(SOO logo here. Earth icon licensed CC BY by Erin Standley from the Noun Project.)

After months of discussions, deliberations, and planning between CC staff, African Regional Coordinators, African Affiliate teams, and others in the open space, Creative Commons Africa is set to storm Africa by having a continent-wide launch for School of Open in September.

School of Open is a global community of volunteers providing free online courses, face-to-face workshops, and innovative training programs on the meaning, application, and impact of “openness” in the digital age. Through School of Open, you can learn how to add a Creative Commons license to your work, find free resources for classroom use, open up your research, remix a music video, and more!

School of Open programs will be launched in Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, and South Africa in September on a series of topics ranging from Creative Commons licensing, intellectual property protection, open society concepts, and the Linux operating system .

Strategic collaborations are underway with the Mozilla Foundation, Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, WikiAfrica, University of Lagos, University of Tanzania, and the Institute of Educational Management Technology of the Open University of Tanzania to make the launch a success.

School of Open Kenya  

School of Open Kenya already started out as a trail blazer by organizing a two-week after school program that introduces high school students to open culture through the use of online School of Open courses and related open educational resources (OER). The training was designed to satisfy the academic needs of the students and to enable the students to use open tools such as Creative Commons licenses to create and share knowledge, as well as learning required subjects in new and creative ways. The students integrated the School of Open training into their school work and were able to produce projects such as this Titration Demo video by the Lenana School under CC BY. Despite its long strides, Jamlab and CC Kenya are not resting their oars; they will be launching a Train the Trainers program this September where they will train 10+ community members to organize and run SOO workshops in more high schools and in neighboring countries. SOO Kenya will also host a SOO Africa launch event and Maker Party entitled PopJam. Jamlab + CC Kenya, in collaboration with Mozilla Kenya and Wikipedia Kenya, will host the event for 5 high schools in the region. Stay tuned for details!

School of Open South Africa  

CC South Africa hosts three projects under the School of Open initiative. The first is the #OpenAfrica project where in conjunction with WikiAfrica, open advocates from Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda and Ghana were put through an “open” bootcamp. The month-long camp covered Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Open Street Maps, Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Data, Open Government, and related fundraising and community building skills. Advocates returned equipped with “open” knowledge and skills to their home countries to influence and spur their communities into action. This has resulted in the creation of new CC affiliate teams in Ethiopia and Cote d’Ivoire and the launch of open mandated tech hubs in these communities.

Launching off #OpenAfrica, participants were invited to compete for the first Kumusha Bus stop. The Kumusha Bus is an African adaption of the South American Libre Bus. Ethiopia ‘won’ the first Kumusha Bus stop. The team spent four days inspiring, teaching and sharing at GIZ Headquarters in Addis Ababa. Participants from Sheger Media, AIESEC and Addis Ababa University were in attendance. The four days resulted in the launch of Project Luwi. Luwi is an open source project, aiming to increase the application of open source information and communication technologies (ICT). Luwi intends to create a local community of interested volunteers that is able to foster motivation and creativity around Open Educational Resources (OERs) and supports a culture of sharing information freely in Ethiopia.

The third project is the Creative Commons for Kids program (CC4Kids). CC4Kids was built with Obami, a South Africa-based social learning platform. The course is self-taught and takes about 45 minutes to complete. CC South Africa was invited to teach its first course as part of a Maker Party at the Code for Cape Town project (Code4CT) with 24 grade 10 and 11 girls from the Centre for Science and Technology (COSAT) in Cape Town, South Africa. For three weeks the girls were trained on how the web works and actively participated in building web content. Instead of policing students’ actions, CC4Kids teaches youth how to open and share their creative and educational works legally through the use of CC licenses. All the girls now have simple web pages they created. CC4Kids’ next Maker Party will be held at RLabs in August. Stay tuned!

School of Open Tanzania  

CC Tanzania is planning to host three sets of trainings. The first will be an ICT empowerment training for unemployed youth, the second will focus on teaching persons with disabilities how to use computers, and the third will focus on training educators on using ICT to improve how they teach their students. Participants will become new School of Open volunteers, improving and running future training programs as a way to give back to and grow their community. Development will be led by CC Tanzania volunteers with expertise in law, journalism, and information technology. CC Tanzania will host a joint SOO Africa launch event + Mozilla Maker Party, date and location TBD.

School of Open Nigeria  

CC Nigeria will, in five weekends, train participants on Nigerian copyright law, intellectual property protection, and the Linux operating system. The training will have two tracks: the first track being copyright law and the second being the Linux operating System. Participants will have the opportunity to choose either or both tracks. CC Nigeria also plans to host a joint SOO Africa launch event + Mozilla Maker Party during the training. During the event, experienced web users will train participants on easy ways to creating content using Mozilla tools.

SOO Nigeria links:

• Courses schedule: http://creativecommonsng.org/school-of-open-nigeria/
• SOO Nigeria Launch Event & Maker Party: https://events.webmaker.org/#!/events/4526
• Registration form for all SOO Nigeria activities: http://creativecommonsng.org/school-of-open-nigeria/soo2014/

After the continent-wide launch, participants who attended the courses will have together obtained and built knowledge of open culture, IP protection and ICT skills.

Stay tuned to this blog or sign up for School of Open Announcements to be notified when each program launches in September! Learn more about how you can get involved with the School of Open at http://schoolofopen.org.

About Maker Party

School of Open and Creative Commons is excited to be partnering with Mozilla to celebrate teaching and learning the web with Maker Party. Through thousands of community-run events around the world, Maker Party unites educators, organizations and enthusiastic Internet users of all ages and skill levels.

We share Mozilla’s belief that the web is a global public resource that’s integral to modern life: it shapes how we learn, how we connect and how we communicate. But many of us don’t understand its basic mechanics or what it means to be a citizen of the web. That’s why we’re supporting this global effort to teach web literacy through hands-on learning and making with Maker Party.

About the School of Open

The School of Open is a global community of volunteers focused on providing free education opportunities on the meaning, application, and impact of “openness” in the digital age and its benefit to creative endeavors, education, and research. Volunteers develop and run online courses, offline workshops, and real world training programs on topics such as Creative Commons licenses, open educational resources, and sharing creative works. The School of Open is coordinated by Creative Commons and P2PU, a peer learning community for developing and running free online courses.