The opening keynote this morning at the Sakai conference in Amsterdam challenged us as a community to participate in a movement from thinking about "my course for my students" to "our courses as open participatory learning environments of reforming and rebuilding."

I found it very worthwhile. Often I've found that as a community we're focused intensely on improving our performance as a community. We work hard, debate, and adapt our communication habits, our policies and practices, etc. As a result we're a healthy growing community. It is very nice every once and a while to lift our heads up and realize the larger movement toward openness we're deeply involved in.

Hal spoke intensely about the importance of open academic content to a world where 30 million million people capable of attending higher education are left out... and about the technical, legal, and attitudinal barriers we need to overcome. At one point it reminded me of this video from earlier in the year that creatively illustrates the revolution underway in how we create, re-use, re-mix, and share content.

The talk is well worth a listen.