Educational futures: Globalisation, educational technology and lifelong learning

A reader who has followed this book from the beginning will have completed a journey, not only via various points on the globe, but also through various educational sectors and approaches. Opening Education is the theme which links each of these points, but diversity is a theme in itself. Arguably, if educators, trainers, policy-makers and administrators are pursuing paths of opening their educational endeavours, they are likely to be diversifying in some way. Hence, it is not surprising that the preceding chapters have both a unity towards openness and yet a diversity in terms of practical and policy outcomes. However, the diversity is not random, indeed there are other common threads which one could draw. Few if any chapters avoid the mention of technology, especially new computer and communications technologies. Contemporary discourses of open and distance education policy and practice seem impossible without the lexicon of the new technologies.