 Can you hear me? I hear you just fine. Yep. You're a bit quiet though. Okay, I'll turn it up. Okay, I'll get going. Good morning, afternoon and evening to everyone. And it's 930 or there abouts in, in snowy Edmonton, Alberta today. And I'll be speaking about the knowledge mobilization. Note that all the slides that I'm showing you are openly licensed, except that some of the images are available under fair dealing or fair use in Canada and other countries. And at the time we're having now in Alberta, we have a very high number of coronavirus cases and everybody is cocooning and, and staying home as much as much as possible. But as most of you know by now, this is having a huge impact on education. And it's now more than 1.4 billion school closures around the world, and so many are now switching to online learning. And where a former governor general, Michael John, she tells us that education is a weapon of mass construction. And we believe that in the 21st century, that online education is going to facilitate this mass construction. The methodology I've been using for this information is a web search, we did a literature review, a survey of OER experts five Canadian and six international, along with a questionnaire and interviews. We were looking at effective learning and teaching quality awareness and costs. There was, we've looked at effective learning and teaching as a culture change when there is alignment with with the curricula. And non formal alignment and found it's not as important. And the ease of use or appropriateness of the learning content was seen to have some significance. I'm going to go through these quickly because I'm going to assume that everyone understands what we are at this conference. And the idea of assembly, rather than assembling courses, rather than creating them is very important to the whole OER concept. And it's the most innovative aspect of open educational resources. Or you can just take a course package bundle. And this is the part that I believe is lacking in open education resources. Many instructors just want the whole course package in a bundle, and they don't want to mix and max and change, etc. So good for retention, we know that free access to content prior to class that it reduces draw the dropout rate. We know that the quality of the material is not dependent on the type of license, nor the technology that's being used. We know that OER are better than commercial content, and other types of restricted content, because of the accessibility, the possibilities of collaboration, and the ability to improve update etc. One of the most significant problems still in the OER movement is that the knowledge of OER is seriously lacking. Once faculty become familiar with it, they become very supportive of open educational resources. And there is some risk of resistance among administrators. Plus, we all know that there are massive savings for students. Free content is a huge boon economically for students. They don't buy commercial texts in many situations because they can't afford them. Many students fall into this category. We believe that open education resources are necessary, but not sufficient for fulfilling the UNESCO strategic development goal for which is education for all. So, why do we need open educational resources, and two main reasons, digital rights management and digital licenses. We call it digital restrictions management, because content, commercial content has restrictions on it that are really unacceptable in an educational context. They put locks onto the commercial content to limit your ability to make use of the content in different circumstances. They've actually used these locks to go into people's computers and remove commercial content that has been legally acquired. DRM software, digital rights management, these locks that they put into it, is it needs deep permissions into the operating system. And it can stop and has in the past, stop normal operating system functions. It's defective by design. So they actually design a defect into your device through with these applications. Access codes are being used in many universities where students have to pay more in order to access the commercial information. So, with these digital locks, you can't copy paste annotate or highlight you can't use text to speech, which is very important for people who are visually disabled, you can't change the format. You can't move your commercial content from one computer to another. You can't print it out. You can't even move it geographically if you go to a different region. You can't use it after the expiry date. Most commercial content. They come and delete it from your computer after the course. And of course, unlike print material, you can't resell it. But I would argue that our device is our property and that DRM it restricts our freedom to use our property. Our device is our property. It restricts our freedom to use it. And it brings up this question, can we not own and control our own property. That is, this is my iPhone. This is my laptop. And can I not own and control this property. The locks on our devices, even though we're totally innocent of any crimes, they still lock up our devices and restrict how we can use them. Corey doctor put it this way. There's no theory of capitalism that says my private property should be regulated by the state, because there's a copyrighted work inside of it. And as I've seen this, we see this all the time in Canada, where the video is not available in your country. And the commercial content providers have tried to put in application that would actually destroy the device that's using their content, if it's not being used in the way they want you to use it. The number 53. I hope no one here has heard of it is it turns. This is a deep application in your iPhone, and it turns your iPhone into a brick. If you install applications not authorized by Apple. I believe that they got a lot of flack from it and it no longer is no longer there, but we don't know that. So Microsoft had an ebook apocalypse and it shows the dark side of DRM. This is a few years ago when Microsoft took down a huge number of ebooks from people's computers. Who's really losing any obstacle that makes a record harder to listen to is bad news for the artist that made it. So these digital locks, don't help the artist they don't help the creator they don't help the author. They are there for the sole use and restriction by the commercial content vendor. Now, even more nefarious than the digital locks are the legal protections that they give these locks. These digital licenses reinforce all of the restrictions that are on digital locks. And they say that owners have no liability, even if their product doesn't work. This is what you sign when you press on I agree to use their content. This is what you're agreeing to. They have no liability. You've agreed they can invade your computer without permission. Select and use your personal data, not just your personal data related to their application, but any personal data on your computer, and that you have a privilege to use but not own the property, the product. And very important in an educational context you're prohibited to show your content to others. It's very difficult for collaborations among students. And you must accept that you have no rights. So these are the laws that are being put in place in order to support the digital locks. That is, even if you have a right to the content, you cannot break the lock. For any reason, it's illegal. It's basically an idea we're going to own all of your stuff whether you like it or not deal with it. And here's an example of a digital license. I suspect that most of you have never read a digital license. I've read about 40 or 50 of them. And they're very onerous, but this one for microchips say that they can arrive in your into your home announced or unknown announced, and whether to take control over your device, whether you like it or not, whether it's located on your premises or at any time. And this is what you've agreed to when you click on, I agree. So what happens is you could find yourself in this situation in prison because you showed your wife a page from your ebook. This is how bad it is in the United States and in those countries that have been forced to accept American copyright law. So this is the main argument, or the main, how can I put it, physical argument for open textbooks with open textbooks, you can bypass all of these restrictions, we don't need to worry about them. We can copy paste text to speech, change the format printed out, move it geographically, do whatever we want with it, and we retain our privacy and digital rights. I believe that open textbooks open content are essential for e learning implementations. And even here, here's an interesting one where in your I agree a statement you've agreed that it's forbidden for you to use iTunes to create missiles, biological chemical or nuclear weapons. So be aware that you're not allowed to do that and you've agreed that you won't do it. So brings up this question. Do you own what you pay for vendors can now control how when where and with what specific brands of technological assistance audiences are able to access content. They brought a new concept into the world. You buy, but you don't get. We're in a world where you no longer get what you buy. And this new concept is being spread all over. It's bad in education it's bad in other areas, but I think some of you are old enough to remember the world we used to live in, where you bought something and you got it. But now you buy something but they still own it. Audrey waters put it this way, we all share and rent on the powerful platforms of Silicon Valley billionaires. This is far from a satisfactory alternative. Corey doctor says that it's a return to feudalism, where the Lords owned everything and the surf so nothing. And now it's the companies that own everything. Not aristocrats but still people really do not own anything. This is entered into many different facets of civilization where you can't run your tractor without the software, and they've come in and disabled the software on tractors. So a farmer owns his tractor only owns the physical tractor but it will not work without the software. And this is the same for heart pumps for lights for cars, everything else, you don't own it. And somehow the notion of actually owning the things you buy has become a revolutionary. If you bought it you should own it it's as simple as that, as Kyle Viennes tells us. So, the answer is openness, openness is the skeleton key that unlocks every attempt at vendor control and lock in. And we can thank David Wiley for reminders of that. And I'd like to finish off by putting in a plug for some of the indigenous knowledge efforts that we've been doing in Canada that when we're talking about copyright and openness. We have to honor indigenous belief systems, respect their protocols, and understand that mainstream views may be value laden and prejudicial. So we have to make exceptions for this. What we see has been very successful in putting out indigenous storybooks as open educational resources, and they've done so by working with indigenous communities honoring their protocols, and bringing language revitalization. They're also publishing these OER in the local languages. They're sharing traditional stories, and the fact that they're freely available maximizes their impact and read and reach. Little Cree Books is an example of that where they are putting out these books for students. And another good example is in Masquassa's Cultural College. It's at a major OER initiative. And even having translated the creative commons into the Cree language. So the recommendations, one, based on this research, government funded publications should be made freely available to the public using an open license. Creative commons has been saying this for many years. Educate faculty, staff and administrators on open licensing. Again, create awareness, educate them. Provide faculty in assembling, adapting and reusing OER. Let's have more training. Provide faculty with career incentives and compensation for OER use, which this was referred to by a previous speaker and I fully agree with her. I advise faculty to search for OER first for courses. That is, do not create OER. I repeat that do not create OER. Look for what's available. Assemble courses. Find out what's out there. Do not reinvent the wheel. Use what's out there. Only create when you cannot find anything, anything that will serve your purposes. Make open licenses mandatory in local course creation. Use OER, then awareness will follow. People wonder, how do we make people aware of OER? Well, start using them and publicize your use of them. Let people know that you're using OER, but use them. Support local influencers among staff and students. If you just don't know what to say, you should wrap up in the next minute. I'm wrapping up right now. Every day. Computers are making people easier to use. Everything you know is wrong. I want to finish with these two statements that the Royal Society, the oldest scientific society in the world, says that the restrictions of the Commons by patents copyright and databases is not in the interest of society and unduly hamper scientific and the previous Pope Benedict said on the part of rich countries, there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property. What does this tell us? That both science and God is on our side. Remember, we are on the side of the angels. We can go forward and thank you very much for your attention. I love that conclusion. On the side of angels. Thank you so much, Rory. Really fascinating and always.