Ligia Puppato, the Secretary of Digital Inclusion of Brazil Government visited the Open University to get a clear picture of the future of Knowledge Media Technologies particularly applied to open education and smart cities.  She also participated in the webinar held in KMi podium to launch the 3rd edition of the book  “Open Education Resources and Social Networks” with Peter Scott the director of KMi and the book editor Ale Okada.
 
This webinar was opened by Larry Cooperman, the president of Open Education Consortium from California and  Danilo Mendonca OEC Brazilian member. There were also several co-authors of the book from different areas in Brazil and some attendees from “Telecentros”, which are ICT centres installed in remote areas, part of Brazil Government strategies for promoting Digital Inclusion.
 
During her talk, Ligia congratulated all the participants in the book and highlighted Online Education as a key strategy for opening up formal, informal and non-formal learning in Brazil – a country that has continental dimensions with many social differences and diversity among the regions. “Our challenge today, with so many projects being conducted, is to include people digitally, but mainly that they can have a sense of ownership of these technologies through open education”.
 
Larry Cooperman emphasised some key issues for a “Global open education infrastructure, and if we can achieve this, we can reduce the cost of the university education, we can spread higher education, and for that matter K-12, to new populations that haven’t had access – and that ultimately is the social goal behind all of the work that is reflected in the OER and Social Networks book”
 
The OER and Social Network Book is available at oer.kmi.open.ac.uk. It was also published by EDUEMA in Brazil. Five hundred copies printed in colour were distributed free.