IssueLab Launches Research Remix Video Contest

Jane Park, October 19th, 2009

IssueLab, “an open source archive of research produced by nonprofit organizations, university-based research centers, and foundations,” launches their Research Remix Video Contest this week. The contest “aims to engage working artists and digital media students with social issues while encouraging nonprofits to make their research more broadly available and usable through open licensing.” If you recall my interview with co-founder Lisa Brooks earlier this year, a good chunk of IssueLab’s research is licensed under one of the Creative Commons licenses. From the press release,

“Contestants will be asked to remix facts or data from one of over 300 openly licensed research
reports on IssueLab into a video or animation under three minutes in length. Winners will be selected
after the December 31, 2009 deadline, and nonprofits will be able to use all submitted videos freely to
support their causes.

The launch of “Research Remix” coincides with Open Access Week, an international movement that
pushes for broad and free access to research findings and publicly funded studies. IssueLab’s official
participation is marked by its continued commitment to bringing open access and licensing to the
social and policy research fields. “It is especially important that nonprofits consider openly licensing
their research and resources. By giving people the ability to re-use, remix, and share research on
social issues we can much better inform and engage public debate and public policy.”

We encourage you to remix and submit your videos by the year’s end, especially because all finalists receive a free CC t-shirt and buttons (not to mention first prize is a netbook). I’m also one of the judges, so I look forward to your submissions!

Digital Open Winners Announced

Jane Park, October 14th, 2009

CC BY by the Digital Open

I blogged about the Digital Open in April, a new online community and competition that was accepting free and open technology projects from anyone 17 or younger through August. The competition was aimed at fostering an online and open community of youth by encouraging them to see the benefits of open source and open licensing.

Since then the jury has come in to announce eight grand prize winners. The first video profile is the Centralized Student Website from Fremont, California, by Raymond Zhong and Aatash Parikh. They’ve gone ahead and built a student portal for their high school, where virtually any school activity, especially student clubs, are accessed. Other winners include a Casa Ecologica in Spain and a Hybrid Airship. Be sure to check back for more videos.

Except where otherwise noted, all content on the Digital Open is available via CC BY. The Digital Open is the result of a joint partnership between the Institute for the Future, BoingBoing, and Sun Microsystems.

Digital Open

Jane Park, April 21st, 2009

The Digital Open, a new online community and competition for youth, is now accepting free and open technology projects from anyone 17 or younger. Free and open means openly licensed, with software licensed under a GPL license and content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. (See the Digital Open–approved Licenses for more details.) The competition runs until August, and they accept projects in all different languages. The competition aims to foster an online and open community of youth by encouraging them to see the benefits of open source and open licensing. Their announcement below, including a link to the Boing Boing video:

“What can you make with technology that will change the world—or even just make life a little easier or more fun?

Institute for the Future, in partnership with Sun Microsystems and Boing Boing, invites youth worldwide, age 17 and under, to join us as we explore the frontiers of free and open innovation. The Digital Open: An Innovation Expo for Global Youth will celebrate projects in a variety of areas ranging from the environment, art and music to the more traditional open source domains of software and hardware.

From April 15 until August 15, 2009, we’ll accept text, photos, and videos documenting projects from young people around the world who want to contribute to the growing free and open technology community.

But the Digital Open is more than an online competition. By submitting a project, you’ll become a valuable member of a community of creative young innovators working in the exciting world of free and open technology.

Collaboration is encouraged! In addition to a variety of prizes and achievements you can earn through community participation, the top project in each category will earn a fantastic prize pack and be featured on Boing Boing Video!

The future is yours to make! Get started at http://digitalopen.org.”

Judges include ccLearn’s Ahrash Bissell and CC board member, Lawrence Lessig.

2nd Annual Digital Media and Learning Competition

Jane Park, August 28th, 2008

Last week, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, long-time supporter of CC, announced the second annual Digital Media and Learning Competition. The 2008 competition is a collaborative result of the MacArthur Foundation, the University of California, Irvine, Duke University, and HASTAC, a virtual and voluntary network of educators and innovators committed to improving learning via technology. The competition accompanies the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative, a $50 million, five-year initiative that was launched in 2006 to “help determine how digital technologies are changing the way people, especially young people, learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.”

This year’s competition theme is “Participatory Learning,” which focuses on the collaborative aspect of learning by exploring different and new models in digital media. This may include “major adaptations of existing models of gaming, world building, social networking or other virtual environments; or the development of entirely new programs.” The emphasis, however, is on “a strong commitment to making possible new ways of valuable participatory learning, as opposed to simply creating new content.”

$2 million will be awarded in sum over two categories: “Innovation in Participatory Learning” and “Young Innovator.” The latter’s focus is the same, but the targeted group is 18-25 year old persons who are willing to “think boldly about what comes next in participatory learning and to contribute to making it happen.”

The winning products and/or programs will be licensed CC BY-NC-SA or be available as Open Source. For more details, see the MacArthur Foundation’s August 18th press release and the competition guidelines.

For examples of winning projects, see last year’s winners in Innovation and Knowledge-Networking.