I’m delighted to announce that the second webinar being run as part of the Digital Literacies and Open Practice module will be taking place on Thursday 8th November from 3.30-4.30pm GMT. It will be given by Lorna Campbell, from the University of Edinburgh and is entitled ‘Open for all? Engaging with open education practice at the personal and institutional level.‘ Once again it will be in Adobe Connect and is open to guests if you drop me a line beforehand. We will also be recording the session and I will share the slides and recording afterwards for those who can’t join us live.

I read Lorna’s blog post on the Soul of Liberty: openness, equality and co-creation earlier in the year. It is based on a conference keynote that she gave, and it really moved me. I had already thought that open practice was important, but she explores a whole range of issues including the inevitable starting point, of what we mean by open, what open educational resources are. However the most important point of the post for me is the section that is entitled Inclusion, Exclusion and Structural Inequality. Openness is about things being free, and reducing costs, but it’s also about trying to address inequalities in education. Inequalities are all around us; who has power, who gets access to knowledge, who’s voice gets heard and it’s such a powerful part of the open movement, to try and redress that on many levels. I am really looking forward to Thursday and I hope that some of you will join us!