The Open Ed Conference Day 2 Keynote – Open for What? Open to What? Beyond Content was animated by John Willinsky. The presentation was live streamed at  http://openedconference.org/2012/program/day-2/day2-900am-c300/ While, in contrast to yesterday’s keynote,  he came across initially as a luddite, his presentation was quite engaging and relevant to OER. He wanted to take us beyond open content.

We are open for what? His classes are not open. His work is on the public library side, rather than open content side. He has been working on the public knowledge side. Stanford started a MOOC last year and immediately had 150k students. This is an institute that debated on whether to add a few 100 undergraduates. The prof teaching it left Standford to start Udacity.
Willinsky’s current initative is to create a do-it-yourself academic journal app. This is a partnership between libraries and independent scholars and students. In the late 90s he did a series of articles with the Vancouver Sun about computer in education. He was embarassed that he could not display any of the research on this topic, just the abstracts. Now 21% of all the literature is freely available. Going up every year. Mega journal — how much more does it cost to publish and extra article. It is called Plus One. 14k peer reviewed articles published immediately. Circulation of articles is not aboout gate keeping, but a minimum standard. Costs $1300 to get published. Other journals are charging up to $3000 publishing fees. Author gets to keep their intellectual property. This economy is driven by ‘intellectual property’. We are sending our students defensive into the world. They give away their software. Open Data refers to replication of research. Example — Genome project. Articles won’t be published unless the data is shared. This is one of the few fields where the data is shared. Alberta won a ruling against Access Copyright. Fair Dealing in Canada has at its core a respect for learning. Private research is exempt from copyright. A librarian can copy a research article for individual learners. Still a problem for classrooms. This summer, however, the judge ruled that the classroom also applies to ‘private study’. What the student and teacher are engaged in is ‘private study’. Publishers worried about the drop in textbook sales. Under Fair Dealing education as a domain is grounds for copying. However, the publishing industry won that textbook purchases continue. That is schools cannot just simply copy textbooks holis bolis. Students have the right to put a Creative Commons license on their work. Are there ways the students can participate with libraries to share knowledge. Remove the divide between learning at school and learning through the public library. Need to connect student learning wth 21% of knowledge freely available. Work with Google Scholar. Bring Google Scholar into the classroom. Needs to be peer reviewed. Students could provide their own critiques for one another.