Mr. Paul G. West
Director, Knowledge Management & Information Technology
Commonwealth of Learning
1055 West Hastings Street, Suite 1200
Vancouver, BC V6E 2E9
CANADA
Tel: +1 604 775 8236 Fax: +1 604 775 8210 E-mail: pwest
Paul West, originally from South Africa, joined COL in August 2001 as Education Specialist, Knowledge Management and became Director, Knowledge Management and Information Technology in July 2006. His previous post at Technikon SA, in South Africa, saw him setting up the African Digital Library (www.africaeducation.org/adl) which serves users throughout the African continent who have Internet access. His work there also involved developing and implementing models for Information Communication Technology (ICT) Centres.
Paul moved to COL to work on knowledge management issues, including the management of internal knowledge assets and to harness the wealth of knowledge across the Commonwealth, and to make this accessible to those who need it. In this quest, he has created the "COL knowledge finder", a virtual library of about one million documents that are available on the Internet (www.col.org/kf). In his work at COL, he has encouraged the use of open source software where it is appropriate to expand access to learning content, and IT systems to support teaching and learning. COL has a number of tools at its disposal, including a staff Intranet to compliment its public website, online collaboration tools and a learning object repository (www.col.org/lor). Paul is responsible for leading the "Virtual University for the Small States of the Commonwealth" initiative (www.col.org/vussc).
In his personal capacity, Paul writes an occasional technology newsletter called "Selected TechNotes" which is available on the Internet (http://selectedtech.blogspot.com). When not at work, Paul enjoys travel, reading and being outdoors.
