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Share, Reuse, Remix — Legally. NEWSLETTER http://creativecommons.org Issue No. 10 December 2008 Alex Roberts. “Melissa Reeder.” CC-BY 3.0 Dear Creative Commoner, This month’s newsletter focuses on ccLearn, CC’s “newest” project (even though it’s almost 2 years old) dedicated to championing the CC infrastructure within education, followed by brief updates from the people on the front lines of Science Commons, Creative Commons International (CCi), Culture Commons, and CC Core. Education as we know it is evolving, and as it changes we need to make sure that it remains open and free and interoperable. ccLearn was made possible thanks to the generosity of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the leaders in open educational resources (OER). I don’t want to say too much though; I don’t want to spoil what is explained so eloquently below. Over the past 8 months I’ve brought you information about CCi, Science Commons, Culture Commons, CC Core (Development), and now ccLearn. All of these projects have one thing in common—the CC “Core” CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10 infrastructure (legal, technology, and operations). As you probably know, we’re in the middle of our annual fundraiser. We need to raise $500,000 by December 31st and we have $260,000 left to go. If you’ve already given to the campaign—THANK YOU. Your support is more appreciated than you know. But you can still help. Tell your friends and family about 2 CC and encourage them to give. Blog about the campaign and encourage your readers to participate. Spread the word about CC and our need for support as far and wide as humanly possible. By supporting CC you will be sustaining this vital infrastructure. As you read, you will notice the difference between this newsletter and past editions. We’re experimenting with a new format, which I think is more informative and effective, and would like to hear what you think. We here at CC are open to community feedback and suggestions. We’re writing this so you have an easy alternative way to stay informed; please let us know what you think by emailing [email protected]. Melissa Reeder Development Manager This newsletter is licensed under http://creativecom- mons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ — please share and remix! Feature ccLearn Ahrash Bissel, Executive Director, ccLearn What does the future of education look like? built on a pool of open educational resources (OER) which are available for anyone to use and adapt as • Compelling lessons on the history of human they see fit. migration available, for free, in eighty different languages. But the stories described above do not yet happen so easily... Even if appropriate hardware and Internet • Free multimedia presentations on the chemistry of access are available, we already know that just volcanoes enthralling children all over the United because something can be shared online does not States, whether or not they are actually in school. make it legal to do so. Many people have suffered the consequences of this mismatch when they have tried • Health care instructors in Africa, Europe, and to share music online, for example. In education, the elsewhere collaborating virtually to adapt medical challenge is to build a truly global learning commons, school curricula to the specific needs of their which requires a great degree of standardization or students, improving both the quality and relevance harmonization at the legal, technical, and social of instruction in their own countries. levels. In addition, there are many concerns specific 3 to education, such as adherence to state-level What makes these visions of the future possible? standards, attention to quality-control mechanisms, Open licensing. and facilitation of local creation and adaptation of OER. We already know that Creative Commons makes it CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10 possible for people to share their works with the world These varied and complex concerns are the context under generous terms – to allow copies, translations, in which ccLearn, the education division of Creative remixes, and other adaptations to be made and Commons, was founded just over one year ago. distributed freely. For authors, photographers, ccLearn is dedicated to supporting the growth and musicians, artists, and other creators, Creative impact of open learning and open educational Commons licenses have transformed the working resources. Our mission is to minimize barriers to landscape and galvanized creative communities the creation, sharing, and reuse of educational worldwide. materials—legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers. But what about communities where sharing is already standard practice? What about in education, where How we are overcoming these barriers— the materials and insights produced by teachers and curriculum developers are usually intended to License Mapping Report be adapted as needed to foster the best learning Legal barriers include the use of restrictive experiences possible? Here, it would seem that the or incompatible licenses, which hinder the rights granted by Creative Commons – rights to share, ability to access, modify, and share content adapt, and improve educational resources – are well- in educational settings. We are analyzing the matched by community practices that have existed for licensing “landscape” for open education, to a long time. And indeed, this is so – most educators be released as a report to the global open around the world agree that their primary intent in education community. The goal is to provide creating teaching and learning resources is for them objective data about the extent to which to have a positive impact on student learning, and license proliferation is actually a problem, they therefore tend to share those resources freely and also insights into the extent to which the with their colleagues. This culture of sharing that learning commons we are trying to build is already pervades the educational domain has given fractured by incompatible licensing policies. rise to a movement – the open education movement – which seeks to realize a global learning commons, Universal Education Search excellent progress on many fronts. We are Technical barriers focus on the fact that near completion on several projects and have open educational resources must be easy to laid the groundwork for significant advances find and access in order to be useful. For in other areas. On a personal level, I have instance, many OER repositories were built in been amazed at the passion, drive, and such a way that their content is inaccessible competence of this global community, which or difficult to use. ccLearn is benefiting is growing every day. We all share a vision from the amazing engineering work of of a future where educational opportunities the Creative Commons team by providing are not limited by place, time, circumstances leadership on technical standards and of birth, or even by technologies. Clearly, we architectures that have the potential to solve are some distance yet from achieving this these problems. Specifically, we are helping vision, but already there is good evidence people to understand how the semantic web, that existing inequities in educational access through RDFa (and ccREL) mark-up, enables and quality are eroding. It’s definitely an the pool of OER to grow organically and to exciting time. retain the site-specific properties that make them valuable and educationally relevant. Open Education Highlights from around This work stands in contrast to most efforts the Globe in this area, which either seek to create a The OER movement is a global movement. Education global centralized repository or a semblance is an issue that crosses borders and spans continents; of one through direct integration of existing open education—the creation and distribution of OER silos. OER—empowers people in a global dialogue. The success of this international effort depends on a great Because these ideas are fairly abstract, deal, as many issues and barriers to open education CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10 we have undertaken to build a proof-of- are country- and culture-specific. However, despite concept search engine, which we are calling contextual differences, significant progress has Universal Education Search (UES). We hope been made around the world. Some specific project this tool will help people to see the benefits highlights of the year: of semantic mark-up and of open licensing. 4 If all goes well, we will have a public release Latin America of a beta version of UES before the end of Latam Commons 2008: The Public Domain, the year. Creative Commons, and Open Education in Latin America, held Nov 19-21 in Santiago, Open Education Community Site Chile, was a great success. The event was Social barriers require that we recognize co-hosted and excellently managed by the that OER development and access are only Non-Governmental Organization Derechos the first steps. Because Creative Commons Digitales, and representatives from all over licenses are fundamental infrastructural Latin America were present and actively elements of most OER, ccLearn is naturally participated in the meeting. Project Leads positioned to serve as a sort of “switchboard” of Creative Commons jurisdictions first and catalyst for the rest of the community, held a one-day meeting to discuss their especially on an international scale. In that projects, possible strategic initiatives and vein, we are currently building an “Open collaborations across the region, and shared Education Community” site which will enable challenges. These conversations are just the OER projects to share information and beginning of what is planned to become a collaborate much more easily. In addition, regular regional gathering to leverage the the site will showcase the various tools and expertise and resources that are distributed resources that we and others have created. throughout the region. The next day was Finally, the site will serve as a landing pad devoted to a highly interactive “unconference” for people who are interested in learning on open education which brought together more about the open education movement.

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