This topic 2 was very challenging to me and a little bit foggy, because at my university we are starting to have online education or online learning as blended learning. So, I had very little to almost zero experience with online learning, Until I was introduced to ONL course, which is the second online course I ever taken.

Before my thoughts of openness were free resources, textbooks and photos anything you can use at your research or maybe some useful links for your students to read about some topics you have on your course, so basically superficial to some extent. After I start reading the resources that ware given to us, I began to see how wild it can get. There is a lot of interesting courses you can take for free on different MOOC. Not all of them were working for me but there is variety of platforms to choose from that best suits you.

After we started the discussion on my PBL (problem-based learning) group on this topic, someone said that knowledge is power and this power should be available to everyone, anywhere. We should spread and share what we know for the better good of the entire world. I really liked that thought and start wondering what if we are genuinely able to open and share with the world? our thoughts, ideas, knowledge maybe teaching techniques anything we want, how the world would be? But then I found out it not easy to be open and share, there is a lot of risks that should be considered.

At the top of these risks is endanger your own privacy or security. Secondly, be prone to criticism and judgments. If you not ready for that it might be a huge problem. Thirdly, openness is not inclusive and not all people really have access to open resources but some of them. As Amira Dhalla stated in The Dangers of Being Open  “What happens when only certain people are able to contribute to open projects and what happens when only certain people are able to access open resources? This means that the movement is not actually open to everyone and only obtainable by those who can practice and access it. Open is great. Open can be the future. If, and only when, we prioritize structuring it as a movement where anyone can participate and protecting those who do.” Another one, is that your work may be stolen or been credit for some else and here where it comes the importance of copyrights ,“creative common license “ which help you to let others know how you want them to reuse you work in a legal way, it like a signature that tells others how they can share or reuse or even alter your own work, or if they can use it for commercial purposes or not, you can create your own CC in the way you want and that is the beauty of using it.

At the end, like Catherine Cronin said “Recognition of the complexities and risks of openness, as well as its potential benefits, should inform open education practice and policy. A critical and reflexive approach is essential.”