Gino Fransman is the founder and leader of the Open Education Influencers project (https://openedinfluencers.mandela.ac.za) at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. He is the current Africa Hub Coordinator for the UNESCO Open Education for a Better World [OE4BW] program, plus both a mentor and previous project author in the program. A highly collaborative Open online course for student empowerment and advocacy is titled Becoming an Open Education Influencer (BOEI), and is a student empowerment and advocacy tool for innovation in education through Open available on the MandelaUni Open Engage LMS. Gino is a member of the OE4BW Advisory Board and the recent 2021 winner of the Open Education Global Emerging Leader Award (https://awards.oeglobal.org/awards/2021/emerging-leader/gino-fransman/).
Initiative(s)
Open Education Influencers @MandelaUni
OpenEdInfluencers, or OEIs (Oh-wees), are ambassadors for Open who increase awareness of Open Educational Resources and Open Education Practices. OEIs facilitate the adoption, creation and licensing of OER. #OpenEdInfluencers energetically advocate for the use of Open Textbooks across purpose, faculties and schools.
Open Education for a Better World
Participation in Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) as a past author of a course, Becoming an Open Education Influencer; a previous mentor of an OE4BW course from Earl Mentor in SA - Peacebuilding in High-Risk Communities in South Africa; and now in my 2nd year as Africa Hub Coordinator and member of the OE4BW Advisory Board.
Together: a children's story picturebook on the values of sharing and collaboration
Together: GO-GN Fellowship children’s story picturebook was written and illustrated by a group of individuals from different parts of the world who worked together online over 6 months. They also had the help of many other educators from around the world who generously contributed their ideas and the characters of the story also originate from their contributions. All committed to creating a socially just world where education is available to all. Values such as sharing, collaborating and helping others are central to this mission of what is called open education and will help towards achieving the UN’s Global Sustainable Development Goal 4, “Quality Education for All” https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4
Some may recognise other stories and fairytales in this story. The illustrations are a remix of details of exhibits from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, available under CC0 and new illustrations
This project was enabled and supported by a Global OER Graduate Network (GOGN) Fellowship in 2020.