OECS Commission launches Global Digital Library

The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission has announced the launch of the Global Digital Library as its first Digital Public Good for education. The OECS said in a release that this launch is an important part of the broader strategic objective of the OECS Commission to develop a digital learning ecosystem that supports lifelong learning throughout the Member States.

The vision for this ecosystem is a digital platform and hub that houses resources for K-12 learning and manages teacher capacity development, knowledge management and professional training.

The Global Digital Library (GDL) is an Open Education repository targeting early learners and contains over 6000 books in 83 languages and a fast growing repository of early mathematics resources. It can be found at https:// digitallibrary.io/ The GDL is designed to be user-friendly for children, teachers, parents and other caretakers.

The Library has been chosen as the first Digital Public Good (DPG) in education to be launched in the OECS under the GIGA Initiative, a collaboration between the OECS and UNICEF, ITU and the DPG Alliance. DPGs in Education will contribute significantly to the goal of achieving equitable access to quality instructional materials in the OECS.

OECS Director General, Dr. Didacus Jules, at the 6th Council of Ministers of Education Meeting in February this year, stated: “Covid-19 has taught us that pivoting to online learning has not led to an automatic widening of access and participation.

Embracing Open Education will remove obstacles to digital education in cost, geography, time and entry requirements by giving ALL learners the opportunity to access education resources at a lower or nearly no cost, and in a flexible way – extremely important considerations in the context of the vulnerabilities faced by OECS Member States today.”

Content from the Library and other OECSled content development initiatives will be integrated into the OECS eLearning platform by the end of October this year.

The Digital Public Goods (DPG) Programme is a multifaceted Open Innovation agenda aimed at progressing the development of the building blocks required to institutionalise DPGs into the fabric of the education ecosystem of the OECS sub region.