One of the most important lessons I learned from TwitterChat is that openness and sharing promotes the independence of learners. In openness and sharing educational context, instead of giving the students class reading, the teachers give their learners the opportunity to look for their own references. With this kind of system, the students are encouraged to learn on their own with minimal assistance from their teachers.
In my opinion, openness and sharing can be promoted in K-12 educational context through using Open Educational Resources (OERs). Students can use OERs whenever they want to conduct researches or they simply like to explore certain topics during their leisure time. When students can easily access resources, the educators can make it sure that they will actively participate in discussions. For instance, the participants in TwitterChat surely have enough knowledge on openness and sharing in K-12 educational context. If none, it would be impossible for them to share their ideas on the topic. Just as one of the famous saying goes: “You cannot give what you do not have.”
If I were to promote openness and sharing to my students, the first thing that I would do is to familiarize my students with different OERs. To do this, I will give my students a list of sites where they can search for reliable resources. In addition to this, I will also discuss the characteristics of reliable and scholarly references. This is for the reason that there are a lot of information available online so there is a possibility of misinformation. If the students know how to identify reliable and scholarly articles, then the students will be able to gain the right information.