Back in March, we were so excited about the new Physics Flexbook aligned to Virginia’s state standards that we had to catch up with the foundation that helped to make it possible. The obvious choice was Neeru Khosla, co-founder of the CK-12 Foundation, “a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook … Read More “CK-12 Foundation's Neeru Khosla on Open Textbooks”
Creative Commons licensing has been highlighted in a couple prominent discussions of “cloud computing” documents recently. Last week Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote about Sun’s cloud computing strategy: Second, we announced the API’s and file formats for Sun’s Cloud will all be open, delivered under a Creative Commons License. That means developers can freely stitch … Read More “Cloud Commons”
The Global Lives Project is a project that aims to “record 24 hours in the lives of ten people that roughly represent the diversity our planet’s population.” Accomplishing this via a volunteer-network dispersed through out the globe, GLP aggregates video for these subjects based on a unique spreadsheet approach to understand global demographics. All of … Read More “The Global Lives Project”
Erik Möller of the Wikimedia Foundation announced a questions and answers document concerning the possible licensing update for Wikimedia Foundation projects to CC BY-SA. On “What will happen next?” We will present a proposal for dual-licensing all Wikimedia projects currently using the GFDL, by January 15, 2009. It will be published on the foundation-l mailing … Read More “Wikipedia licensing Q&A posted”
Sylvan Sunset | Scott Carpenter CC BY It certainly isn’t the most publicized use of CC licences we have seen, but Scott Carpenter’s “Slyvan Sunset” appearing on the cover of the 2008/2009 Rapid City/Gillete Phone Book has us ecstatic nonetheless. While big names help gain wider exposure for CC, it is important to remember that … Read More “CC Licensed Image on Rapid City/Gillete Phone Book”
eSchools News reports that the state of Florida has recently added the open content reading website Free-Reading.net to its list of approved curriculum resources. Officials said Free-Reading.net is the first open instructional program granted bona fide state approval, and OER supporters see momentum building in the idea that a “public, collaborative, continuously modified online curriculum … Read More “Open Educational Resources Aid Florida Reading Teachers”
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 … Read More “2008 Science Video Collection and Remix Challenge”
As announced last night by Jimmy Wales (video), the Wikimedia Foundation board has passed a resolution on licensing: The Foundation requests that the GNU Free Documentation License be modified in the fashion proposed by the FSF to allow migration by mass collaborative projects to the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license; Upon the announcement of that relicensing, … Read More “Progress on license interoperability with Wikipedia”
With the addition of “How to Make an Eiskaffee (Creamy Iced Coffee)” on September 21, the 25,000th article was added to wikiHow. wikiHow is a wiki whose community works to build and share the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Articles include everything from everyday tasks such as maintaining a vacuum cleaner and tying a … Read More “wikiHow Reaches 25,000 Articles”
From the Science Commons blog … “MIT Libraries recently launched a new podcast series dedicated to issues involving scholarly publishing and copyright. The latest addition to the series is a piece by Anna Gold, head librarian of the Engineering and Science Libraries at the university. In the podcast, entitled “Making a Difference: Pushing Back on … Read More “New podcast series on scholarly publishing and copyright”