Just in time for the opening of nominations on May 15, 2023 for the 2023 OE Awards for Excellence and in the theme of being inpsired by previous winners, we are sharing a conversation we recorded with Giovanni Zimotti who was recognized in 2022 with an OE Award in the Educator category. As Director of Spanish Language Instruction at the University of Iowa, Giovanni has taken on applying and developing Open Educational Resources in the Spanish courses and has led the development of several open textbooks, two of which are focused on Spanish in professional fields (healthcare and education). Listen in as Giovanni shares his journey from the Italian village of Cagnano Varano to Iowa City, how open education became his focus and mission, and more about his ideas on teaching with OER and applying virtual reality in language teaching. In the OEG Voices studio (left to right) Giovanni Zimotti and Alan Levine Episode 056 TranscriptDownload Notes and Quotes for Episode 56 We have a pretty big Spanish program with around 800, 1000 students per semester and my goal for this program right now is to fully switch every single level to OER textbooks Giovanni Zimotti