Hi everyone! I’m excited to have a conversation space for my session, The Work at the Hinge: Mini Structures and Human-Centered Open Education, happening Thursday October 8, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pmEDT - Online
I’m a teacher at heart, and I believe deeply in reflective and reflexive practice. So rather than using this space simply to describe what I’m going to talk about, I thought we might try a small experiment together.
At the center of my session is a sentence: A door is only open if someone can actually get through it.
Before the session, I’d love for you to sit with that for a moment.
Think about your own work in open education, open knowledge, or another space where we invite people to participate.
What do you think makes it possible for someone to actually walk through an “open” door?
Or, from the other direction:
Where have you seen something be technically open, available, or welcoming, but still difficult for people to enter or participate in?
That’s it. No need for a polished answer. An example, question, instinct, disagreement, or half-formed thought is welcome.
If you’re willing, reply here before the session and leave yourself a little record of what you’re thinking right now.
Then come join me for the session.
I’ll share some experiences from my own open education practice, some very small things I began noticing in the design of programs and professional learning, and the much bigger questions those observations have started raising for me about openness, participation, relationship, care, and what happens at the space between access and participation.
Then come back.
After the session, return to your original reply and respond to yourself.
- Did anything shift?
- Did something become more complicated?
- Did you notice something you hadn’t noticed before?
- Are you less certain about something?
- Did the session give you a new question?
- Or did it strengthen something you already believed?
There’s no requirement that your thinking change. I’m interested in what happens when we make our thinking visible at one moment, encounter new ideas and one another, and then return to see what, if anything, has moved.
And of course, this thread can also stay open for questions, examples, connections, disagreements, and conversations that we don’t have time to finish during the session.
I’m looking forward to thinking with you.
Before we begin: What makes it possible for someone to actually walk through an open door?
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