How Open Education Can Support Digital Literacy

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Open Education isn’t just about creating and using free tools for education. It’s about connecting with the ideas around open education and open source to create a more equitable space for us all.

Clint Lalonde shares two ideas on how open education can support digital literacy skills, as outlined in the British Columbia post-secondary Digital Literacy Framework.

While the first idea of having students edit/add Wikipedia articles is great, the second one, using GenAI tools to modify open texts, is a winner.

The second example I used focused on educators, and I picked a more contemporary example of using an open textbook with Generative AI to develop ancillary support materials using the open textbook as the reference material. When I was at the Open Education conference in Providence a few weeks ago, there were a few presentations about how educators are using GenAI with openly licensed materials to modify, adapt, or create ancillary resources. A particularly powerful example of this is instructors uploading a chapter of an openly licensed textbook to a GenAI tool, then asking the tool to rewrite the chapter to adjust the reading level.

And here is his full CC-BY licensed slide deck.



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Bluesky, decentralisation, and the distribution of power

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Laurens Hof writes:

I write about decentralised social networks because I care about an internet that is open, accessible, and not under the control of a few tech oligarchs. My interest in federation and decentralisation is pragmatic; I view it simply as the most likely option of getting there.

And:

Decentralisation is a way to distribute power, and power is gained by people bestowing it on you. Technology changes the ways power can be distributed, but it is a sideshow to the thing that matters: where are the people, and on whom are they distributing power.

Bluesky is quickly becoming a popular space for educators to connect and share ideas. While it’s designed to give users more control, most people still depend on the platform’s central infrastructure. As Hof points out, this means it’s not truly independent yet. Until we have a fully user-driven network, we’ll always face the risk of someone in charge making decisions that could build it up or tear it down.



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