 Today's video is going to talk about leadership in open education, and more importantly, it contains one piece of advice I have for new leaders in the open education movement. But as always, first we have to cover some background information. The open education movement today is a wonderfully diverse group of individuals working towards a common goal, a more affordable and accessible education for everyone. And these individuals can all contribute to the movement in uniquely valuable ways. For example, instructors in the movement can create new resources or edit existing resources so they can be used more effectively in different classrooms. Students can rally for change, participate in classes that use open educational practices, and even help professors create new OER. And librarians, instructional designers, and educational administrators can all contribute by reaching out, teaching people about open education, and creating resources to further the movement in other ways. But each of these individuals are individuals, they are singular people with their own visions and ideas about what the open education movement should be. This has led to rifts among members of the movement, disagreements about what constitutes open educational practices, and feelings of isolation among newcomers to the movement who don't know which side to stand on. For this week's video, I wanted to explore one thing I've learned about open education over the past few months. And so I decided, if I could reach out and give one piece of advice to every open education advocate around today, I would say this, we need to talk to each other. Our work does not and should not exist in a bubble, by ignoring the work that others in the open education movement are doing, or by failing to share our own work. We are creating yet another closed system, a system in which the same tools and resources are being created over and over again, where the innovation and growth of the movement is stunted and where new voices are stifled by the old. But that doesn't have to be the case. We need to share with one another. Advocating for open practices is good, but displaying those practices by sharing our tools, our outreach tactics, and our stories is even better. Because when we share our experiences as well as our work, great things can happen. By interacting with other people working in the open education movement and listening to their stories, we can become better advocates, leaders, and creators ourselves. How do I know this? Well, for the past few months, I've been working collaboratively with a group of open education advocates as part of the Spark Open Education Leadership Program. This program provides a space for new and a more experienced open education advocates to talk to one another, discuss trends in the movement and in our own personal circumstances, and work through problems together. As Amanda Larson, another member of the Spark Open Education Leadership Program shared with me, working in a collaborative environment with other OER leaders has exposed her to ideas she never would have thought up on her own, and because of the open nature of this community, she feels encouraged to embrace those other ideas, tweak them to fit her institution's needs, and implement them. What have I learned about open education leadership from this program? I've learned that in order to make open education work, we need to listen, to share, to collaborate, and by doing these things, we can all do more. Thank you for watching. For more information, check out our related resources in the description.