The global health crisis is crystalizing the need for policies that support universal access to learning resources. The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on over a billion learners’ lives—half of the world’s student population have seen their schools or universities close to slow the spread of the virus. As a result, many educational institutions are…

Creative Commons regularly works with governments, foundations, and other institutions worldwide to help them create, adopt, and implement open licensing policies. These policies typically require grant recipients to openly license and freely share the work they create with grant funds. We do this to ensure publicly (and privately) funded works are openly licensed and freely…

New UNESCO House in Paris. United Nations. 1958-September-01 / CC BY

After running 26 CC Certificate courses, and certifying hundreds of graduates, CC is exploring the way the courses impact graduates and their communities. In this interview, we highlight one CC Certificate graduate’s work within Connecticut, a #GoOpen state, and celebrate the momentum he’s built in open education.  This interview is with Kevin Corcoran. Kevin is the…

We’re happy to announce that our collaboration with the American Library Association (ALA) to create the print companion to the CC Certificate has finally come to fruition!  The book, Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians, is now published under CC BY and offers an additional way to access the openly licensed CC Certificate content. It’s…

New UNESCO House in Paris. United Nations. 1958-September-01 / CC BY-NC-ND

The UNESCO Open Educational Resources (OER) Recommendation was unanimously adopted on November 25 by 193 UNESCO member states at the 40th UNESCO General Conference. This milestone offers a unique opportunity to advance open education around the world. Why does it matter? This Recommendation is an official UNESCO instrument that gives national governments a specific list…

To date, the CC Certificate has only been available in English. However, thanks to the incredible efforts of CC Global Network members, the CC Certificate course content (e.g., readings, articles, etc.) is being translated into multiple languages. In particular, we are proud to highlight the work of CC Network members in Italy and Saudi Arabia.…

Image credit: "Teaching," Joris Louwes, CC BY-ND 2.0

As part of the drafting committee, Creative Commons (CC) fully supports the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) on which the member states will vote at the 40th session of the UNESCO General Conference in November. We laud the multitude of national governments and open education experts engaged in the development of this international…

From CC Nepal: Photo by Roshan Kumar Karn, Director of Open Access Nepal, licensed CC BY 4.0

The Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) is a passionate community that lights up our vibrant, collaborative, global commons. The CC Network is also critical to our mission of sharing. To support CC Network members, we launched a scholarship program for CC Certificate courses.  Today, we are proud to highlight our first 10 CC Certificate Scholarship…

Elizabeth Batte tweeted her Certificate graduating from the June 2019 class. She will join Jeanne Pavy, another June Certificate graduate, and present how they plan to use gained knowledge on campus, and the impact of CC licenses in higher education at the 2019 LOUIS User Conference on October 15.

From June—August 2019, Creative Commons hosted eight CC Certificate classes for Academic Librarians and Educators. Participants in the classes studied Creative Commons licenses, copyright, the public domain, and open practices. Certificate students developed open licensing proficiency and deepened their understanding of the broader context for open advocacy. See examples of the assignments participants shared under…

Over the last several months, Creative Commons has collaborated with the American Library Association (ALA) on the first-ever print complement to the CC Certificate program—and we are thrilled to announce that the book will be available in November!   The CC Certificate program is Creative Commons’ official training in open licensing. It targets copyright law, CC…