As to changing media constellations and the medialization of lifeworlds, a transgression of boundaries including those between formal and informal learning contexts, childhood and adulthood, private and public spheres, has been discussed. Today, a variety of initiatives are aiming at opening up education on various levels using digital communications technologies in order to foster media literacy as well as various kinds of literacy skills and to empower children and young people. For the most part, recent debates about education for all and free educational infrastructures can be characterized by a kind of historical amnesia. The paper starts (1) with a brief outline of selected understandings of openness in education followed (2) by a discussion of different understandings of 'education' as related to Open Education (OE). Finally (3), the contribution aims at critical reflections on the literacification of everything and paradoxes of openness in education as strategy of empowerment.

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