Today the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its long-awaited National Broadband Plan. The plan aims to “stimulate economic growth, spur job creation, and boost capabilities in education, healthcare, homeland security and more.” The FCC has taken particular interest in the power of broadband to support and promote online learning. We applaud the FCC for working to…

Slightly less than a year ago the count of CC-licensed images at Flickr surpassed 100 million. Over 35 million have been added since then. Now is a good time to look at changes over the last four years (for which we have data), in particular changes in the distribution of licenses used. We’ve heard many…

The United States Department of Education 2010 National Educational Technology Plan (pdf) includes the following: Open Educational Resources (OER) are an important element of an infrastructure for learning. OER come in forms ranging from podcasts to digital libraries to textbooks, games, and courses. They are freely available to anyone over the web. Educational organizations started…

  In the spirit of Creative Commons Salons — global, informal events focused on bringing together the community around a central topic or focus — Science Commons will be holding a day-long event this February in Seattle. The event will aim to bring a broader understanding on the term “open” and all of its flavors…

Creative Commons recently celebrated its seventh anniversary, capping an impressive year of success for the organization, including the launch of CC0, our new public domain tool, migration of Wikipedia to a CC license, and compelling new implementations — from CC-aware discovery in both Google and Yahoo! image search, to adoptions of CC licenses ranging from…

Artists and creatives of all types are sharing some incredible CC-licensed content on The Behance Network. Levi van Veluw showcases miniature landscapes built on a human canvas in Landscapes (BY-NC-ND); Glenn Jones offers ideas for future t-shirts (BY-NC); L Filipe dos Santos highlights illustrations with See. Saw (BY-NC-ND); Si Sott offers a poster series in…

Are you a creative professional who frequently finds yourself using Google Image search or the Flickr commons portal to discover new images? PicScout, a company specializing in image recognition software, is working on a Firefox extension called ImageExchange that they want your help to beta test. Right now the program is in closed beta, but…

Jeeran, the largest Arabic online community with 1.5 million registered users and more than 7 million visitors per month, has just launched a dedicated Creative Commons space to inform the developing CC Arab community with articles, news and updates about CC activities in the region. While a large commons culture is still developing in the…

Film Annex is an online film distribution platform and and Web Television Network with million of viewers and thousands of filmmakers. Recently, the site launched CC license support (complete with ccREL expression via RDFa). This is fantastic news in and of itself, as it means there’s now more choice for creators looking for platforms that…

Last month, ccLearn published “Otherwise Open: Managing Incompatible Content in OER“. For those of you who never got around to reading the paper, it basically provides an overview of the problem posed by the incorporation of “all-rights-reserved” materials into otherwise open educational resources (OER). It also explores ways of dealing with this problem and the…