Open Learning ExchangeUniversal Basic Education 2015

Richard Rowe poses in Beijing, China, January 21 2008, with key leaders who have committed to developing a national OLE for China. More details shortly!

Open Learning Exchange is working with groups in a number of countries that would like to establish local OLEs and be part of the global effort to support universal basic education. The OLE Annual Report for 2007 highlighted progress by two of these centers:

OLE Nepal: The Center now has a fulltime staff of six, plus several volunteers who seem to work almost full-time to help develop OLE. OLE Nepal ahs a formal Memorandum of Understanding with the Nepali Department of Education to conduct a pilot project during 2008 on the impact of using XO laptop computers in a rural school setting. OLE Nepal has strong leadership and a great sense of energy, and its experiences will be invaluable to other Centers as they start up.

OLE China: A broad-based group has taken first steps toward establishing a national OLE for China, starting with meetings this past October and continuing with discussions with OLE founder Richard Rowe in January 2008 in Beijing. The national Ministry of Education has indicated strong support for the project, and has agreed in principle to provide OLE with digital versions of its complete line of k-12 textbooks and curricula! The Center has an initial Board of Directors and an Executive Director.

We will be sharing news soon about OLE initiatives in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, India, Canada and other countries. The potential level of interest in joining OLE and creating local Centers far exceeds our current ability to respond. This is a good problem that you can help us solve.

The Board of Directors of Open Learning Exchange received and approved OLE’s Annual Report for 2007 at its meeting today at the OLE offices in Cambridge, MA.

The report, which will be available shortly in print and electronic versions, outlines the great need for providing access to free, high-quality learning resources for the children of the world. Although OLE is less than a year old, it has taken great strides toward making its contribution to universal access to education by 2015.

OLE Tool Kits

OLE will be helping national OLEs develop their libraries and communities by providing “plug and play” digital Tool Kits that will help each OLE start operating quickly and efficiently. The Tool Kits include:

• OLE Knowledge Kit
  • National Kids Library. This will contain a ready-to-go library for collecting and creating courseware and related educational software, and will connect seamlessly with OLE’s Billion Kids Library.
  • Course Development Studio. Here library members and create learning resources from scratch, or by adapting and assembling existing learning resources.
• OLE Community Kit
  • Leadership. These materials will help Open Learning Leaders work well on behalf of their members and their organization.
  • Learnership. The kit will offer tools and training to help learners learn, and to sustain them in participating in the larger learning community.
  • Volunteers. Finding, encouraging, sustaining, and directing volunteers is an art form. The kit will provide tools, suggestions, and templated materials to ease the task.
• OLE Sustainability Kit
  • Organizational Development. This includes tutorials, guidelines for legal and human-resources procedures, template forms and documents, and ready-to-use contact management software. Each OLE will thus have the basic tools for supporting its new organization.
  • Communications. Tutorials, a model website, template documents, an email facility, and guidlines for press releases and other media tasks will help each Center communicate with its members and supporters, and with its larger community.
  • Fundraising. The kit will provide tutorials, template development plans, and other resources for identifying and sustaining a community of financial support for each Center.

With these kits local Centers can quickly become self-sustaining and contributing members of the worldwide Open Learning Exchange Community.

Next post: National Center Developments…