Open Learning ExchangeUniversal Basic Education 2015

The date has been set for the 2010 OLE Global Assembly, hosted by OLE Rwanda in Kigali. From October 11-15, OLE  leaders, partners, and friends will explore the topic:  “What Works?: Strategies for Scaling Quality Universal Basic Education among Marginalized Children.”

The program will include discussions of quality universal basic education (QUBE) strategies that scale, presentations of QUBE evaluations that are underway or planned, discussions of different program evaluation approaches, workshops for designing future evaluations, and more. Field trips to innovative QUBE projects underway in Rwanda will be included.

To express interest in participating, contact us at info@ole.org.

OLE has been adding depth to its organization with key appointments to its board, program leadership, and financial management. Recently joining the OLE team are:

• World Bank Senior Education Specialist Michael Crawford (at right) is the newest member of OLE’s eight-member board. Crawford is a key figure in the World Bank’s Education Department, in the Latin America and Caribbean Vice Presidency.
• Jeff Kerzner is now a senior program officer at OLE responsible for developing new international programs, in particular, a new initiative to provide quality basic education for children in Haiti’s internal refugee camps. Prior to joining OLE, he spent nearly five years in Haiti, serving as chief operating officer at a Haitian telecommunications firm, as country director of an NGO focused on economic growth and job creation, and as a consultant evaluating the country’s vocational training.
• David Levenson has joined as OLE’s chief financial officer, secretary and treasurer. Levenson has a long history of working with social benefit organizations in a variety of positions.
• Additionally, Senior Program Officer Shannon Taylor has recently been named project manager of OLE’s programs in Namibia. She is a graduate student at Brandeis University focused on the impact of information and communications technologies on social and economic development and has worked in Namibia for several years.

Read about the whole team here.

The Open Learning Exchange has been commissioned by UNESCO to coordinate a study of the potential for a national digital education library in Namibia.

OLE’s global approach to innovating education includes helping to build national digital libraries of open and free courseware relevant to the goals and standards of any interested country. At the same time, OLE has been building a global Billion Kids Library with online learning materials and tools enabling their adaptation, translation, and exchange among different countries.

In Namibia this month, OLE Senior Program Officer Shannon Taylor has been coordinating the feasibility study with UNESCO and Namibian educators, taking account of the current education sector landscape, as well as such matters as technological hosting requirements, e-readiness of schools, and content availability and acquisition.

The Open Learning Exchange figures prominently in Fast Company’s April cover story: “‘A’ is for App.” Comparing the advent of educational applications on handheld devices to the 1969 debut of Sesame Street and educational television, the article proclaims that “today, handheld and networked devices are at the same turning point, with an important difference: They are tools for expression and connection, not just passive absorption.”

iPhones, PlayStations, and “the ever-shrinking computer” are all part of what Fast Company calls the “iTeach future,” but its report singles out partners OLE and TeacherMate, in particular, with their “total package of appropriate design, quality software, and an ability to connect kids with teachers and technologists.” OLE has begun introducing TeacherMate in its global OLE network of innovators dedicated to improving education in their countries.

Fast Company describes Rowe as someone who “has spent a lifetime at the intersection of technology and education. … Taking a leaf from the burgeoning open-education movement – like MIT’s Open CourseWare site, which provides all of the university’s courses online for free – Rowe started the Open Learning Exchange with the redoubtable aim of providing quality basic education to 1 billion children in 100 countries by 2015.”

“OLE is structured as a global network of centers led by local social entrepreneurs who share materials, best practices, and new technologies,” the article says. It is developing the Billion Kids Library of open-source educational software for primary schools, while also rating new hardware options that are rapidly coming up.

Rowe describes his business plan to prove both the cost-effectiveness and teaching-effectiveness of these tools and strategies through research, so that governments around the world will be moved to take them up on a grand scale.

“The history of educational technology, which goes way, way back, is just full of graveyards,” Rowe is quoted as saying. “Now can be different – maybe. Technology is getting smarter and cheaper. Software is getting more powerful and effective. The open-source movement is making content more widely available at much lower cost. But we need to recognize that the technology itself is only a very small part of the solution for ensuring highly effective education.”

Read the Fast Company cover story here.