Proposals for an open education dialogue

The future of education is open. It is about promoting a new learning environment, for life, more student-centred than teacher-centred. Education in a connected society is not a world of experts but of global communities and ecosystems of open and shared knowledge.

From the Open Education Association we have launched eight initiatives for a dialogue on open education that I would like to echo in today’s conversation. The main objective of this initiative is to draw attention to the need to thoroughly review the principles and beliefs that underpin our educational model and stimulate debate on new ways of learning and teaching through new social technologies and open digital content.

These eight proposals, which I summarize below, are aimed at managers, teachers and students interested in making open education a reality in their schools and institutions. The change towards open education is necessary and felt as such by most of the educational community, so I encourage you to read the proposals in detail and participate in the debate on the association’s blog :

1. A curriculum for lifelong learning , from early childhood education to adult life, for school and in contact with reality beyond the school institution. A curriculum designed not so much from the point of view of teaching as from the way in which it teaches and that includes the necessary skills to face the future of a digital society with guarantees.
2. An assessment for learning in which the student, the teacher, the school and the system are evaluated with the aim of learning and improving. A personalised, authentic, evidence-based assessment that recognises diversity and in which the student is the protagonist of their learning.
3. A learning without borders, where learning takes place in real contexts, and has as its goal its application in life and not simply success in exams. A learning with liquid borders, in which the walls between the world and the classroom disappear and the resources that are available in their social environment are integrated.
4. A collaborative education that is supported by a learning community, and where the teacher is a creator, whose role is to facilitate, energize, guide the student’s relationship with knowledge, so that their learning process is more effective, more personal and more relevant. The teacher is the only one who, with his enthusiasm for the subject, listening more, fostering collaboration and creating an emotionally safe climate, can make possible the new paradigm of participation, collaboration and collaborative learning.
5. Schools that are open to the community, that learn, and are able to listen to their community and link their project to the world. Schools in which innovation is an attitude and a capacity that keeps them constantly evolving, according to their changing environment. An open school is a learning platform for students, families and education professionals.
6. An education in values that promotes responsibility, diversity and collaboration and develops a competent citizenship formed in the primordial values of equity, accessibility and social responsibility. An open education is a project that revolves around the dignity of the person and creates 3H leaders, humble, honest and humane. If a good leader is necessary in all areas, in the educational field it is essential to have the best.
7. An education connected to life, to society, to contexts and to communities, which makes the most of the opportunities of the Internet to connect with the collective intelligence of society and make a global and comprehensive education possible throughout life. Without an educational digital divide that can generate areas of exclusion, where we can learn with others, from others and for others.
8. Open infrastructures that allow content to be shared, to cooperate in its creation, to contact other people, to share and create value in collaborative networks based on collaboration and trust. The Internet is the global infrastructure that makes the extension of open education possible. The educational resources it offers us, their availability and the cost make it possible.