Open Access Scholarship and Teaching

I like to prepare ... and worry. Since I was a child, I have always prepared for the 'next' event, that being teacher's college. Immediately, I looked up some books at the UofT libraries. Very interesting stuff :) My second thought, with a huge time delay, was to check out MIT OpenCourseWare (Experiments in Education). When I want to learn something that  doesn't fall into the how-to category, like language learning, philosophy or computer stuff, I turn to MIT. I remember when they unleashed this site! I wished I had access to this when I was making choices to enter university. THIS is the best advertisement for a university. That's simply a bi-product, though, a good one at that. Teachers from the same discipline or from crossover disciplines could find syllabli and reading lists, even assignments, a valuable resource. During my Master's (linguistics), I always found that more and more barriers to access to information -- not less. Researching for my papers, preparing for tutorials, or browsing a journal became a skill of its own.  When I wrote papers I always preferred quote published articles that I found on a professor's site, or a free download from a university conference page. Access to materials to learn from, to help teachers, to quote from and use for research should all be made available for open access. When I found this presentation online, it has motivated me continue learning from what other teachers have written online. There are other people in Toronto, in Canada, and around the world that believe in sharing their knowledge -- in a manner that is easy to find and access.