 Thank you so much. You did a brilliant job in building this bridge and making my job certainly easier here. The only thing I would add to this wonderful introduction to actually this afternoon and the second segment about case studies. Of course the case studies are not only opportunities to challenge our conceptual thinking and eventually improve it here and there hopefully, but also really to get to know each other's work better. The way we approach it here is during the afternoon we will feature a number of case studies, a number of projects some of you have been working on but later in the afternoon actually during the break and then most importantly tomorrow morning starting at 8 30 here actually it's not in this room but we'll talk about that later on. We will give you the opportunity to present to your peers the projects you're working on. So if you haven't signed up yet for presenting your work please do so. Tomorrow morning is a great opportunity Caroline Nolan and Amir Asher. I'm sure you have his address. Are the right persons to talk to if you need a little space that we could arrange or set up a poster or a laptop so that we can have kind of more empirical messiness to start with tomorrow. So with that I would like to transition to Sir John Daniel and Stamenka Valic. I hope I got the name right the pronunciation. Talking about the lessons learned and the takeaways from a collaboration between the Commonwealth of Learning and UNESCO really asking the question how can we engage governments with OER. Obviously that was a stakeholder group this morning that wasn't represented on the panel directly but has come up a lot in the discussion already and so we're looking forward to you sharing your experiences with us. Thank you. Well colleagues good afternoon and thank you for pronouncing my name right. It's not often the case but that so I'm very pleased to have this opportunity. We'll speak about something a bit different than what we've been hearing so far and we're pleased to have this opportunity to report on the project fostering governmental support for open educational resources internationally which is being implemented by the Commonwealth of Learning and UNESCO with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In these three interlink talks I shall present the rationale for the project then Sir John Daniel will update you on the story so far and Zeynep Varoglu of UNESCO will tell you about the preparations for the World OER Congress in Paris this June which will be the culmination of our efforts. We start with the background this has been mentioned already but the story we are telling goes back 10 years ago when UNESCO organized a forum on the impact of open courseware and higher education for developing countries in which the term OER was coined. 10 years later some of the key participants at that 2002 forum are here today still dealing with the OER so we're going strong. I refer to Kathy Casserly then a consultant with the Hewlett Foundation Sally Johnston then representing WCET Zeynep Varoglu and myself representing the education sector of UNESCO which was then headed by Sir John. I apologize to the others whose photos are not here because I see some of these faces that were there 10 years ago makes us feel old. So UNESCO remained involved in OER and seven years later in 2009 it held the World Conference on Higher Education and I had the honor of being the executive secretary of this conference. The conference brought together some 2,000 participants which represented higher education worldwide and in its communique it urged governments to give more attention to the roles of ICTs and OER. There was a general feeling that at that time that despite all the enthusiasm and idealism in the OER movement its impact remained limited to the grassroots level. In 2009 it was easy to get the impression that the open educational resources community had become paradoxically a somewhat close group of enthusiastic producers of OER with much less attention to their crucial value which is their reuse adaptation and repurposing. For those who were there one of the memorable moments of the 2009 World Conference on Higher Education was a robust exchange about open educational resources between two South Africans. Professor Brenda Gurley then vice chancellor of the UK Open University explained how the UK OU was making much of its courses material available as OER on its Open Learn website. However, Professor Barney Pitjana then principal of UNISA asked whether OERs were not potentially a form of neocolonialism with the North pushing its intellectual products at the South. This was one occasion when flagging a potential problem early may have helped the world avoid it. Following the discussions of OER at the World Conference on Higher Education later that year a resolution was presented at UNESCO's general conference requesting it to promote OER further and arguing that the time was now ripe to bring OER to the attention of politicians. UNESCO call took up this challenge with a project called taking OER beyond the OER community policy and capacity for developing countries led by UNESCO's Zeynep Varoglu and calls through the Van Vijk. It was funded by Kohl and UNESCO with a contribution of $50,000 from the US delegation to UNESCO. The project took us through 2010 and 2011 and achieved some useful outcomes. We held nine workshops on OER for educational leaders in Africa and Asia along with three online forums and a policy forum in Paris. Taken together these workshops reached hundreds of decision makers from many countries most of whom previously had the big idea of OER and their potential. Following advice from these meetings UNESCO and Kohl produced two documents late last year which you can download from the website from the two websites a basic guide to OER and guidelines for OER in higher education. All this laid the foundations for the current project. Last summer the Hewlett Foundation offered Kohl a grant to team up with UNESCO in order to foster more support for OER among governments. This reflected the growing belief that OER would not enter the educational mainstream unless governments were made more aware of their potential and established policies to support the development use and adaptation. This was why the project is called Fostering Governmental Support for OER Internationally. The project has three interlinked activities. First is a survey of governments about their policies or intentions regarding OER. Second we are conducting a series of key policy forums for governments in all UNESCO regions. Third is the World OER Congress in June which Saint-Beroglu will talk about in a moment. An important aim of the Congress will be the debate and approval by governments of a Paris declaration about OER. Before we get to that let us update you on the survey and the regional policy forums. A survey of all governments is being conducted collaboratively by Kohl and UNESCO to find out whether they already have or intend to develop policies on OER. All the world's governments including the provinces and states of some federal countries have received the survey questionnaires from Kohl or UNESCO or both. To date we have received replies to the survey from over 100 jurisdictions in all regions of the world. The responses are being analyzed in South Africa and a report will be presented to the World OER Congress in June. We are most grateful to members of the non-governmental OER community especially those in Creative Commons network who encourage their governments to reply. The second activity is a series of regional policy forums for governments in all UNESCO regions. The rationale for these gatherings is that questionnaire surveys have their limits and that they take you there is little knowledge of OER among governments that face-to-face discussions between governmental officials with practitioners can help to raise awareness. This assumption of limited awareness of OER in governments has been confirmed in the three forums that we have held so far. A forum for the Anglophone Caribbean was held in Barbados in January. This was part of a wider meeting on ICTs in education but it did allow senior government officials a chance to review the first draft of the declaration on OER that will be presented to the World OER Congress in Paris in June and the meeting inspired several more countries to send in their survey questionnaires because they became excited about the topic. In February we held a two-day forum for African Pretoria. This gave us a challenge to profile some of the very exciting OER developments in Africa which indicate that the fears of cultural neocolonialism articulated by Barney Petiana three years ago are not the reality. OER in Africa are alive and well. A junior minister from Kenya even suggested the creation of an OER of OER units in ministries. Two weeks ago we held a forum in Rio de Janeiro for Latin America where comments from governments led us to produce a new draft of the Paris Declaration. Governments and civil society interacted very well. Indeed the creative comments representative from Guatemala met the minister of education for the first time in Rio. This Rio version of the declaration will be further refined at the policy forum for UNESCO's Europe region next week. This region in UNESCO terms includes Canada, Israel and the US and the forum will take place within the open core square conference being held in Cambridge UK. Later in April we shall hold the forum for the Asia-Pacific region in Bangkok and finally one for the Arab states in Oman in early May. Thank you, this is not the place to give you a detailed account of the responses received to the survey so far and all the input to the regional forums but let us try to give you the flavor and make this Congress a little less US centric as we do so. So here is the part of the rest of the world as a case study. As Stamenka said the first policy forum was in the Caribbean when it convened only the Bahamas, Grenada and Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago had returned the questionnaire but most other countries have since responded. The meeting was primarily about ICT in schools and assembled officials mostly permanent secretaries who are the most senior ministry of education officials in these countries and they were very impressed by an example of the use of OER in producing materials for teacher training. In developing learning materials for teachers about using ICT in the classroom the Cyril Potter College of Education in Guyana had found that by taking existing OER from a variety of sources and adopting them to Guyanese needs they greatly reduce both the cost and the time required to offer good materials to the teachers. Moreover the college faculty found their engagement with OER a very satisfying professional activity. This concrete and successful example of the use of OER helped the participants to see OER less as an abstract concept and more as a practical benefit and they considered OER a potentially transformative development for education but they emphasized that designing one's own content and being part of the knowledge creation process was extremely important. These Caribbean officials were concerned about how to foster regional collaboration particularly among teachers and to ensure multidirectional flows of OER in and out of the Caribbean. They hoped that the Caribbean could speak with one voice about OER through the Council of Ministers of CARICOM the Caribbean community. In the case of Africa replies from 17 countries showed that although none with the exception of South Africa have a distinct governmental policy on OER the majority are active in the OER movement mainly through institutions and individuals. In the minds of most respondents OER are closely associated with the introduction of ICT in education or with the development of open and distance learning or both. In South Africa a policy decision to share OER under the Creative Commons license is already included in its integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education development. Most of the countries perceive the benefits of OER because of the flexible learning opportunities they offer and their cost efficiency and I stress the cost efficiency. Most of the discussion here today has been about improving education and waking up the students the developing countries are desperate to cut the cost as well. Major obstacles to the use of OER in Africa are copyright sustainability and above all connectivity constraints the latter even in the case of South Africa. Two countries Mozambique and Niger reported that participation in the OER movement was constrained by language and connectivity but expressed interest in becoming more active because of a growing need for quality educational resources for both students and teachers and again a common desire in the replies was for the countries cultures and languages of the region to be part of the knowledge production process developing countries take this very seriously. By the time of the Latin America forum to in Rio two weeks ago we had received replies to the survey from 11 countries in the region from Argentina to Mexico and the government of Brazil in particular had done a very thorough job on commenting on the draft Paris declaration. Seven of the countries reported some strategy or policy related to OER often based on government portals of educational materials that offer teachers access to OER however following the presentations we realized that very few are actually OER in the sense of having explicit open licenses. Some governments have a wider range of policies that extend to ICTs and open and distance learning which may or may not include OER. Generally the use of ICT is perceived as offering more equal opportunities in education. Some of the replies mentioned the use of open licenses such as creative commons but this was less common. Indeed governments at the Latin American forum urged us to include less jargon and simpler concepts in the next draft of the Paris declaration which we have tried to do. Again most of the countries perceived the benefits of OER because of the flexible learning opportunities they offer their cost efficiency and providing equity of access to educational opportunities. Major obstacles to their use were cited as copyright in Chile and Paraguay sustainability and in some cases connectivity. Interestingly while Guatemala sees language and cultural diversity as an obstacle to the development of OER, Chile considers that a common language and similar cultural background in Latin America are an asset for OER sharing and development in the future. A specificity of the replies provided in this region is that there seems to be extensive public funding for learning materials and another feature is that OER are in greater use in secondary or even primary education than in tertiary. As we noted the governments at the regional policy forum in Rio de Janeiro improved the Paris declaration in the direction of simpler language and clearer concepts and you can view the new version on the coal website at this address and on the UNESCO site at the second address. The project's international advisory and liaison group will meet in mid-May to put the finishing touches to the draft declaration that will be presented at the June Congress and this group is made up of government representatives from all UNESCO region plus some key IGOs and NGOs such as the OECD, WIPO, Creative Commons and OER Africa. The aim of the declaration is to get greater buy-in from governments to the promotion of OER and of open licenses generally. Government backing for the open licensing of public educational materials is essential if we are to make OER the normal way of doing business instead of a marginal donor driven phenomenon. However throughout our regional policy forums we have found that generally governments have little understanding of the notion of open licenses. They often simply declare that materials on government portals are quote freely available which is not really sufficient especially for potential users outside the country. We recall that Larry Lessig wrote in Free Culture in 2004, this movement must begin in the streets. Once the movement has effect in the streets it has some hope of having effect in Washington and later we have a long way to go before politicians will listen to these ideas and implement these reforms but that also means we have time to build awareness around the changes we need. So we believe that since Lessig wrote those words the growth of the OER movement and our earlier project of taking OER beyond the OER community have indeed built awareness around the changes that we need. So now is the time to tackle governments directly. So we believe that this joint UNESCO Coal project will support you in getting the concept of open availability of materials into the mainstream of education and I thank you and turn it over to Zainab who will now talk about the Congress itself. Good afternoon my name is Zainab Varglou and I'm from UNESCO and I'm going to speak to you about the UNESCO World OER Congress. So you'll see we have this photo you'll think that all we do is put the same 5, 10 people on the stage put up some flags and get a guy on the podium and we solve all the world's problems well we do that's what we do this right. But when we're not doing that we're planning doing this so we're going to be having the World Congress on OER which will culminate all the activities that we've had with the regional forums the surveys and so on which you've just discussed on the 20th and 22nd of June. I can't guarantee that all those people that are on the stage will again be in the exact same position but we'll try that too. The Congress will bring together governments, ministers of education, representatives of ministries of education at a high level and human resources development, senior policy makers, experts, practitioners, researchers and relevant stakeholders. As you'll see on the left side of the screen where you have the image it's a new image that we've just put together in UNESCO it comes in almost every language that exists and it's been developed on the wisest case C. The objectives of the Congress are three. The first one is to release the 2012 Paris OER declaration which calls on governments to support the development and use of OER, to showcase the world's best practices in OER policies, initiatives and experts and to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 2002 UNESCO forum that coined the term OER. So what's UNESCO? We're a specialized UN agency for education, science and culture. There are 195 member states and eight associate members which covers a lot of the world. Actions are at the intergovernmental level and it's an excellent and unique forum for intra and inter-regional policy discussion. We have five functions we're a laboratory of ideas so to test out new ideas, new concepts, a catalyst for international cooperation so to get a lot of different countries together and get them to work together on something, a standard setter, we have a number of conventions that we have in an area of education for example. They're non-binding in the sense that we can't do anything if nobody does them but we do have a discussion around it so it supports the idea that they would be respected. Capacity builder so as Sir John was speaking of the different workshops that we had to build capacity at an international and regional level on different issues that are happening and a clearinghouse function which is to have information available for people to get. Our main strength is that we can get a lot of people together who can make a lot of decisions at the national level that can change a lot of things quickly. The key principle that we work on is consensus so you're thinking how on earth can you get consensus with 195 member states? I can't explain exactly how we do it but we do do it and there is consensus and things move ahead and it deals with a lot of discussions a lot of consultations but it's very very powerful and so with that I want to come back to the declaration of the 2002 forum in which the participants expressed their satisfaction and wish to develop together a universal educational resource for the whole community to be referred to henceforth as OERs. Ten years later there was consensus on this and ten years later we've moved forward substantially. The program of the congress has three main areas there's a highlight of key examples from the regions of how OER are harnessed by governments interventions from ministers in support of OER in all UNESCO regions and discussion and adoption of the Paris OER declaration. There is a parallel event which is the open exhibit seminar it's to showcase innovative and promising practices in OER policies and initiatives it's open registration on our website you see the rubric there and we invite you all to please do come and register in order to be part of this exhibit and to be part of the discussion. This is the this is the website for the meeting with the registration on the right as you'll see there is a there are two parts of the meeting there's the open exhibition and there's the governmental declaration discussions. What we'd really like to ask you as the community of the OER of the OER community is that you would ask your governments you would encourage your governments you would push your governments to be part of this meeting to come to send ministers to be part of the policy discussions that will be happening to be part of the discussions on the declaration and to be part of the process that adopts this declaration it'll have a long-term effect at a policy level which will have a very positive impact on the OER movement and the community in general and with that if you haven't had enough you can follow us on twitter on facebook and the wisest community as well as of course the websites thank you thank you so much for the presentations and of course for your very important work are there any clarification questions pressing questions i hope you will stay here for the rest of the conference so there is opportunity to connect in person