Open Educational Technology Summit

I had the privilege of meeting with a group of about 25 "educational and technology experts" this week to brainstorm issues and trends in open education. This is open education that goes beyond the traditional notion (familiar to distance educators) of providing access to formal education without barriers and prerequisites. This is a learning 2.0 version of open education which aims to make "educational assets visible and accessible and by harnessing the collective wisdom of a community of practice and reflection"(Iioshi & Kumar, 2008, p. 2). It's about making the educational resources and knowledge in higher education open and freely available for use and repurposing and in the process improving the resources and practices and further developing the knowledge. This new open education is much bolder and potentially more transformative than the old open education but it faces significant challenges if it is really to take hold. It will require educational institutions and the people working in them to abandon the closed, proprietary culture and embrace openness and sharing.

The Open Educational Technology Summit brainstormed four themes:
1) The personalization of the learning process
2) Learning content development and delivery
3) Future technologies at the service of learning
4) Learning: everyone, everywhere and anytime

If you want to learn more about the open education movement, I highly recommend the recently released book, Opening Up Education which is available in an online open access version.

Iioshi, T., & Kumar, V. (2008). Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge. MIT Press.