ccLearn monthly update – 21 May 2008

Ahrash Bissell, May 21st, 2008

Work on tools and resources that we hope will help to enable engagement with open education continues here at ccLearn. We’re getting into the testing phase for the Universal Education Search project, and we are currently writing a first report on licensing policy diversity among open educational projects and web sites.

ccLearn attended the Berkman at 10 anniversary conference in Boston this month. Creative Commons was essentially birthed at the Berkman Center (Harvard University), so the ten year anniversary provides an interesting reference point for considering how things have changed in that time. It is safe to say that practically everything has changed, at least with respect to the relationship of society and the Internet. For many people, the Internet is no longer a special feature of computing; instead, it IS computing. As social networks, mobile computing, and digital media become ever more integrated into our daily lives, the question of what we want that landscape to look like becomes ever more important. Is this a landscape of blockades and digital hazards, dominated by litigation and enforcement of a code that was developed over many years of pre-digital societies? Or is this a landscape of open pathways and possibilities, predicated on the notion that openness and transparency drive diversity and opportunity. Obviously, we here at ccLearn opt for the latter option.

We hope that everyone who discovers ccLearn and the open education movement will help in spreading the ideas and practices that define our collective work. We continue to engage with all interested parties, spanning commercial and non-commercial efforts, pre-K through lifelong learners, and all manner of initiatives that strive to improve educational access and opportunity worldwide.

Our resources pages continue to grow, and hopefully questions and concerns you might have about the open education movement are addressed there. If you have a specific question or comment, or some suggestions for additional useful resources for our site, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Spring seems to be flying by!

-Ahrash

ccLearn Workshop Video Now Live at OSL

Jane Park, May 12th, 2008

In April I blogged about Open Source Lab’s fourth official workshop featuring ccLearn’s Executive Director, Ahrash Bissell. The Open Source Lab has now posted a video of the workshop at their blog. The workshop focuses on recent developments within open education, including but not limited to the impact of open licensing, as Ahrash emphasizes the grander scale of the movement.

The video, like all content on OSL’s blog, is licensed CC BY-NC-SA.

CC and ccLearn at OCWC 2008 in Dalian, China

Jon Phillips, May 2nd, 2008

I just wrote a big post up on my appearance at the big Open Educational Resources conference OpenCourseWare Conference 2008 in Dalian. It is cut apart below:

Jose speaking about Knowledge Hub at the Open Ed conference in Dalian, China, Photo by Tom Caswell

I just arrived back home in Guangzhou, China from the OpenCourseWare Conference in Dalian, China last weekend and met many great people (but don’t have the tolerance to write out the contents of my thoughts ;), had many fruitful discussions, and rocked out a good slide deck for ccLearn (and you!). Check out my presentation (or any of my presentations and here), “OER XinXai (NOW!).

The most fruitful part of the conference for me was interacting with Philip Schmidt, Victor from Hewlett Foundation, Chunyan Wang from CC Mainland China, and Stewart Cheifet from Internet Archive. Also, hearing about sustain-o-bility in all its forms as a major consideration for projects, and mentions of CC+, made me quite happy. It also served as a nice place to test out my Mandarin skills for the good or worse of things. Hopefully at the next conference there will be more time for discussion during the conference days.

I jumped up on stage to give a final call for participation to the ccLearn and OER regional meeting at iSummit July 29 – August 1 in order to increase participation by principals in the region. Let’s hope it worked!

After this conference, I directly headed to Beijing where I worked with CC Mainland China team on accelerating business development and assessing great projects which would be great to integrate Creative Commons licensing. If you have an organization in China or any jurisdiction and want to help in this process, check out the page CC Web Integration.

The next stop for me is to head to celebrate Lu’s 27th birthday on May 4th, then onto Japan to meet up Joi, Catharina, Fumi and more (ken!). Then back to Guangzhou, Beijing, then back to Guangzhou, then back in San Francisco May 21 through at least end of July as homebase. Cheers!

Make Textbooks Affordable campaign launched

Ahrash Bissell, January 23rd, 2008

It was a busy day yesterday for campaigns to open up educational access and opportunities. In addition to the Cape Town Declaration, the Student PIRGs in the United States just launched a major campaign to encourage faculty to adopt open educational resources in their classrooms, which will provide significant benefit to students in making college education more affordable. ccLearn and members of the Creative Commons board have been advising on this campaign, and of course the texts being recommended would carry a CC license.

A press release is below:

January 22, 2008: Textbook costs can be a huge financial burden on students, and considering new low-cost options can help keep higher education affordable and accessible.

Although most of the textbooks on the existing market are expensive, an emerging number of free, online, open-access textbooks presents one of our best hopes for more affordable, comparable options. While the supply of these textbooks is still small, existing open textbooks have already won adoptions at some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, including Harvard and Caltech. Instructors who use open textbooks have affirmed that high-quality textbooks are not necessarily expensive textbooks.

The statement below is an effort to build faculty interest and demand for affordable and still comparable course materials, including open textbooks.

http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org/statement

Signers state their intent to consider open textbooks in the search for the most appropriate course materials, and their preference to adopt an open textbook in place of an expensive, commercial textbook, if the open textbook is the best option.

Please consider signing it!

For more information, to view a list of signatories, and to submit your signature, visit the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign website.

Teachers, Students, Web Gurus, and Foundations Launch Campaign to Transform Education, Call for Free, Adaptable Learning Materials Online

Ahrash Bissell, January 23rd, 2008

ccLearn, the education division of Creative Commons, was one of the core participants in the drafting of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, publicly launched yesterday. Creative Commons’ CEO, Lawrence Lessig, is a leading signatory, as are many CC friends and affiliates the world over. We encourage you to share the news and to sign on yourself. The press release is below.

Cape Town, January 22nd, 2008—A coalition of educators, foundations, and internet pioneers today urged governments and publishers to make publicly-funded educational materials available freely over the internet.

The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, launched today, is part of a dynamic effort to make learning and teaching materials available to everyone online, regardless of income or geographic location. It encourages teachers and students around the world to join a growing movement and use the web to share, remix and translate classroom materials to make education more accessible, effective, and flexible.

“Open education allows every person on earth to access and contribute to the vast pool of knowledge on the web,” said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and Wikia and one of the authors of the Declaration. “Everyone has something to teach and everyone has something to learn.”

According to the Declaration, teachers, students and communities would benefit if publishers and governments made publicly-funded educational materials freely available online. This will give students unlimited access to high quality, constantly improving course materials, just as Wikipedia has done in the world of reference materials.

Open education makes the link between teaching, learning and the collaborative culture of the Internet. It includes creating and sharing materials used in teaching as well as new approaches to learning where people create and shape knowledge together. These new practices promise to provide students with educational materials that are individually tailored to their learning style. There are already over 100,000 such open educational resources available on the Internet.

The Declaration is the result of a meeting of thirty open education leaders in Cape Town, South Africa, organized late last year by the Open Society Institute and the Shuttleworth Foundation. Participants identified key strategies for developing open education. They encourage others to join and sign the Declaration.

“Open sourcing education doesn’t just make learning more accessible, it makes it more collaborative, flexible and locally relevant,” said Linux Entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, who also recorded a video press briefing (http://capetowndeclaration.blip.tv/). “Linux is succeeding exactly because of this sort of adaptability. The same kind of success is possible for open education.”

Open education is of particular relevance in developing and emerging economies, creating the potential for affordable textbooks and learning materials. It opens the door to small-scale, local content producers likely to create more diverse offerings than large multinational publishing houses.

“Cultural diversity and local knowledge are a critical part of open education,” said Eve Gray of the Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town. “Countries like South Africa need to start producing and sharing educational materials built on their own diverse cultural heritage. Open education promises to make this kind of diverse publishing possible.”

The Declaration has already been translated into over a dozen languages and the growing list of signatories includes: Jimmy Wales; Mark Shuttleworth; Peter Gabriel, musician and founder of Real World Studios; Sir John Daniel, President of Commonwealth of Learning; Thomas Alexander, former Director for Education at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; Paul N. Courant, University Librarian and former Provost, University of Michigan; Lawrence Lessig, founder and CEO of Creative Commons; Andrey Kortunov, President of the New Eurasia Foundation; and Yehuda Elkana, Rector of the Central European University. Organizations endorsing the Declaration include: Wikimedia Foundation; Public Library of Science; Commonwealth of Learning; Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition; Canonical Ltd.; Centre for Open and Sustainable Learning; Open Society Institute; and Shuttleworth Foundation.

To read or sign the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, please visit: http://www.capetowndeclaration.org.

2008 Science Video Collection and Remix Challenge

Jane Park, January 15th, 2008

If you have access to educational science videos for kids (or if you even want to make your own), ccLearn encourages you to participate in the 2008 Science Video Collection and Remix Challenge! Check out the website for official details, but here’s the important stuff. Deadline is March 31, 2008. The grand prize includes:

• $2,000
• an OLPC laptop
• winning producer material featured on laptops and press materials worldwide

Photo by Venkatesh Harihara / CC BY-NC-SA

One Laptop Per Child and Intelligent Television are working to bring educational video to kids (namely 8 to 16 year-olds) who don’t have it. Your submissions will help to increase the amount of great educational video content available as part of the Open Education movement.

Basically, anyone can enter—kids, students, teachers, filmmakers, working people with time on their hands… The aim is to gather as much existing scientific video material as we can; this is the first stage of the competition. All contributed video material must be openly licensed (CC BY, CC BY-SA ), which means it can be copied, distributed, transmitted, and adapted by others.

There are other prizes too, which will be awarded by an international panel of judges. After you submit the prime material, the remixing stage will be announced. Remember, it’s all about the best science archives. Happy gathering!