We have a pretty big Spanish program with around 801,000 students per semester. And my goal for this program right now is fully switch every single level to OER textbooks (followed by multiple voice intro)

Here we are again in the OEG Voices Podcast studio, and I'm really pleased to welcome Giovanni Zamoti, who's coming to us. I didn't even ask where in Iowa you were. I know you're in Iowa. Where are you?

I'm in Iowa City.

Iowa City. Fantastic. Well, welcome to this show. Like I said, we do this very informally, but we want to talk a lot about your work in OER, but especially calling out your receiving of the OER Awards for Excellence in the Educator category. How did it feel to get that award? What was your reaction?

It was unexpected. I was really happy to receive this award, recognized the work I've been doing for the last four or five years, basically since I arrived to Iowa and I started teaching and working here as a program director. Didn't know much about the world of open educational resources. I got into a project that was a small project that I think now failed, but it was a project that was a combination of various universities trying to create resources for student assessment for various topics. I was in the third court or the second court. They were trying to develop this platform where they would keep all the question banks or various subjects. Me and six or seven other Spanish professors worked on creating questions banks for Spanish, elementary Spanish one and two. I actually used them in my program, and that was like my first introduction. After that, I started diving into more into the Oyrwad. This was my introduction. There was an issue with some publishers that they stopped publishing some more niche textbook for Spanish, for the professions, healthcare, and nothing existed for education professionals. With one colleague of mine, we were like, okay, we need to teach a classroom about Spanish for educators, professionals. We don't have a textbook. What do we do? And we were like, okay, we're going to write our own textbook. We are not going to deal with traditional publishers. We're just going to do it in OER, save a lot of money for our students. And then from that textbook, it all started. And I have been involved into OER since then.

Oh, that's so beautiful. And you read my mind and asked the question, because I like to ask people how they got into OER, but let's dial back even further. Tell me about the place you grew up. I understand it's a small village in southern Italy.

Yes. So I grew up in Canyono Varano. It's a very small town in the south of Italy. It's beautiful. We have a lake, beach, mountain. So there is basically everything right in like a 10 miles radius.

What kind of kid were you? Did you like school? Were you motivated by school? What was your early educational experience?

I was a good student, but I didn't like school, so I didn't like doing homework. I was good. I was never risked failing a class or anything like that. But I was okay. An okay student, I would say.

So you didn't like the structure of it? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, I was a student that will get easily distracted.

So maybe there was not enough interactivity, as it were. Yeah, maybe. You had to answer this a lot. So born in southern Italy, but now you're teaching Spanish in Iowa City. What was the path that led you to where you are right now?