re handed. So maybe the learning management system is the turntable and we’re not quite perfectly happy how it works, so we gotta put our hands on it and mess with it.
Terry Greene on hip hop music as a metaphor for rearing online learning resources
Usually our music for OEGlobal Voices are open licensed tracks from the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist), but we wanted to pay tribute to the song that inspired Terry’s podcast. Since that song is not openly licensed, we have an unprofessional version of the opening chords played on guitar by host Alan Levine.
