 start it. So I've got a couple of housekeeping announcements just to welcome you all back to this afternoon's session. We have a little bit of lost property here at the help desk, so if you feel like you've lost things, I think glasses included, please go to the help desk and we'll give it back to you. But I also wanted to give a big shout out this afternoon to all of our conference sponsors and I think we could give them a big round of applause please, if you might. They make our conference possible and very briefly we're going to welcome back who's going to tell us very briefly about UK Open Textbooks. Hello everyone, hi I'm Bec Pitt from the OAL Hub at the Open University. I am absolutely thrilled to be here in Bristol and to be representing the UK Open Textbooks project. We've got a number of people involved with the project in the audience as well, so raise your hands if you were part of this project. So basically we're a one-year Hewlett project collaborating to raise awareness of Open Textbooks and explore the transferability of Open Textbook methods to the UK higher education context. We've been doing loads of workshops and promotional events over the past year across the UK. You may have been to some of these, you'll be aware of some of the work that we've been doing and we've been utilizing OpenStacks and Open Textbook network methods in order to kind of engage people with Open Textbooks. I really encourage you to go to the website, check out what we've been doing, we've got loads of blog posts, we've got some case studies that we've been doing, you can also sign up to find out more about our kind of next steps. If you've got ideas, funding opportunities, things that you'd like to talk to us about, please please come and talk to us. We're also going to be publishing a report of what we've been doing, the outcomes from the project as well as research papers. So keep your eyes peeled, we're on Twitter at UKOpenTextbooks and do please go to the website and thanks ever so much. All right so thank you very much and again thank you to all of our sponsors to help make this event possible. I'd like to welcome back Vivian Rolfner one of our co-chairs to introduce this afternoon's keynote and I think some more fun as well. So Vivian do you want to come up? The first lucky prize winner number 22 if you have ticket 22 at the back. Get yourself down here, get yourself a prize. So next let's get our forthcoming keynote Mamadou. The next number is number 88. Does anyone have number 88 and would like to claim a prize? No? I'm afraid you're going to have to join another ticket Mamadou, sorry. That one didn't work. So hopefully somebody has number 100. Hey Mamadou. So if we're doing keynotes let's do, let's actually stop off for a second and get a ticket from Marin. The next lucky winner of an amazing prize, we're not told you what the prize is, this is intentional, is number 21. Do we have a number 21? Hey there seems to be some kind of a conspiracy developing up at the back there and one of them not quite sure what's going on, they're all winning. So we've had four tickets, we give away three prizes. Let's get a ticket drawn by David Wiley. So how many prizes do we have left? Just two more. We need some more people to draw tickets for us. Who do we want to draw tickets? Oh Alan you can draw a ticket for us. So it's clearly all going on about there. There is one final prize, I'm just trying to think who's going to draw this for us and I think it needs to be Beck. And with that we conclude our grand prize draw. Or have we got any other prizes? Well there might be some more tomorrow. What is the more tomorrow here, why not okay. I shall let you get on with that I think. Thank you everyone. Well I've waited for this moment for a little while and I'm so excited to announce our second keynote of the day who is Mamadou Sulla. Mamadou is a lecturer or a reader at De Montford University and I've known Mamadou for a number of years and he just is totally an inspirational person and we're going to hear about some of his amazing work. He was founder of the Global Hands organization which really embraces students in the academic journey and in sort of social causes and Mamadou takes students all over the world on trips to work with local communities which is great but the bit I've always loved is his total putting students at the heart of what he does and making a real difference to learners. Mamadou is an absolute star in my eyes. He's a national teacher fellow which is one of the highest sort of accolades you can get as a university lecturer in the UK. He's a times higher innovative teacher of the year I think that was 2016, 2015 and I'd love to welcome Mamadou onto this stage. Thank you very much Viv, the chair. We didn't agree on a price but I'll pay you later. He's saying all those nice things. It's quite humbling and quite actually embarrassing because I like to hide behind the scenes and do my things so starting here. Yeah I also want to thank the organizers especially for inviting me to share the co-chair David, Martin, the water chairs and all the wonderful beautiful people here. I know it's about the end of the day and I've already thanked Viv for giving me the graveyard session. So can I just check if you're still awake and with me can you put your right hand up please, right hand? Can you wave it from side to side like you just don't care? Okay now I've got you. Good. I think I'm gonna kind of like share some of my thinking. I sometimes want to consider myself as a heretic because some of my thinking does not go quite easily with configurations of ways of knowing and being but I think that I am in good company here. I think I'm in the company of in the temple of heretics so I'm happy to share and so that hopefully we would actually do a bit of disrupting together but what I want to share today is just to I think it's important before I do anything before I share my work before I contextualize my work to share a bit of my positionality and my situatedness you know who I am and how that influences what I do. I think that's really really important. I think it's important to do that for transparency but if you're talking about reproducibility as one of the key tenants of research it's important that in actually being in sharing my stuff I am transparent and you know you can just take it from there but also I want to believe that a lot of the work I do is around pedagogies of disruption in order to generate pedagogies of hope because in terms of my situatedness in terms of my positionality I've been positioned in particular ways and the people I work with sometimes are positioned in particular ways and as part of what I would say we become seduced by the defective logic of the system and we accept the logic of the system which in itself is defective so how do I disrupt that but also you would be called a heretic if you do those things as well so I want to share some of my attempts at doing that but also unashamedly I am a scholar activist I love the research I do I love the teaching that I do I love the generation the production of knowledge but I'm also an activist in that I want to see the operationalization of that knowledge I want to see how it impacts on people yes let's talk about REF and TEF and the NSS and all of the other assets but at the end of the day it's about how does it impact how does it transform lives and I'm all about that as well that is very very important part that's a very important part of what I do but also it's about taking the classroom into the real world but also bringing the real world into the classroom so for me education must be about that and I want to talk about that symbiosis as well because if we talk about all of these things open educational resources open educational practice open education all of these things I think it's really really important we should wait it but one of the things I want to say is like I am myself an open educational resource and I'm sure that everybody here is an open educational resource not only in terms of the technological or the digital but also as powerful resources that goes across borders and boundaries and that impacts on lives and I think that's very very for me that's a very key part of what we do in terms of education I just want to say where I'm starting from and I think in a lot of my talks I want to start with this that throughout the world there are practical alternatives to the current status quo of which however we really take notice simply because such alternatives are not visible or credible to our ways of thinking and in my work with some of the UK universities it's always about how do we decolonize the curriculum because we have been imbued by a defective historical analysis and the situation of people and communities can also be very faulty and and I think for me it's very very important to say that there are other ways of thinking other ways of being other ways of knowing that are that are not visible or credible to our ways and this is actually articulates that very very well a lot of my work in terms of being a heretic in terms of being a disruptor is actually going against the norms of these things that we have been told adding are normal you know how knowledge is configured how it is produced how is it it's disseminated how it is sanctified you know these comes from particular pockets of ways of knowing and being and for me it's about being very clear from the beginning about that and also in a lot of my work I mean I've been coming across all of this situatedness all of this positionality and and what I have come to call even a negative neutrality because in academia we're expected to be objective and and to do all of these things but actually when somebody starts I mean the whole point is that a perfect point of neutrality would be zero but there is minus one minus two minus three in terms of the number line and there's one two three four five so sometimes people start from five or minus five but in their head they're starting from perfect point of neutrality and for me that is kind of like quite interesting because the institutions the founding regime the management regime the educational climate is all being imbued within the system that has its own bias and I want to step out of that but also in stepping out of that I want to be clear in terms of called um um uh uh Oakley's term of cultural affinity as developed by Bushnell as experiential affinity you know epistemologists of the south by the suzer we're talking about uh kind of like other ways of knowing and being but who I am in terms of where I grew up I was born in the Gambia I lived in the Gambia until I was 24 years old and I've been living in the UK for 20 years that tells you how old I am now but but but but I have lived half of my life in either side and they're not an in the south and and I think it gives me particular views but but but coming from a low resource low resource setting coming from a place where I have seen so much that has made up my experience makes means that I come with particular views about particular things which might not be the normality that that that that goes on so and and I am also a community development worker by background a youth worker and and for me it's always about how we disrupt the system um so there's the easy kind of like radical approach the liberal approach the plural uh the functionalist models approach uh from being very conservative about chain because for me what we do is not only about educating our students for me it has to do with social transformation you know how we change society how we make society better and yes we have to be we should be objective as as um as academics as practitioners but is that objectivity from a negative neutrality point of view from a negative neutral starting point I'm very clear where I'm coming from and as far as I am concerned I'm objective what other people make of that I think it's for them to deal with and for me to worry about and again I mean something that I've read as a as a young man but something that keeps on coming to me all the time because I do a lot of work in a number of African countries as well and this is something I encounter uh and Rotney argues you know Walter Rotney in his book how Europe and the developed Africa argues that the main purpose of the colonial school system was to train Africans to help man the local administration at the lowest ranks and to staff the private capitalist farms owned by Europeans it was not an education system that grew out of the African environment or one that was designed to promote the most rational use of material and resource and social resources it was not an educational system designed to give young people confidence and pride as members of African societies but one which sought to instill a sense of difference towards all that was European and capitalist and and and and people tell me move on you know that this is 50 years ago 100 years ago um but I can tell you that when I was going to primary school we had these things that we call symbols so if you speak vernacular if you speak the local language you know does anybody know what symbols are as anybody know you know you could think of all the disgusting things that you can find in the bin and you know like uh like um empty tins and decaying fish or whatever it is there and they will roll it up into this rope and put it as a necklace around your neck so that whenever you speak it the language that's what you have to wear and that was to discourage you from speaking any kind of language that was not English so when we talk about when Google for example talks about decolonizing the mind and how the destruction the greatest destruction was not the raping and the looting of the land but the destruction of the concept of self in terms of how we see ourselves in relation to how other people see us and I think that's very very important so yes I mean if for those of you who are scholars of postcolonial decolonial studies you will begin to understand the impact that this has because as far as I was concerned growing up in the gambia uh in my high school and in my primary school as recently as in the 80s and early 90s I didn't know much about my history because it wasn't taught I could tell you about um Alvisto Caramosto and Vasco da Gama and I could tell you about the plantagenets and you know Sir Francis Drake and how Columbus discovered and although I could tell you about all of this thing but I couldn't tell you about the history and part of what we're doing in terms of disruption is actually uh uh publishing books that are now being used in the University of the Gambia as cortex book to actually challenge some of these things and these are acts in which we're trying to disrupt but I'll come to that later but I think it's also I want you to see where I'm coming from so it's almost like a soliloquy or like a monologue where I just talk but I want to invite you to see what's going on in my mind and what I do what I do so that some of these things actually would make sense to you so um so scholar activists so on one hand you could see yeah Vif has been kind to say yeah I've won that award so I'm in this formal setting yeah but on the other hand I'm actually not I'm actually sweating there if you can see the picture I'm not just posing we actually get we just really actually do the things and for me this these are the two extreme ends of what I do in that one um I'm an I'm an academic and I do all of these things I get into these forums and we played all the game about publishing and peri or perishing or the ref and the theft and all the things that you need to do but but deep inside my heart that's where my heart is about working with communities to empower them to see social transformation and I think this is important because if you're talking about developing resources if you're talking about kind of like promoting accessibility and all of these things it's also very important that we should wait who we are and what is it that we're trying to do for me I always keep on coming back to the situatedness this positionality and who I am because that info that actually hugely influence my values and what is it that I do and what it is that I'm about so for me the cornerstones of open and and viv I mean viv has I mean because we used to work in the same university and she just used to go on about you know Moodle and OER and whatever are and you know I'm just thinking what is this all about you know I didn't get it you know and it took me a long time whether it's about open pedagogy or open educational resources or open scholar or whatever it is I think for me the fundamental principles that I want to apply are one of co-production how do I work with the people whether they're my students or whether the communities I work with and kind of like almost equalize that power imbalance so that we become mutual learners at the same time so and we co-produce knowledge I think that's key in everything that I do again is all about disruption because I work with a lot of communities who you know have been kind of like have bought into you might say a forced construction of reality or have come to accept this logic of the system which in itself does more harm than good so how do we disrupt how do we cause trouble because if we talk about disrupting the supply lines of the production the certification the configuration of ways of knows and ways of knowing and being it is important that we actually engage in that process it's also about accessibility how do we make education accessible how do you make our resources accessible and for me it's beyond the digital divide we can talk about if I'm in my home in the UK probably my the size of my speed would be about 70 max or whatever it is and when I do it in the Gambia it will be less than five and I couldn't get more than five so that has got implications about watching videos about accessing particular things or sometimes like you know there will be no electricity for 12 hours or 24 hours so so that that limits access so we need to think about other ways in which people access these things so how do we make it accessible but also I assume each and every one of us here is an open educational resource because you've got the knowledge you got the experience you got the ability to be able to engage at various levels with communities with people with students so it's not only about the static net or some people might not have got access it in particular communities but it's also about what we have within us that we can share at any given time but also the technology the knowledge transfer or the knowledge sharing and I think a lot of my work goes around knowledge sharing and I will I will talk about that in a bit and I'll show you some examples how we've worked with experts here and you know in other places to actually share knowledge but we go to understand as well that when I when we talk about these practices or whatever open we talk about in in whatever stage or face we talk about it it cannot be a one-way street it has to link with mutuality that if we're going to other places we're not only going so that we can learn and our students can learn but also those people can be engaged in the in mutual learning and that they benefit from the process as well again it's also about counter-adoxy spaces how do I create I mean obviously this always puts me in trouble because I don't always follow the what I'm told to do or how I'm told to do it but but but part of what I am about is about this disruptive spaces and how do we generate them and I would share some of them as well so my full-time job is to teach at DEMON for the university and I've been teaching there for the past 13 years so that's my job my passion is global hands I set up global hands with some students in 2012 and it was just like we were just tired about everything that was going on and we didn't want to be bystanders anymore and we wanted to do something about the way things were and I can tell you some of the stories that actually led us to take action I know in particular there was one incident where I visited two countries within a space of one month and I saw squalo I mean I grew up in the Gambia and I'm used to seeing low resource settings but I saw squalo and poverty and hopelessness so much so that like I like to recount I cried for three days and three nights because it was just so touching and I just said listen I'm gonna get off my backside and do something and global hands was that baby you know and and what we do is about education and public engagement for example we did a massive camping around around the back way there was you know you know about the back way when a lot of sub Saharan young people are coming through Libya and Italy and drowning in the Mediterranean and we did a big camping around kind of like kind of love hope kind of love light through music through documentaries through fundraising events but also with the media so but also like a couple of weeks ago we had about 30 people from eight European countries and we were teaching them around combating hate crime hate hate speech and and discrimination and all those kind of things so that's part of what we do in terms of international development we've taken over 500 students to the Gambia we do a lot of work around for example we build the second biggest library in the Gambia what I mean with the students without funding from any external body but it was about architects who designed the building it was marketing students you know who actually did the fundraising and the project management and all of those kind of things we also do publishing and I'll talk about publishing in a bit and that is more linked to being an open educational resource so part of what we do is like in terms of study visits we want to generate these spaces that are functional that are participatory that are relevant that's disruptive and I want to show you a video quickly and then I will come and share more about this thing as well okay okay that's fine I think this next one here is in the Gambia is is in Jufre you know about Kuntekinte and Roots so Kuntekinte was supposed to come from the village just about a mile from there or about a kilometer from there and then we're standing in this statue which is kind of like which is called Never Again and you could see the branded statue and it talks about the experience of slavery and the impact it has on people and we should never experience it again but if you just go on on my right probably about 20 meters you will come across the Chapel of Santa Domingo that was the first one of the first churches was built in West Africa by the Portuguese you know the era of exploration in the 15th century that was the first place that they stood and the the the chapel is still standing so you can still see it but also if you go on the other side probably about about 30 meters away you would see one of the first outputs of CFIO after the operation of slavery then you had the legitimate trade and and a lot of these big companies came over and started to trade with the locals so just standing there on one side you'll have the one of the oldest churches that has linked to history to globalization to the Spanish-Portuguese explorers on the other side you've got the kind of like because this is linked to the industrial revolution and kind of like the need for raw materials and the production and how that was acquired but also when you cross over you've got James Island which is the name of the King James where there was a lot of slavery and then maybe a mile there you've got where could take in days from so when we take the students this is just probably probably half a day of what they do in terms of understanding it deconstructing it and then learning with the head and with the head as well okay so and when we take them we want them to kind of like we have particular objectives around for example changing life changing experiences in terms of how they construct reality because in a number of western countries a lot of our students are very privileged about reality and don't don't necessarily always have counter views about what happened and how history has been explained so that would be one of them it was also about the impact of globalization and we do a lot of things for example we go to the busiest market and we get them to look at the five phases of globalization and they look at the they do an observational analysis of one of the phases of globalization and then they'll be able to go back to the beach later on and sit down and draw their findings and then kind of like kind of like learn from that process of the construction so these are some of the things that we do with the students or the objectives and I just want you to work this for a little bit I have to promote my university. Welcome to the Gambia this morning I describe this trip as transformative motivational and a lot of fun Students to get an international experience different languages different food different interactions it just helps really build the student experience and your experience as a person on our first real day here we went down to Mandua and as soon as we got off the bus people they're ready like a band was there we got up and dance with them and I'm not a dancer but I had a great time it was just a once in a lifetime experience. The language I originally thought be quite difficult but after a while after you've learned a few phrases it becomes easier like nangadeth which is how are you? Tomorrow means eating. One highlight for me was going to see the family and stay with them and eat with them. It's funny no matter how different a life you've had and no matter how you've been brought up you still laugh about the same thing. Just folks like home was like a family reunion. I have the confidence to go up to an employee and really sell this experience they'll see that I've done grassroots development work. Global Hands is such a great organisation it'll be nice to be part of something that's growing and developing how much the hub has grown and changed from last year it's just amazing having the chance to actually be involved to make sure that it's done in time was also great. One of many highlights of this trip is delivering the literary workshops. I've had the privilege to deliver the first project at the hub while it's still being built. I've learned so much from the young gambians they're all positive and they all they all help each other build their own dreams. I want to take this opportunity to welcome you to a school of high academic excellence. The highlight of the trip has been going to the placement it was really interesting to see how they delivered the lessons there. I've learned a whole new area around globalisation as well and about slavery. This house here is the house where they normally kept slaves also. I co-hosted at the Mandra hub opening. I feel I've grown quite a bit like just this week I've been here it has taught me like to improve on my communication skills. I've been really inspiring it's an inspiring in terms of my life and the things that I want to do in my life. If I had to describe the trip in three words I would say welcoming life changing and thought provoking like if you hyphenate it yeah thought provoking I wish I could just move here. I think what I didn't tell you as well is that yes the students actually were engaged in the trip they did a lot of learning before during and after but also it's about how do they work with the other communities. The Mandra hub which I'll show you pictures of later was actually the consultation for building it was done by our students the design of the place was done by our students the building of the project was done by our students and it was just students from different courses who actually did this throughout and we did not get any major funding to build any of this and now when our students go to Gambia they actually stay in there and there are other projects that are happening as well and it's now a massive resource one of the biggest resources that we've got around that can actually cater not only for for people who are coming outside but also for people inside but also it it is working on them on the model to be sustainable so that we don't have to be funding it but it actually funds itself to because now it can accommodate 40 people it's got the second biggest library in the Gambia it's got a massive hall for 300 people and it should be able to generate money in order to be able to do itself but in terms of transformation and one of the students said as I reflect now throughout the trip Momori was creating opportunities and asking questions for us to understand and engage deeper in the work by physically doing it this put us out of our comfort zones but I left the Gambia feeling like my learning experience had changed my life I found the trip very useful although I wasn't always learning about globalization specifically I was always learning about something whether it be about the locals the climate the history the Gambian culture or even learning something about myself it was a really good eye opener and nothing compares to having an experienced foresand rather than reading about it in a book and I did some I did some baseline um questions before and after and then like in the year we had about I think we interviewed about 25 about 50 people over three years and you could see in the blue section where people were at before and in the in the pink one where they were after in relation to their ability to embrace multiple perspectives and challenge thinking and you could see the big shift before and after and again you could see here an openness to and respect for a range of perspectives from around the world again you could see where they were in the blue before they went on the trip and after the trip again in relation to this one multicultural learning agility and you see they were here blue before and right after the trip as a result of taking the trip so I mean in in relation to the um to the Gambia trip um it's about students as co-producers because from the planning of the trip right to the implementation the video you saw was in 2015 in January 2018 we took 45 students from three different universities and now we're opening it up to other universities so that people I mean if there are particular courses from uh students from particular courses they'll just come on board they will work on a project before and they'll work with the local to actually deliver it after so that's about the study visits we do the other bit that we do in global hands and also through my work as an academic is the journal of critical science studies we talked about the invisibility and sometimes the perception that these certain perspectives are not credible so one of the things we did was we set up a journal of critical science studies and and basically it was about the challenge the hedge money and knowledge production um I mean I must say that over the last year year and a half we haven't produced an issue because I just haven't had the time um you know we've dismantled the old board we've set up a new board and we're hoping that um around August September we will launch we will launch again but it was all about part of the problem is like you're an academic you're you're an activist and you've got so many deadlines that sometimes some things have to fall down but um we've got a number of issues already there on the website and we had people from all over uh coming to actually publish with us and some of the articles are very very interesting so if there is a gist partner or open resource partner who wants to come on board and support this hey we'll come and work with you but it's peer reviewed and it's also open access and I mean our access was really good we were getting very high numbers in terms of people from different parts of the world accessing and also publishing with us and and we use this you know um as an open educational resource but also we've got global hands publishing like I said uh we set it up because there are a lot of southern voices that are missing from the discourse uh from the mainstream and and we wanted to inject some of those southern voices and southern perspectives into the discourse so we've been run we've we set up and the interesting thing is like we don't have experts running and the publishing thing we got students who are doing media they do all the designs and doing English they edit all the books and we got literally there is no other external expert everything is done by the students but you can go on amazon and you will see our books because we've just gone for that print on demand model and you could see that I mean we insisted that they were very high quality books in terms of the content and also in terms of the production and I'm I'm very very happy that some of the courses in the universe of the gambia are using our books as core textbook and this is changing is having an impact and that's what we wanted to do but also uh one of the last books um that we published was was about banjul uh the capital of the gambia and and one of my most interesting chapters was there about the politics of shit and actually yeah the shit was used as a political tool and then how it was used in the gambia by the uh by the British officers who were there and you know the resulting two outbreaks of cholera which killed sweet parts of the population but the system has not changed drastically from colonialism to now so just reading that it was just like wow okay that's that's really interesting so it was educated for me but but I'm I know that it actually provided counter narratives for a lot of people and that's the whole intention of what we wanted so we we do a lot of these books so this is the mandua development hub and it's a resource now that's being used but also when students go from all over they actually use it as well can I just check are you still with me okay okay good yes now now you get it you got it you got it but but it's being used for different things and it's a space it's a resource you know for people to do different things as well but also we're trying to get more into some of these other efforts because you got to remember that sometimes what I encounter in a number of low resource setting is also about the poverty of the imagination and they've been told for so long their life is that they begin to believe that they're like that and part of I said no things are possible we can do this and I come up with all these crazy ideas all the time said I'm sure we cannot do this yes we can do it like we said we were going to build the hub well we don't have money we don't have the plan and within one year we build it you know so I think that's a testament to how strong we should be in our in our in our convictions but we're setting up a food processing so the Manduar library is supposed to be the second biggest library in the gambler and we've got like really good books and we work with library staff from demonford university and it's probably got one of the few libraries that's got an online catalog so we took up some of the books and I've been talking to Viva about how we can you we can make some of that online educational resource textbooks more accessible because I mean I go to the national library sometimes and I see science books that are so old that they're dangerous science you know it's like things that are so out of date that you know people you're using it in the 50s and 60s I'm saying oh my god you know so and I think that's very and that's one of the things that we're trying very hard to use it to create this space where you know a lot of these modern books can be used there and we can produce it and something about the deficit but also I mean I think this is one of my favorite thing I don't know whether it's very clear if you look at the library I showed you the library before the library one of the other exciting thing is like it's built using compressed art when you when you buy when you make when you take a bag of cement you can normally make about 35 bricks but it's got it's very heavy on the environment because you use a lot of sand which you mine from the beach which is causing all kinds of erosion but if you use the compressed art methodology for one bag of cement you can make 120 130 bricks which is and then you just dig two meters in the ground get some mud and then it just does the trick so we've worked with young people from the village to introduce them to compress art brick and that's what we use with the young people in the from the village to actually build this and some of our students have been actually been able to support them to do that but the exciting thing is that the machine to make the compressed art brick I think the arum 3000 costs about 4 000 pounds yeah I've been able to work with two young garment engineers with support from some of our engineers here to build that one for 250 pounds that can actually do the same we're testing it I mean obviously some of the resistance is like ah this is not made from Europe so it's not good enough I said no let's change the mindset let's change the narrative let's so so and they they they they're testing it I mean I wish I could share some of the videos but I've got some videos of them testing it and I think it's going to take time but it's about developing that space where we can start to produce the things that are responsive to the local needs and and for me it's not only it's getting people from here who've got the knowledge who are willing to try out some of their theories their practice but also getting people to actually move in that direction the other bit is like I've got an expert an expert branding and marketing who's actually gone to the Gambia last week he got there last Monday and he's already started working with them and they're setting up a food processing company they're going to process right in the the Gambia has got two main seasons during the mango season it's from around April May till around July August max and then probably 60% of the mangoes would actually get spoiled because there was no way of conserving or using them so now we're setting up this company that does dried mango cashew peanut honey and I know I'm missing one of them well yeah one of them yeah and they've already started working on the brand and before he comes back by the 11th of May they would have started the production but the young people are so excited because they're learning about the branding about the production and for using it for both local and international markets and for me that is about how we how we share resources how we make knowledge accessible and it's not necessarily about having it logging it in the internet but having the the open educational resources themselves sometimes move into the environment and then do some of those things as well so what this piece I'm hoping that within the next three four weeks we will be able to get this going but also I mean you know I told you I told you I like disruption and I'm a heretic so we just went to Nissan I said yeah we want to run the first solar power taxi service in Africa give us one of your vehicles the electric vehicles and and they gave us one of their electric vehicles and we spoke to Sharp and they gave us some solar panels and this car has been shipped to the Gambia last week and it's going to be there by the fourth week of May and we're going to try to test the proof of principle because we did some research and we found out that some of the taxi drivers were using 60% of their daily intakes to just buy fuel but we've got so much on sign that we don't know what to do with it there so I mean today's been good today has been good in here so I'm not complaining I'm not complaining but what we're doing is like Rupert is my colleague on the other side and Ayola who was a student of DMU but she's now one of the directors of Global Hands standing there and that other dude I don't know him but we're quite excited that we're establishing a living lab in the hop where we're going to do all of these repositories and we're going to look at how we address local solutions local problems through local solutions but also hopefully this will be just the test of proof principle that it can be sustainable that it can be economically viable and that it can actually make a difference and if we can move into building a tuk-tuk style electric vehicles that would be my dream because the tuk-tuk style will take probably about 25 of the energy that it needs to run this kind of car but we're going to run this totally from the solar energy hopefully in the next four weeks it will start running and we'll start gathering the data and we'll start demonstrating impact and hopefully we can build other things as well also the other thing that we've done is like we've also kind of like signed up with Sunshine Solar Academy who are charity based in the UK they do some work in the Gambia and by the end of the month they'll be at the hop we've given them some space and they'll be at the Manduar hop so we were thinking about how do we drive the mangoes because to buy a solar mango dryer solar mango dryer will be about 140 150 pounds and then when we were having these conversations the lady said ah yeah we can build it for about probably about 20 pounds so we'll be building solar dryer not only to use for ourselves but to be able to sell it for other people who could also be able to use it but they will also be able to train young people because one of the biggest problem is electricity like there's not constant regular electricity wherever you are I think there was a press conference I was being had by the president of the country and suddenly the light went off it was very ironic but you know anytime the light could go off so and sometimes it could be for long periods of time that light is off I mean the new government is trying to ameliorate the situation but it is still not anywhere near there and one of the biggest issues for people who are off grid because the hop here that I show you is off grid so we've got to build our own borehole our own solar panels and everything but one of the problems for those people who are off grid is about changing their mobiles so many of the young people I think somebody said to me that about 1.4 million mobile users in the gambia you know which is like how is that possible out of a population of about probably 2 million so the people have got the mobiles you know so one of the problems is often charges you know so but this academy can teach these young people how to make the charges from scratch the solar charges and these are the kind of exciting things about transfer of knowledge about making this education accessible so that it can improve lives it can transform lives and that's what excites me about all of this open thing that we're talking about but the other thing that we do is like I don't know whether most I mean are there any post-colonial decolonial scholars in the house yeah you know Ngugi Wachungo yeah that's that's Ngugi Wachungo so he was in the gambia in 2017 we wanted to get him to come there and we do this annual logic of the system conference I'm trying to persuade some people to come and speak at the next conference in the gambia because we always do it and Halifasala is one of the leading politicians in the gambia and the other guy Silla is also one of the leading writers from the gambia and we always bring this this time we we also had some other people in January in January so part of what the students do is students will present papers at our conference that we do in the gambia in January and staff can present papers as well and we create these spaces where because for me there are two main things one is about how do we want one provoke consciousness and to support action as a result of that newfound critical consciousness and part of the spaces that we generate is for people to rewrite the narrative to question the logic of the system to develop counter narratives in terms of what we do as well and then we've got I mean the idea was that we were going to stream all this conference is live but the internet was so bad that we couldn't do this so I've been talking to some people said come on guys can we not do something can we not do something so and I'm very very keen to develop like a like an online facility where lectures can happen from all over the world but people can come in they have a very secure internet connection and I've been talking to a few engineers but I'm yet to find a solution so if somebody's got a solution we'll pay for you to come and have a great time in the gambia in the sun you just make sure you get the job done okay so in terms of pedagogies of disruption for me it's important because whatever educational practices that we talk about or we're trying to generate for me it's about learning with the head and with the heart as well because a lot of the learning is about learning with the heart with the head but how do we learn not only in terms of those models and static static didactic approaches but how do we learn with the heart with emotions which sometimes we're told to remove from the education process how do we generate those spaces where students can actually do that but also for me there is a principle of mutuality we're not only taking our students to go and be cultural tourists and to soak up everything how do we improve the lives of those people that we have gone into how do we transform the lives of those people but also how do we transform the lives of our situation our students I go there and every time I am I actually learn because you'll probably not be able to tell me apart from the students I immerse myself in the experience and I only shout when somebody needs is doing something that's going to kill them and give me more paperwork to write so but apart from that I'm always in the background and I do this so I think it's very very important in terms of understanding that mutuality but also the emotional distance because when I'm when I'm teaching in some of this very formal environment there's a very very big gap between me and the students and there's a very emotional distance and when you go in some of those spaces and you start to get deep and to get students to open up and then to be able to open up that's a different thing so you've got it but also be aware be careful of your blood pressure because you know when you try to do all of these different things you know I've been told I've got three minutes so I'm just going to shoot through this one you're so kind yeah but but I think there is about pedagogy practice and public good and I think there is there is there is um almost a three-legged stool there that can be explored in terms of in open educational resources and any kind of other open education we're doing so access to technology hampers OEP and I think I've already talked about that but the key thing for me is about finance and viability if you're going to make all of these resources available all of this practice is free who's going to pay for it and and for me that's why I've come to this conclusion that that the charity model doesn't work and I have over the past three four years transformed myself into a social entrepreneur I don't know what that means but it basically supposed to mean that you know I need to have a more business heart as well and I need to think about cost and kind of like and making sure that people are not giving their time forever and not being re-numerated and running away but also making sure that this the business actually generates enough money to keep itself going although most of it will be invested into social good but there is a model because if we do all this wonderful work and when the funding stop it dies you know is it worth it can we do a better way but also this this color activist continuum and and I do get into trouble a lot so how do you manipulate that how do you get your institution on board how do you get I mean we've not had any major funding from the apart from getting my national teacher fellowship of about 10 000 from the higher education academy most of which I spent in supporting the HOP we've not had any major funding whatsoever to do any of the work that we do I must say though that the Monfort University has been very very kind our vice chancellor has been very kind and also the setup in terms of the mantra of DMU is defying convention the environment has been created for us to be able to do a lot of this heretic disruptive stuff but again co-production is the key I think it's all about co-production how do we work with the communities how do you work with the students for them to take ownership of this process thank you very much for listening and I'm going to be around if there's any question and please feel free to get in touch if you've got any crazy ideas come on I'm game bring it on we are we have time maybe for one or two short questions and then we really have to run for this boat I'm afraid I would love to keep this here going longer I think that was incredible I think we need some more applause sorry so if anybody out there has a quick question we can do that now if not we can catch up with mum and do over the evening and over tomorrow please do seek him out and ask him he'd be keen to answer I'm sure thank you thank you announcement before we get on our boat trip which we'll start forthwith I'd like to just ask Anna to come up to the stage because there's one more person who's won a prize today and you can see as Vivian and David already shared coming to OER 18 definitely pays off so before the boats depart for our tour Anna is just going to give out one more prize so I'm just going to do this with a little it's a box it's a big box so where do we where's the number you I've got it thank you first off I want to thank that presentation it was profound and I think we're all resonating and digesting all that we learned so thank you again it opens the idea of this concept of openness and I'm very proud to work from a company that created a solution from the open source world and we often participate in a lot of these projects so it's very exciting we're a video platform end of plug but now who gets the prize and it is Debbie Baff where's Debbie Baff is she she's actually she's gone she's shot off looking back tomorrow well um Debbie's made us this drawing and it's the plot of the day so hopefully you can all help us make an even better one for tomorrow where the competition will continue so big round of applause for Debbie yes and thanks to culture for supporting our evening entertainment so if you're keen to join us for a harbour tour um off Bristol please go out of the venue the boats are just departing on the left um in the sunshine and we'll then meet back here for drinks and nibbles and music from six o'clock so the boats are departing um at five o'clock so please do make your way out