Hello, I am Adeline Bossu. 
I am so happy to be here! This platform is amazing! 
Our team PhDOOC is proposing an interactive asynchronous activity where you can help us to improve the way we are inviting MOOC participants to create learning groups! You are welcome!
See you there!
Una welcome, how una dey? This is common West African, pidgin English of welcome and how are you people. I am Esther Ojeah, a Trustee of African Prisons Educational Network, full time, Deputy Controller (Director) with Nigerian Correctonal Service with seconded works as Correctional Adviser, UN peacekeeping Mission in Chad(2009-2010), UN Peacekeeping Mission in Liberia(2016-2017). In 2018 I lead my Nigerian Correctonal Service to emerged among winners of Unesco literacy Prize, presenting a concept: National Open University centres in Nigerian Prisons and inmates General Education programs. That’s why I remain interested,committed to Open Education as, particularly for Prisoners to have University Education the open Education for teaching, exams, learning materials is inevitable and impactful. Likewise for Nurseries or Preschools ( for Prisons which encourages nursing female inmates with babies)Primaries, secondary, Literacy or TVET open Education resources are necessary. Also to ensure UNSDG4, UNSDG5 of Education for All before 2030 Agenda. Looking forward to impactful conference and relationship thereafter.
Hello et bonjour du Canada (Ottawa)
Hello Team RLOE!
I’m Sharon, department chair-librarian at one of the City Colleges of Chicago! I look forward to meeting everyone. 
Best,
Sharon
Hi,
I am Pamela Price who works in NJ at Mercer County Community College’s library. Our OER effort is striving to move from an interest to a full-fledged OER program. To do so, it needs leadership to move it forward and I see myself as a person at my institution with OER fire in my belly - so to speak. My participation in this group is to keep me focused on this goal and to learn from those who have been where my institution is on the OER spectrum of engagement, practice and service with a particular interest in its ability to serve in the spirit of DEI.
Welcome Esther, and I just adore the West African welcome, it feels warm.
Thanks for being here for the conference and hope you share more about your work using open education to support people in prisons.
Hello, xin chào. This is Minh Do from Vietnam. Have a good day!
And hello to you. I hope Google translate does this well:
Chào mừng đến với cộng đồng này.
Thanks for visiting and please feel welcome to ask questions or reply to any messages in OEG Connect.
Hi there. I’m from Treaty 8 territory
Treaty 8 Tribal Association - Wikipedia (AKA Fort St. John BC)
I now live in Prince George, which is the unneeded land of the Lheidli T’enneh people. I’m very British myself on both sides, and I regularly visit England. By regularly I mean twice but I dream of fish and chips often…I work at a public institution, the College of New Caledonia. we are growing as in institution and I want to learn from everyone in this group about how to better myself as in instructor and policy writer and also my college as a whole.
I recently tried to rescue a German tourist (long story) and ended up connecting with the people on the land in Alexis creek near here that burned a few years ago. Crazy to hear about that experience from local people who were literally trapped by the forest fires that just inconvenienced me with smoke. The army dropped food for the community to keep them alive while those fires burned. Can’t wait to connect with all of you. Val
Hello and welcome, Val, from my location in Treaty 4 lands a wee bit east of you.
Thanks for sharing your stories and work interests at New Caledonia… please make good use of this space to connect more, Alan.
Nice to meet you Alan.
Hola, olá, Hello!
A comunidade Alquimétricos manda abraços desde Brazil e Argentina!
Ainda não conhecem Alquimétricos?
Temos uma notícía muito boa para a comunidade REA:
- O projeto Alquimétricos LAB já está disponible no catálogo de recursos da #OEWEEK Open Education Week
- O lançamento (em Português) vai acontecer no 10 de Marzo às 19:00 (BR), fica ligade! Open Education Week
- An English track on Open STEAM Resources and alternative ways of producing and distributing OERs will be at March 11th, 17:00 Open Education Week
- Invitamos a la comunidad REA hispana a que participe de una “juntada” online para conocernos e intercambiar experiencias 11 de marzo, 15:00 (Argentina) Open Education Week
Vivan los/os REA!!
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I’ll be there! thanks for sharing
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Hola, olá, hello! I don’t miss it for anything!
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Vai ser demais!! It’s gonna be awesome!!
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Hola/ola and many thanks for the multiple sessions…!
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Hello! My name is Robin Pesko, I’m currently in South Carolina (Columbia). I am a librarian at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College in Orangeburg, SC. I’m passionate about the possibilities that OERs create for equality in education- although tech is still an issue, that quote by Stephen Gould is always in the back of my mind (“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”) …I think that OERs are going to be a major push in the evolution of education, and are crucial to the growth of a more equitable and healthy society. The first experience I had with OERs was in grad school, and it blew my mind that I wasn’t going massively in debt for textbooks the way I had done in undergrad. I also hadn’t anticipated the addition of so many different layers of interactivity- being able to use .gifs to respond as you read a pdf, creating materials that grow and evolve with the course (or a portfolio that grows with your career). There are just too many amazing things about OERs to list, and I’m always finding new layers of utility and fun in the “OER Onion”.
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Hello and welcome here, Robin. I just peeked in at Google Maps to spot Orangeburg between Columbia and Charleston, so you are not too far from the beach (?).
Ahh and a quote from Stephen J Gould, I read almost all his books while a graduate student in Geology, I just loved the way he wrote clearly (and passionately) about science, and society - was that quote from Mismeasure of Man?
My school days were long before OER and much internet use, but I did have a professor in the 1980s for structural geology where we all were assigned a topic to research and what we wrote ended up in a published NASA book (it’s on my shelf)-- it’s only now that I know Dr Lowman was teaching with an OEP approach.
Thanks for visiting here, and bring back the fun and usefulness of that onion.
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WOW, it sounds like your structural geology professor was way ahead of his time. Unfortunately, I find the commute super stressful (there is basically no policing on the highway, so people regularly go well over 100 mph, and 26 in South Carolina is actually super dangerous). I do need to get over it though, since I really want to see the aquarium. I’m actually not sure which book it is from- to be honest, I’ve read bits and pieces of Gould and Carl Sagan, but I can’t actually say I’ve read either of them cover-to-cover. I keep meaning to, but I have over a terabyte of ebooks I mean to read, along with several stacks of books taller than my head that are on my “list”. So I’m afraid I’m guilty of this Ricky Gervaiss bit. I’m not born and raised in SC, I’m originally from Michigan… it’s been a crazy shift in culture. I had more culture shock with this move than I even came close to when I did a homestay in Costa Rica. But sometimes it feels like the universe is yelling at you “open your eyes, you idiot!” …That’s how the past few years have felt to me. Orangeburg is rural, and very sharply segregated in terms of home ownership. And the white area is just generally better off in terms of infrastructure, internet access, housing etc. OCtech has a good mix of students, but the realization of how incredibly privileged I have been with my upbringing (my mom has a PhD in education, my dad two masters degrees- one in electronic the other in mechanical engineering) has left me a little dazed. Between seeing first-hand the lingering effects of racist policies, the impact of overworked and underpaid (and not particularly strong) k-12 curriculum/instruction, and then the sort of national reckoning we’ve had with George Floyd et al (and the fact that there are far too many people to name is also heartbreaking). Well, it’s driven home to me how crucially important OERs are. It’s easy to forget what it was like to be on an hourly wage once you have a few years of working on a salary, but OERs really are one of the few things that I feel like could really help us achieve a more equitable society. Haha, you asked for more onion layers… you didn’t know how deep they go! …But seriously, this is my favorite week of the year in terms of academia. I’m hoping to find more blogs etc. of instructors recording their real-time impressions of working with OERs (which, considering I can barely keep a simple library blog updated, may be asking a bit much). But this week always is so enlightening, I want ways to experience more like it throughout the year. And it makes me feel more optimistic, which is a nice change from my somewhat misanthropic outlook on life.
Hi there from Reading in the UK - am new to this space, and just starting out with OER creation. Would love to connect with other novices! Kath