Open Education: an opportunity to work together on knowledge sharing and cultural change for the public good

The “opens” (Open Education, Open Science, Open Data, Open Software, Open Pedagogies…) are connected in their purposes and in their values, but are too often still divided in sylos when it comes to joint action, joint strategies and joint participation to key cultural change opportunities. The Open Education Italia network (https://www.openeducationitalia.it/) is a community of experts, teachers and other stakeholders aimed at promoting Open Education in Italy, in a broad sense, in full connection with the other open areas, to enhance civic participation, and with particular attention the social impact of open education practices. Born in 2017 to respond to the fragmentation of the sector in Italy, the community has more than 50 members, active from school education to higher education to Lifelong Learning. The bottom-up efforts of the community can do so much while through properly connecting with adjacent communities in the opens it could definitely gain better results in advocating for a more intentional implementation of the UNESCO OER Recommendation on OER, especially considering the Italian government signed it, together with all other members, but low level policy change happened so far. We want to connect with other open communities that share the same values and purposes to make our efforts more effective and coordinated, so that the change we make can become, even slowly but steadily, the default for the public good.