 I am speaking today as a communication person, a media practitioner, and a teacher, researcher, an open distance e-learning advocate for higher education. For us who are actively involved in using ICT for education, we certainly want to make use of technology to enhance our teaching, learning, research for new knowledge, sicker theorizing, so we mean improved pedagogies, modalities, methodologies, and in terms of practice, extension, collaborating with our community of practice, and benefit people in our communities where we live in our nation, region, and the world. Certainly we want to make our lives better as we maximize the use of technology without taking away practices that we feel are essential aspects of quality assurance and what we always say our push for pursuit of excellence. Being part of a university that champions openness, this makes me an advocate of ODEL, learner-centered education, continuing professional education, and lifelong learning in general and open sharing of resources through ICT. For us teachers who use ICT for education, we are now in the middle of the 21st century higher education environment. There is greater work ahead of us. The many university schools and colleges of traditional mode and open universities as well, we teachers who put high regard to the use of technology enhance and technology mediated education, you know as educators we have to think about 700 to 800,000 high school graduates every year who are not given the opportunity to take higher education and the numerous millions of adult Filipinos in our country and abroad who need professional continuing education. We can only do so much in physically, you know, replicating our institutions, fly our professors in every island of our country to reach those who are marginalized. We therefore make digital information communication technology work for higher education in our country. We have to continue doing research to fully understand the benefits of ICT and e-learning for higher education. Moving forward, we have to examine the parameters of openness in determining our institution's direction in these digital times, concepts of open education in general and in particular open educational resources or OER including MOOCs. MOOCs is a form of OER. It is a type of OER. It poses benefits to all teachers and learners, especially in developing countries like the Philippines. OER is a term that was first formalized in UNESCO's 2002 forum on open courseware in teaching, learning and research materials. OERs can be in any medium, digital or otherwise and in the public domain or is under an open license. It has in most occasions been associated with open distance learning and the openness movement. Digital OER is an important resource for education in the Philippines, especially as internet connectivity becomes increasingly available and starting its maturity year 2016 with our total population of 102 million and 250,133 Filipinos. The internet users out of this population, we have 44,478,808. That means 43.5 percent penetration so considering the active users of the internet with its continuing growth and considered as the Philippines being the textiest social network selfie photo centers, it is part of this generation's learning style for tertiary education learners and with the Philippines having an active and dedicated people to maximize ICT for education. We have UP Open University which started to go online in 2001 and fully online in 2007 and with today's media connectivity, interactivity and ubiquity brings the Filipino people a powerful platform that promises higher education institutions making its way to strengthen the concept of lifelong learning. These modes of openness have been applied not only to open distance learning institutions in varying degrees. Over the years while these outcomes have dominated the discourse on openness in higher education, conferences all over the world, dramatic changes in information and communication technologies in recent years have added new dimensions to openness. When we think about the way ideas now move in a networked society and how fast the exchanges of ideas are, the network is this an ending trillion of conversations making usable media. We have print, we have radio, television, all rolled into a medium that is multimedia, print, graphics, audio, video, all different media together with its own set of grammar and syntax giving openness this new excitement and synergy in this new dimensions of connectivity, interactivity, ubiquity, everywhere it's accessible framed in this automatic constructivist participatory pedagogy of teaching and learning in multimedia age. This digital era not only calls for knowledge of different literacies but what is more exciting is you have this multimedia that captures orality the exchange of ideas verbally and you have moments of quiet contemplating in modes of visuality. Let me talk about the concept of openness in the case of UP Open University. For UP Open University the MOOCs called Model Courses for Free have become the way of openness and in doing it share of scalable human resource development. These are released as OERs free for sharing. Open DSTLZ Learning the worldview that has guided the UP OU's performance of its instruction, research and public service functions, ODEL draws from the philosophies of open learning, the affordances of distance education and approaches of e-learning while being supported by the values that underpin the universitas ethos, academic excellence, academic freedom, intellectual pluralism and service to society. And so we have MOOCs and UP OU has termed its own brand of MOOCs as I said earlier massive open distance e-learning the model. The widening of virtual teaching and learning culture worldwide has ushered in the changing learning styles of our students. Each year more and more digital natives are joining the higher education sector. Even digital migrants like us are persistently and constantly being put in a position where we have to adapt new technology challenging us faculty and learners to develop other media literacies and the deep realization that teachers and learners are co-creators of academic texts through research and practice pushes new knowledge for the growth of our disciplines and communities of practice. What is the direction in the future? The e-mobile culture is likewise going to be very much a reality so not only being connected directly to services provided by the private sector but to government transactions as well. Governments all over the world are finding e-solutions for their government procedures and transactions and exchanging the best practices in the world and selling the culture of advocating government transactions in everyday life. Therefore not only commercial transactions will be available on demand in the likes of bank deposits withdrawals online e-shopping e-booking for travel to name a few. We have had these for quite some time when this is fully implemented it becomes a social contract where the citizenry the general public expects efficiency immediacy accessibility and connectivity of all services. This social contract becomes second nature and a way of life expecting nothing less in all the other services extended by both private and government institutions. Then we shall definitely see e-mobile, e-culture, e-teaching, e-learning, e-research prevailing and linking us all through ICT for social transformation. As ICTs become more comprehensive e-learning has become a viable option in reaching out to learners from across the globe. ICT has merged with media institutions, educational institutions and communities of practice into a new paradigm of building global teaching and learning communities thereby changing how new knowledge happens. This has changed the way we think and how we try to solve our problems and challenges. We see teaching and learning in all levels in the university schools and colleges in the workplace with a learning platform that we call e-learning. So e-learning platforms offering different types of courses directly to the public in social media whether it's an ending conversations and on television whether it's stream of documentaries, exposés, instructional and talk shows. In all levels new knowledge, teaching and learning transpire. The development of free and user friendly ICT has also brought down the cost of producing and distributing learning resources. This coupled with the principle that knowledge must be free has contributed to the propagation of open educational resources. According to UNESCO, OER are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license and digital media today have incorporated all traditional media into multimedia transforming and redefining the processes of teaching, learning, research and extension. I cannot overemphasize this point for OERs to be truly meaningful. They have to be delivered and used within the context of a teaching, learning, research and extension environment. After discussing the global trends in open education let me share my perspectives on the openness discourse in the Philippines. This is based on my conversations with fellow academics, university administrators and policy makers in the government. And the Philippine discourse of openness in education revolves around three interrelated issues national access, quality and transnational education. Low makers in the country have heeded this call. So the Philippine Commission on Higher Education, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority of the Philippines and UP Open University were named as the three institutions to enable the implementation of the new law known as Open Distance Learning Act. And the application of open learning as a philosophy of access to educational services and the use of distance education system of delivering quality higher and technical educational services identifying ICT as delivery mode and other approaches. This law is strengthening the development and production of MOOCs and OERs in the Philippines. As shown in section 12 the role of the University of the Philippines Open University is summarized into the following. It says provide leadership in ODL, promote best practices, share innovative research in ODL, design curricular programs in ODL, develop and promote appropriate ICT, design quality, learning materials, make instructional materials, assist educational institutions for specific learning groups or the public at large, design and implement a continuing program to develop high quality, high level expertise and capacitate ODL teachers and practitioners. You know I'm thankful that I work closely with this because you know being part also of the technical panel of Transnational Education in Chad and with UP Open University working closely with our Chancellor and other administrators and other faculty and staff of UP Open University the opportunities and the many changes that will happen in ODL scenario in this country will be wide, will be deep and will really affect our lives as educators. What is good as well in the section 15 of the ODL Act roles of broadcast media and telecommunication networks they are encouraged to provide as much assistance to those offering ODL programs and also in section 18 it talks about tax exemption donations if you are going to donate and have grants for individuals and organizations there will be tax exemption for donors so Transnational Education CMO has also gone through public hearings and will be ready for orientation for Philippine HEIs. The national government wants to promote greater openness, distance learning in education and the IRR of the new law has gone through public hearings as well and orientation for HEIs on the law has transpired. What are the implications of these trends and developments for us who are in higher education and believers of information communication technology for education in heeding the call for technology enhanced education we need to go back to the mission of our respective HEIs and evaluate how can openness and technology enhance education support the attainment of our mission in the context of teaching and learning in the 21st century.