Sharing is not scary; I guess everyone I work or collaborate together with, are way passed the point where you feel that sharing or openness is something you even need to question. However, my subject area is language writing and communication – obviously we don´t have secrets or do research on sensitive materials that can´t be shared to the world.

I would say, sharing materials for education, ideas for assignments, pedagogical methods or interesting articles is a given, but I do understand and respect my colleague’s resistance on going open in terms of e.g. showing your own face in videos that are accessible for anyone anywhere. I don´t feel comfortable myself, uploading videos, but on the other hand, I don´t think the rest of the world are that interested or would find and watch videos made for our students… (How sad, in this world where you count likes and views )

I must admit, that I have been rather lazy
when it comes to insuring that pictures I use in e.g. documents I share with
students are free to use. Therefore, I really appreciated the update on
copyrights and creative commons and the links to resources that are free to
use. Here are some useful resources for nice pictures to freshen up your
presentations and documents! https://unsplash.com/ and https://pixabay.com/

Without touching problems like financing systems for Higher education, annual fees, acknowledgement of knowledge or getting an actual degree, one must rejoice over the possibility and access to education and knowledge that millions and millions of people are provided with, thanks you online learning and open education systems. It is a huge step and progress for democracy and equal rights. I was absolutely blown away by the numbers (from 2010) presented in David Wiley´s TedTalk. At the moment 120M people are in HE, and the number is expected to grow by staggering 150M more participants worldwide in the next 25 years. In India alone, that would mean 2400 new universities, aka one new university every second week for the next 25 years. It goes without saying, that online education is the only possible way in the future (= as in now).

These are numbers I can´t even begin to grasp in my small corner of the world, where our university accept about 600 new students per year, and the number is not expected to grow, at least not when it comes to native Swedish speaking students.