Alan Levine (@cogdog) is preparing another True Stories of Open Sharing presentation, this time focusing on reuse of open educational resources. I contributed a story for his latest call True Stories of OER Reuse highlighting the recent Geography Open textbook sprint and the textbook we created reusing open educational materials gathered from around the web.

I love contributing to Alan’s calls because they give me a great excuse to have a bit of fun, like this daily prompt from a few months back, urging me to: Create a visual that might accompany one of the mashed up headlines from @twoheadlines. The mashed-up headline I got was Photos: Seattle Seahawks shows off his table tennis skills in Chengdu which became:

His prompts always give me something to work with, and idea to run with, like this latest call for OER stories of reuse where he framed his pitch for stories around a hunt for a mythical beast. It was a good narrative hook and easy to play with and, just like the atomic testing awoke the mighty mythical Godzilla, our recent backyard renovations disturbed something hidden underground that has now taken refuge in my backyard.

If you are not familiar with Alan’s True Stories of Open Sharing, I urge you to spend some time poking around his collection of user submitted True Stories of open sharing (he has conveniently curated a featured section of stories, which might be a good place to start). What makes this collection so special is that these are personal stories told in a personal fashion. These are not scripted marketing videos to sell the idea of sharing, but rather personal anecdotes (both great and small) of sharing and connecting. There is power in anecdotes, made even moreso by Alan’s work aggregating and collecting the stories in a single space.

If you have ever created, used or reused an open educational resource, consider submitting a video to his latest call. It doesn’t have to be a grand story of something amazing, or have impressive video production skills. Just turn on your webcam and tell your story that illustrates the everday power of sharing and connecting in our virtual world.