 This week I want to take a step back from the practical aspects of open education to ask something that I don't think any of us here will be able to answer correctly. What will open education look like in 20 years? But before we look to the future we need to reflect on what's happening right now. There are four major trends in open education today. Legislative support for open education, growing numbers of open resources for K-12 educators, the development of open pedagogical practices, and the globalization of open education. First, let's look at the legislative support for open education today. Legislation in support of open education has passed in countries and states around the world. This support, similar to support for open access, has a lot to do with public funding. For example, South Africa's draft policy framework for the provision of distance education asks educators to do what many researchers are required to do already, openly license and share materials that they create using public funds. Other policies, statements, and bills supporting open education take different approaches, some expressing support for open education abstractly, and others offering funding for the advancement of open education directly. For instance, the United States Affordable College Textbook Act, recently reintroduced into the U.S. Senate, would provide funding to institutions of higher education to support programs that expand the use of open textbooks. These systems encouraging the further development of open educational resources are still fairly new, but their existence as drafts and proposals alone shows that national and international support for open education is growing. But legislation isn't the only big thing happening in open education today. Another major trend in open education is the inclusion of more K-12 resources. Now, you might wonder why the inclusion of educational materials for children and high school students is such a big deal. After all, historically, open educational support has targeted the needs of students in higher education, who carry the brunt of their education's costs personally and for whom material costs are extremely high. Children in public school systems do not need to purchase their own books, so costs of this type don't affect them, right? Not exactly. What you need to keep in mind is that open education is not about cost savings for individuals. Open education is about improving access to knowledge. Many elementary schools, both in the United States and abroad, are currently suffering from a lack of funding and resources to support student learning. Because of this, teachers are having to use personal funds to buy materials for their classes, and out-of-date textbooks are being used by school systems that can't afford newer additions. Broadening the focus of open education to better support these groups is an incredibly important endeavor and one that I hope continues on in the future. But we're not looking at the future yet. We're looking at the here and now, and if any innovation in open education could be said to be the hottest new thing today, I think it would be open pedagogy. Open pedagogy can refer to a few different things depending on who you ask. But usually, open pedagogy refers to the use of different teaching styles and even assignments that are only possible through the use of open educational resources and teaching. For instance, an instructor applying open pedagogical practices to their classroom might allow students to edit select materials used in class, something that is only possible due to the open licensing of OBR. But like I said earlier, open pedagogy is a fairly new idea in the open education movement and it will continue to grow and change over time. What I'm interested in seeing is how its focus on student participation, learner-centered teaching, and nondisposable assignments will evolve as support for open education continues to grow nationally and abroad. Which brings me to our final point about open education today. Globalization. For the sake of this video, globalization refers to the contemporary phenomenon in which international groups and individuals are able to share and exchange information. One of the biggest advantages of using open educational resources is the fact that it allows for content to be remixed and altered for use in different learning environments. In some cases, this can mean the use of examples that students in particular area can relate to better and in other cases it means a textbook or other course material can be written or translated into an instructor's native language. Over the past few years, there's been a lot of discussion about how open education can become truly inclusive to all people and not just for the English-speaking Western audience that dominates much of the online culture today. These discussions are a great start but we need more than that. As the open education movement continues to grow, I hope that it will bring in more creators from other cultures, that we will support and lift up the work of these creators and that the work being done will be reflected in the diversity of the items available in top OER repositories and presented at open education conferences. So now that we're thinking about it, what is the future of education? Note that I left out the word open here. If we're looking as far as 20 years into the future, I'm not sure that there will be a line drawn between open education and all the other education anymore. So let's think about what that could mean. With all the changes happening in open education today, it is possible that in 20 years the support of national governments, growth and available resources and adoption of new teaching practices built around the use of open educational resources could build a new, more inclusive kind of education. It could mean that worldwide we are able to provide an authentic high-quality learning experience that is tailored to the cultures and needs of learners from the age of three to 103. If we continue at the pace we're moving right now, there is a possibility that 20 years from now we could be reaching a new age in education. One that highlights the importance of access, equity and innovation for everyone.