GO-GN – UNESCO Chair for Latin America connection

Last January Paco and Carina visited Tecnológico Monterrey University in Mexico last January to attend two events: a UNESCO Chair and the biggest ed-tech conference in Mexico and perhaps in Latin America with over 3,000 participants.

UNESCO Chair
Paco arrived earlier to attend face-to-face the UNESCO Chair Open Educational Movement for Latin America 2023 for one week (January 9-13).  Open Education academics, practitioners and researchers from the Americas and Europe attended this event, including colleagues from Germany, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, the UK, Dominican Republic. The process was supported by the participation of 35 experts from Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Open University, the University of Leeds, the University of Salamanca, and Siemens Stiftung (Ramírez Montoya, 2023).

The Chair had the objective to promote scientific, technological, entrepreneurial, and innovative development, through an interactive Play2Train4C boot camp. During the week participants engaged in several activities such as training in design methodologies, active learning, and prototyping new high-value solutions for education and open science in groups within the framework of complexity and sustainable development. On the second day, Paco had the opportunity to run a one-hour session titled “Towards a more inclusive open education” introducing GO-GN to the participants. In a hands-on session, five new members joined the network. The following video summarises visually the whole event (Ramírez Montoya, 2023):

CIIE conference

During the following week, Carina joined the GO-GN team for The 9th International conference on educational innovation (January 16-18) and the second week of the UNESCO chair. Since 2006, Tecnológico de Monterrey has organised this event, the biggest about ed-tech in Mexico which seeks to promote and facilitate experimentation and innovation among teachers, managers, entrepreneurs, and all those interested in innovative education. Carina presented the session submitted by the team where we showcase the Community of Care experience lived during the Covid-19 Pandemic (Iniesto et al., 2023).

At the end of the two weeks, 10 projects had been collaboratively designed by those international networking teams during the UNESCO chair event. The projects have been uploaded in open access to the Institutional Repository of the Tecnológico de Monterrey. These projects are alive and being developed during 2023.

Attending these events created opportunities to strengthen links with our Latin American colleagues, to further disseminate GO-GN research, increase the network, and understand their open initiatives. And they loved the penguins we brought with us!

Paco and Carina.

References

Iniesto, F., Pitt, R., Farrow, R., Bossu, C., & Weller, M. (2023). The Global OER Graduate Network: an example of a Community of Care-La Red Global de Estudiantes de Doctorado en Educación Abierta: un ejemplo de una Comunidad de Cuidado. In: 9° International Conference On Education Innovation, Jan 16-18, Monterrey, Mexico, pp. 287–291. https://oro.open.ac.uk/86482/

Ramírez Montoya, M.S. (2023). Estancia Internacional 2023 Cátedra UNESCO/ICDE Movimiento Educativo Abierto para América Latina [Informe técnico]. Tecnológico de Monterrey.https://repositorio.tec.mx/handle/11285/650073