OER22 – the GOGN penguins cometh
In case you’ve missed it, OER22 is back with a mix of face to face, online live and asynchronous online this year. Everyone’s favourite conference (yes it is), is co-chaired by our lovely GO-GN team of Rob Farrow, Beck Pitt, Paco Iniesto, Kylie Matthews and me (although I’ve been firmly in the slacker category over the past month).
The papers are in, the reviews have been done and the decisions sent out. It’s going to a great event, so I’d encourage you all to register. The themes are:
- Theme 1 – Pedagogy in a time of crisis: what does an ‘open’ response look like? How has the word of open education changed since we last convened in person in 2019? What role do open approaches play in shaping a (post) pandemic pedagogy?
- Theme 2 – Open textbooks: with the crisis for students and institutions deepening in the UK and across the globe, and renewed calls for new policies for open textbooks being issued, this theme is for research, practice and policy submission exploring their potential and impact;
- Theme 3 – Open in Action: exploring open teaching, educational practises and resources, we are looking for submissions that show openness in action in different contexts and from a range of perspectives.
- Theme 4 – Open research: this theme focuses on the importance of open scholarship or research around any aspect of open education;
- Theme 5 – Wildcard proposals that demonstrate fun and creative practice in relation to openness are very welcome.
Combining GO-GN with OER also means a chance to commission more penguin images from Bryan. And maybe even some animated bumpers. I’m coming to the conclusion that ‘finding excuses to commission work from Bryan Mathers’ is now my guiding principle in work.
As an aside with my interest in metaphors, Bryan and Rob explored the use of penguins as the images in this paper. Penguins are cute and as Bryan says “Who doesn’t love a penguin? Curious, collaborative, and playful: but also vulnerable, exposed, on a yearly pilgrimage through the bitter Antarctic desert, surviving against the odds”. Well, people who spend time with them are less keen (ask my colleague Mark Brandon who has shared time in Antarctica with them). My daughter sent me a link to this article that related how when zoologist George Levick observed the Adélie penguins in 1910 he was so shocked by their behaviour that he only wrote about it in coded Greek in his notes. He comments “There seems to be no crime too low for these Penguins”. Proving the point that what is a good metaphor for some, may be a bad metaphor for others. The GOGN penguins are universally lovely though.
