Tosiyasu L. Kunii “Practicing Global Openness in Education: From Elementary Schools to Graduate Schools“, Proceedings of Workshop on Digital and Academic Liberty of Information, March 26-29, 2001, Aizu. Japan

Abstract

An experience-based summary of global open education is presented solely for promoting its practices. My life has been benefited from practicing open education, first at an elementary school and later at a graduate school. The openness has been local because of the lack of globalization mechanisms in education. It is fairly recent that we have effective global educations mechanisms for global interactivity and global two way communications such as the web and cyberspaces. Compared to local open education, global open education removes the boundaries of ages, organizations, nations, sexes, and disciplines. Many unseen barriers exist to prevent global open education, mostly originating from survival intuitions and fights embodied in life itself. Since the barriers are rooted in the nature of life, it is hard to practice global openness in education. Hence it is important to cooperate for us to practice it to see real advances in our knowledge.

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