 conference, global conference. Thank you so much for coming here. So I'm here to welcome our educational manager, Margrethe Thyspen. Please come at the stage and she will tell you about the OEC conference. Thank you. Thank you so much. Right. Hello, everyone. It's a huge room for small me and not too many people. If you care to kind of go together here in the middle, it's fine. Anything. Or you can just do as you want to. Okay, so I'm Margrethe Thyspen from Norwegian digital learning arena. And I am here to talk a bit about our projects with SARME resources. But before I start, I have to just mention that I stand here very conscious today, very aware that I am not a SARME person. I do not belong to the SARME population of Norway. So I'm talking about SARME resources and SARME conditions without being SARME. And that makes me join a very long Norwegian tradition that I'm not very proud of. So I'm very conscious of it. And I just have to say that I hope during the presentation that I will be able to show you that this is about inclusion about empowerment and about capacity building. So it's not about me knowing what's best for the SARME population. So that's really important for me to say something about. And especially with the start we had this morning. So, okay. Just a few words about where we are in the world. You see the map of the world up in the corner there. And then there's Norway in green. And then the larger map, you can see the SARME, which is the name of the SARME country, which is the area that traditionally has been home to the SARME population of the Nordic countries. So there are four countries with the SARME traditionally with the SARME population. So that's Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Of course these days SARME people live everywhere else as well. And there's, for instance, of course a huge population in Oslo, the capital of Norway holds a lot of SARME people. I'm just going to start with a few facts, not too much, but just a few facts about the history and the conditions for the SARME population in Norway. So we've got SARME parliaments in all the three Nordic countries. So there are some degree of self-government for the SARME population. Of course, especially when it comes to SARME matters, SARME culture, SARME traditional herding and other SARME issues. So we opened our SARME parliament in 1989 in Norway and then Sweden and Finland followed after that. This is the SARME flag, very beautiful flag for the whole of Sapmi. And as you can see on the slide here, there are a lot of languages in this small area. 10 or 11 depends on how you count. But in Norway, there are five languages and two of them are almost gone. So there are very few speakers of those languages. But there are three official languages, which is not the SARME, which is by far the largest one. And then it's Southern SARME and Lule SARME. And all three languages are in a crisis on the verge of extinction, but especially Southern SARME and Lule SARME, very small languages. But of course, there is a huge interest these days in revitalizing these languages and reclaiming them. SARME children and youth have the right to an education in SARME, also delivered in SARME. But laws and rights are not the same as practice all the time. So in areas where there are very few SARME pupils, it's hard to get the SARME education to fit into the schedule. And it's also a very large problem that there are a shortage of teachers in SARME and SARME speaking teachers. So very often it's something that they do after school hours or before school hours. Then they do their SARME lessons. So of course, that's not optimal at all. Okay. This year, in June, the Norwegian report on truth and reconciliation were presented to the Norwegian parliament, the 1st of June. And it's a huge report. And of course, it's a sad story about language loss, about traumas and shame of being SARME. So there was a very conscious policy of Norwegianization for years, especially in the 19th and 20th century, where children were forced to go to school and forced to learn Norwegian and denied practicing their own language at school and denied using it, also through breaks and so on. And a lot of these schools were boarding schools and they were not allowed to use the SARME language during, I think, yeah, that was my mic. Okay. So there is a lot of sad stories in this report and I don't want you to go too far into this because it's not but I'll just state them as facts that there are a very sad history here and a lot of wrongs to try to make right again. The language loss and the trauma and the shame continued long after Norwegian government had abandoned the rules or the laws of Norwegianization. It's a sad fact that when you change the laws, the practice still is ongoing out in the different counties and societies in Norway. So as far as into the 70s, 1970s, 80s, this was still still a practice, I'm afraid, even though the laws were abandoned decades before. So small children would come into school knowing only SARME being placed in a classroom where they didn't understand a thing of what was going on and being labeled as stupid because of it. This led to a lot of parents deciding not to teach their children SARME because they thought that SARME children would have an easier life if they only knew Norwegian. So a lot of language was lost that way and these days there is a lot of trauma in not knowing your own language and a lot of interest of course in revitalizing and reclaiming your own language. There is a huge difference between some very small core areas in Finmark up north in Norway. They have kind of done better for themselves. They have been left alone more so there is a more vibrant and strong culture that has existed all through the period while in areas closer to Norwegian societies it has been very hard and the story is quite different there with very few people left speaking the language and feeling SARME and identifying as SARME. But it is changing these days in a more positive direction. Okay to the educational resources and this is the SARME parliament in Karashok very beautiful building. So the SARME parliament has got the responsibility of providing learning resources for SARME children and money there is a lot of money in the system there is money is not a problem but a problem is there are so few teachers SARME teachers and so few people being able to do to provide the material to make the material and provide it. There is a very small publishing industry SARME publishing industry and the SARME parliament wants to to take care of the publishing industry which is very understandable. So they want to give the work with providing resources to this small industry but there are too few people so there is things are kind of queuing projects are not being completed because of the lack of resources when it comes to people. So that is the problem when it comes to the counties of Norway I can go over to this picture then this is Norway with the different countries. They are responsible for providing the education for upper secondary and this is where my organization comes into the picture. So they have also got an responsibility for these for pupils 16 to 18. So in the northern most counties of Norway of course there will be SARME pupils 16 to 18 and then there is a responsibility in the counties for providing free learning material for them as well as Norwegian pupils in the same schools. So the counties and the SARME parliament then have some kind of joint responsibility here and that is why NDLA Norwegian Digital Learning Arena also can come into this equation and do some work on SARME resources if the counties want us to. I'm just going to say a few words speak a few words about the NDLA and the NDLA model just to show you why this is a good idea in my opinion how we can work with SARME resources. So we are a large OER repository we are owned and financed by the counties of Norway all counties are joined in making this effort except one county everyone else is joining in and so they provide money for us to make learning resources free open digital learning resources for upper secondary pupils in Norway and the way it works is that NDLA gets to borrow teachers from different schools all over Norway that come into NDLA and make the resources and then go back to their schools or they have a part-time job with us for a while and still stay at their school and make resources. So that means that if you are a SARME teacher working at the school in Finmark an upper secondary school that is owned by Finmark County you can come into NDLA and make resources SARME resources for us if that is the wish of the counties that we should make SARME resources. So it's a system where you both get learning resources and you also get teachers staying in their schools making the resources not leaving their work not leaving their school and that is of course an advantage in a situation where there are a few teachers few SARME teachers and it's also a way of getting new competency into schools how about how to make good learning resources we come into our environment and learn how to make good resources there you go back to your school with the skills and can share them with your colleagues so you kind of you can spend the same money twice both on the resources and on the competency that the teachers get. So the key word here is collaboration so it's a collaboration between the counties and between NDLA and the different schools on how to make learning resources so this is the main system that we work with but it also means that there's a joint board from the counties deciding what subjects and what resources we should make which I'll get back to a bit later. Okay so I've told you about the shared responsibility for the resources told you a bit about Norwegian digital learning arena and how it works and now I'm going to just tell you a bit about the small projects that we have been involved in concerning SARME resources the last few years. In these projects we function first and foremost as kind of a publisher an online publisher for the resources so the teachers on different schools that are involved in these projects they are more loosely connected to NDLA than what the ordinary teachers working for us are and I'll tell you how that works as well so they make the resources we publish so it's kind of collaboration there so the initiatives that we are working on has been made from the counties with the SARME population not from the joint board of NDLA so it's a bit on the side on what we do the main thing on what we do and we don't know if that will change hopefully it will change so it can be something that we do in our main workflow as a consequence of the truth and reconciliation report we could hope that that would help and make everyone see that this would be a joint responsibility for all of Norway not just the northernmost countries. Okay so I'm just going to talk a bit about these projects. So Southern SARME as a foreign language that is the oldest project that we have Southern SARME I told you it's on the verge of extinction so it's very few people speaking this language and very few people able to make resources however there is a center a language and cultural center called Aagege in Trøndelag in mid Norway and NDLA has been asked to collaborate with Aagege to make resources and publish them so money has been given from the SARME parliament to Aagege and they have a teacher's at an upper secondary school nearby who has come in and made the resources in Southern SARME so the reason why this is a foreign language project is of course because this is language is not they haven't been born with the language oops sorry they haven't been born with the language they they need to relearn their own language so it's a foreign language to them when they start school that is why it's a foreign language course and this has been a success and the authorities wants us to continue so actually we are going a bit out of our own area when it comes to ages and making more resources for younger children in Southern SARME as a foreign language as well so this is a bit special but it's because they have seen that the workflow the way this function will work now our resources I had just have to to say that one more time they are open online for everyone to access so of course that is also a big asset when it comes to subjects like this because grown-ups adults anyone who wants with an internet connection can access and learn Southern SARME from the resources if they want to any teacher teaching adults can use them any way they like then we've got a science subject project which is quite new it's been going on for two years I think and this is a collaboration between us and another most county in Norway and they have been giving means to a school in Tromsø and the teachers there have made resources in science SARME science and SARME science is a subject that you can take if you if you are a SARME it's the basic subjects in Norwegian schooling have their own SARME curriculum when it comes to science it's quite the same it's a few competency aims that are different from the Norwegians curriculum but most of it is the same this we are in the process of publishing this we have published almost half the the subject a lot of resources has been published but we see we have learned a lot from this project and we see a lot of challenges so one challenge is that we are a very professional provider of learning resources with a very professional system and our own editing platform so when teachers are supposed to publish for us and they're not quite in the system they have to spend time learning how to do all these things all these managing our systems learning to use the systems and it takes a lot of time for them that they they thought they could just come and and write resources make resources and everything would kind of magically fall into place but they have to learn the systems and they spend a lot of time on this so it's a much slower and more demanding work than they thought it would be so if they were closely connected to us they were kind of coming into our system as most teachers are it would be easier for them but then again there's time and there's money for the schools to manage this so this year we are not finished but this year the school could not put in more resources so now we are left with trying to to to complete this finding the means somewhere else and it's also been mostly a translation project and of course that's not quite good enough we need to provide some context but then you need to get photos and you need to get films and it's a very costly process so I think we will manage we'll take some time before we have a complete subject in science for some of the children but I think it holds even though it's not good enough with the translation I think I think it holds value anyway to be able to come to school and read a subject in your own language I think it holds value anyway but it's not it could hold more value just put it that way right the last project is starting up these days and it's northern Sami as a foreign language so it's very similar to southern Sami as a foreign language and it's also a collaboration with the tromps and fin mark kanche and there's teachers at another school called noor troms that will make these resources but again we see that there is not there is some money they've been giving money from the county but it's not enough to to make a complete subject we can see it already that there is too little money so we will in for now function more as advisors in how to make the resources and then we hopefully we will be able to get money and publish these resources in the future um the ideal thing would be with the Sami parliament giving the money to the county to make these resources but then they need to collaborate and I think that is quite new to them that they should collaborate the counties and the Sami parliament to make resources that isn't quite useful to them so so it's it's hard to navigate kind and talk to the right people and see if we can can get something going there but we're not giving up okay now I've got a slide on all the all the benefits of making OER and the NDLA model for the Sami resources and I'm not going to read the whole slide and you know a lot about OER here and I've already mentioned some of these but it's of course that the open resources and the CC licensing makes it easy to adapt to any situation that the teachers are in and I also talked about how this system allows the teachers to stay in their work as teachers which I think is hugely important when there is a teacher shortage as I told you about um also I told you about the competency that this gives this work gives the teachers so they can bring back to other colleagues and how to make good open resources and also of course the costs of open online publishing where you don't need to provide for so and so many pupils it will the cost stays the same compared to ordinary publishing because this is a problem for the for the publishing houses of Norway of course these these subjects are not they can't make money on these subjects so they need subsidies to make such subjects so but that is not a problem for us it's the same if there are a few people pupils or many pupils the same costs so the key here is capacity capacity building I think but this model allows capacity building in the communities in the areas making resources um learning how to make good resources staying at the schools and providing local contexts so the SARMI teachers will make the resources and we will just be kind of a publisher and a provider and a collaborator to make them good um okay but as I told you there are some challenges it's time assuming to get into our systems and and learn how to to navigate and there is also as I said a shortage of teachers um and there is a problem of funding and I said money is not an issue but there is money in the system but it's not in the right place the money is not kind of getting into to this kind of of uh making of OERs for now so would it be better to just to get just make an arena where SARMI teachers could upload their own material and and share it there we are going to make such an arena for teachers in no way to share and not kind of relying on our more costly model with the quality all the quality processes that we demand and that would make it hard for the teachers to kind of get into the system I'm not sure uh I think why shouldn't SARMI resources be of the same quality as the Norwegian resources are on our website um yeah um if my wish is that all counties goes into this and and allows money for it so that we can use our utilize our model to the fullest and we can have the teachers more closely into our organization while still staying at schools and and it will be easier for them to make the resources um so we could hope that that will happen and the SARMI parliament are not convinced we have meetings with them they are not convinced that we are the solution at all and they want to support the small SARMI publishing industry as I as I said and they have also got issues with our being digital all digital which they they're not sure if that's a good thing um yeah so that is also an issue so to finish off um what I've been trying to tell you about is that there is I think this model that we have where the teachers can stay at the school and make the resources and we can kind of provide our workflow our quality workflow and and and get it out there and it's open to everyone and it's CC license I think it's a good model for SARMI resources and there's a huge need of them um but there are some issues with I would say that the money is not in our kind of lane it's on in the SARMI parliament and it's also a question of all counties going all in and not just leaving it to the northern countries to take responsibility for for it I think so for now we have to kind of work with our our issues and and take the time it takes with little money and loose connections to these schools and these teachers um but we get something done and I think it's it's okay I think it's it's good that we can have these projects and and work with them but we I would like to do more I would like I would like us to do more um but we have our we have our challenges yeah that was it really so I would like like to get some feedback or some response or some advice or whatever you could talk to me during breaks if you like if you have if you have anything you would ask me or anything any advice for us it would be really really welcomed so I can't see this this is just the spotlights blind me miss I can't see you at all I feel like yeah yeah not like a teacher some kind of a pair in the spotlight is not where I usually are but can is there anybody who wants to say something or ask me something comment Connie there's nine calls to action for the truth and reconciliation here in Canada related to education there's 96 all together so there's many many parts but in that in those nine related to education they're quite specific about certain things to have happened and even this recent visit to Canada by the pope that was one of the calls to action was that you know the pope would come and apologize and and make a better relationship with indigenous peoples and I mean it's a very complicated thing but he did come and there was you know an apology so it's part of that working together in our present living with the past so do you have any calls to action and if so would those be a way for those other counties to perhaps recognize that they have responsibility to live up to those calls to action what is the case right now is that the report has been handed to the parliament and they are working with it now so and there's a lot of suggestions towards the end of the report or what could be done and what should be done so we just have to wait for to the parliament to decide if they're what will come into those type of actions so I hope hopefully we will have them because the report just mentions education of course and resources as well what we'll see a very sad thing that happened this year was also that the same day as the report was was handed over the part Norwegian parliament ratified a new educational law and the Sami population wanted the right to be learning material to be in that law but they wouldn't take it in and that was ratified the same day as the report was was handed into the parliament so very sad and of course it's it's something about or this will be very costly if we are going to do this if this is a law then we it's probably some kind of consideration that but it was it was a it's quite a paradox that day really so so I don't know hopefully it will change okay come and talk to me if you have something yeah some advice for me please thank you