In this age of information overload, traditional teaching methods and roles are fast becoming extinct. Students have access to most of the relevant information in their teachers’ heads and more, but this doesn’t mean students know how to organize and interpret this information in a meaningful way. George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger have developed a…

This coming weekend (March 21-22) in Cambridge, Massachusetts the Free Software Foundation is holding its annual meeting, dubbed the Libre Planet Conference. Many of CC’s best friends and supporters will be there, as will CC staff Asheesh Laroia and I. If you aren’t familiar with the significance of the free software movement to free culture,…

Today marks the beginning of the second half of the month, and with it, the Ides of March are safely behind us. What else is behind us: the beta launches of several Flexbooks, aka the CK-12 Foundation‘s version of open source textbooks. The most notable Flexbook is the one we mentioned last fall—notable because of…

Thank you to all the internship applicants. It’s past the March 13 deadline, and we have more than enough submissions to review. We will not be able to interview all applicants. We will announce our final decisions by the end of this month or early April. Applicants may email inquiries to me, Jennifer Yip. (No…

Open Access Week at the University of Michigan is “a week-long, campus-wide exploration of Open Access.” And a discussion sponsored by the Michigan Library on this topic couldn’t come at a better time; libraries are facing tough economic situations and the current political discourse around copyright and open access needs to be addressed. Featured Commoner…

There’s about a week left to enter CC Australia’s Pooling Ideas competition before it closes on March 23. They’re giving away cool prizes, including an internship with ABC Radio National to co-produce The Night Air and mountains of CC gear. Contestants are invited to creatively interpret the theme We are what we share, and upload…

The third beta of the next version of the Firefox web browser is now available for download. For the approximately half of you reading this in a Firefox browser, the next version of Firefox will be (because the beta already is) much faster and more awesome all around (and will be released as version 3.5…

The Open Video Conference taking place on June 19th and 20th in NYC has published its call for proposals: The conference is a co-production of the Yale Law School Information Society Project, the Participatory Culture Foundation, Kaltura, and iCommons. The conference will feature talks from internet luminaries, panels and discussions, screenings of video art, and…

Former Featured Commoner Beatpick have launched a new website that aims to make it easier to explore their diverse catalog, showcasing improved search features and an easy way to find music to be used in commercial contexts. Of course, their entire catalog remains released broadly under a CC BY-NC-SA license, making it shareable and remixable…

Open Educational Resources are good for the economy (or at least, economizing). They are also good for students, teachers, and the environment. And they currently theme the most recent issue of Open Learning, The Journal of Open and Distance Learning (Volume 24, Issue 1). ccLearn’s own Executive Director, Ahrash Bissell, submitted a paper last fall…