Open Educational Resources

School of Open Launch!

2013-03-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

Repost from Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/37179

Welcome to the School of Open, Class of 2013

Jane Park, March 12th, 2013

Happy Open Education Week! We are happy to announce that the School of Open community has launched its first set of courses…

The Library of Congress / No known copyright restrictions

Sign up for these facilitated courses

this week (sign-up will remain open through Sunday, March 17). These courses will start the week of March 18 (next week!). To sign up, simply click the “Start Course” button under the course’s menu navigation on the left.

Copyright 4 Educators (US) – Sign up if you’re an educator who wants to learn about US copyright law in the education context.
Copyright 4 Educators (AUS) – Sign up if you’re an educator who wants to learn about Australian copyright, statutory licenses and open educational resources (OER).
Creative Commons for K-12 Educators – Sign up if you’re a K-12 educator (anywhere in the world) who wants to learn how to find and adapt free, useful resources for your classroom, and incorporate activities that teach your students digital world skills.
Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond – Sign up if you want to learn how to edit Wikipedia or improve your editing skills — especially if you are interested in and knowledgeable about open educational resources (OER) (however, no background in this area is required).

All other courses are now ready for you to take

at any time, with or without your peers. They include:

Get a CC license. Put it on your website – This course is exactly what the title says: it will help you with the steps of getting a CC license and putting it on your work. It’s tailored to websites, although the same steps apply to most other works.
Open Science: An Introduction – This course is a collaborative learning environment meant to introduce the idea of Open Science to young scientists, academics, and makers of all kinds. Open Science is a tricky thing to define, but we’ve designed this course to share what we know about it, working as a community to make this open resource better.
Open data for GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) – This course is for professionals in cultural institutions who are interested in opening up their data as open culture data. It will guide you through the different steps towards open data and provide you with extensive background information on how to handle copyright and other possible issues.
Intro to Openness in Education – This is an introductory course exploring the history and impacts of openness in education. The main goal of the course is to give you a broad but shallow grounding in the primary areas of work in the field of open education.
A Look at Open Video – This course will give you a quick overview of some of the issues, tools and areas of interest in the area of open video. It is aimed at students interested in developing software, video journalists, editors and all users of video who want to take their knowledge further.
Contributing to Wikimedia Commons – A sister project of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons is a repository of openly licensed images that people all over the world use and contribute to. This challenge gets you acquainted with uploading your works to the commons.
Open Detective – This course will help you explore the scale of open to non-open content and how to tell the difference.

And more… check out all the courses at http://schoolofopen.org/.

Join a launch event this week

School of Open at the Citizen Science Workshop / Levi Simons / CC BY

P2PU: A Showcase of Open Peer Learning (Wednesday, March 13) – Join this webinar to see a showcase of some of P2PU’s best learning groups spanning topics from education to open content to programming to Spanish and more, and learn how you can participate.
Open Video Sudan (all week, March 10-17) – Join the Open Video Forum in improving “A Look at Open Video” and creating new courses and resources on open video in Sudan.

And more events as part of Open Education Week at http://www.openeducationweek.org/events-webinars/.

Spread the word

Just do these 3 things and call it a day.

#SchoolofOpen has launched! Take free courses on #copyright, #OER, #openscience & more: http://creativecommons.org/?p=37179

The School of Open has launched! Take a free online course on copyright, CC licenses, Wikipedia, open science, open culture, open video formats, and more at http://schoolofopen.org/. Especially check out this course: [link to course of your choice here]. Read more about the launch at http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/37179.

this pdf

The Growing Adoption of Creative Commons Textbooks

2013-01-17T14:44:00.002-08:00

The Growing Adoption of Creative Commons Textbooks

Governments turn to the Creative Commons license to reform education programs

By Simon Owens

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/01/17/the-growing-adoption-of-creative-commons-textbooks

Cable Green doesn't have to look very far to find an example of an education system weighed down by what he considers a bloated and inefficient textbook industry. The director of global learning for Creative Commons simply points to his home state of Washington. "My state spends $130 million per year buying textbooks," he says. "We only have a million public school kids in the state, so we're spending $130 per kid per year." Because each book is expected to last half a decade, the kids aren't permitted to keep them or write in them. The books are only available in one format, paper, and are sometimes seven to 10 years out of date. If one of Green's kids loses a textbook, as a parent Green is expected to fork over the money to replace it.

A superior alternative, he believes, would be easy to execute. "Instead of spending $130 million a year getting those outcomes, what if the state put up $100 million in one time money," he suggests. "We have 12 grades and eight textbooks per grade, so what if we put up a $1 million [request for proposal] for each book, and anyone can reply. The professors from the best universities can reply. McGraw Hill can reply. It's an open RFP, but the conditions are that the books are licensed under Creative Commons because they're paid for with taxpayer money."

...

Creative Commons: Turning 10!

2012-12-05T12:40:00.002-08:00

Greetings Friends of CC:

As I'm sure you know, this year is Creative Commons' 10th Birthday! Starting this Friday, we'll be launching into a 10-day frenzy of celebrations leading up to 16 December - the day the first CC license suite was launched in 2002.

The celebrations will be wide ranging, including more than 20 celebrations worldwide, a dedicated website, interviews and featured resources, a social media campaign and our usual annual fundraising campaign.

As part of the CC community, there are many things you can do to help:

Add a widget or banner to your website: you can find the official CC10 logo (scroll to the bottom of the page).
Go to a party, or encourage your friends to attend. There are CC10 events planned on every continent (except Antarctica), starting tonight and continuing almost every day through December 16. There are even some online events and webinars.
Friend us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and let your friends know. The hashtag for the celebrations will be #CC10
Give CC a birthday present! Write something, draw something, compose something - whatever you do well - and add it to our CC10 Flickr group, or send it to us via Twitter, Facebook or at press@creativecommons.org
And, of course, please encourage your friends and family to donate (or even donate yourself).

Most gratefully,

Cable

Give CC a birthday gift!

Creative Commons is turning 10 this month. Millions of people around the world are using CC licenses to make the Internet a smarter, freer, and more innovative place. We are grateful to you, as a member of the global community that supports Creative Commons. Thank you for being part of the CC team.

Give CC a birthday gift today, and make an investment in the future of the Internet as a place to openly create, share, collaborate, and learn. We need your help to launch our next decade with a birthday gift of $25, $50, $100, or more.

When we blow out the candles on the CC birthday cake, our wish is no secret. We want another decade with even more CC licensed photos, videos, music, educational materials, textbooks, data, and scientific research available to everyone on the planet. We’re only 10 and we’re just getting started.

Please join CC in shaping the future of sharing, and donate now!

With great appreciation,

Cathy Casserly
CEO
p.s. donate at least $50 and get our new CC t-shirt!

Building an Innovation-Based Economy with Creative Commons

2012-11-15T11:51:00.000-08:00

In a paper released in conjunction with a panel discussion, the Brookings Institution identifies promising policy ideas to encourage entrepreneurship and innovative growth in the technology industry.

"We need to improve knowledge transmission through faster adoption of digital textbooks, more widespread use of creative commons licenses for instructional materials developed with taxpayer dollars, and policy changes that speed education innovation."
"In an era of limited resources, educators must figure out how to do more with fewer financial resources. One action that would improve school efficiency and financing is to have educational resources developed with taxpayer dollars be licensed under a creative commons license that would improve accessibility to instructional materials. Budget circumstances require schools to get more efficient, boost productivity, and make do with fewer financial resources. While this poses obvious problems for school districts, it also creates the possibility of making changes in business operations that are innovative and transformational."
"Throughout each of these initiatives, we should have metrics assessing education innovation implementation and impact. We should determine how fast we are transitioning from paper to digital textbooks, leverage the use of creative commons licenses, and enforce changes in education policy and accreditation that encourage more innovative approaches to learning and achievement."

The report also endorses FRPAA legislation that would "mandate public dissemination of federally funded research within six months of publication (for agencies with extramural funding exceeding $100 million)."

2012 Paris OER Declaration

2012-06-29T12:32:00.002-07:00

Our (all of us) collective work in helping governments understand "openness" and why open policies are important got a boost last week when UNESCO members states unanimously approved the 2012 Paris OER Declaration.

Creative Commons blog post: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/33089

Well done UNESCO, Commonwealth of Learning and everyone who worked hard for the last year to get this Declaration passed!

See the list of recommendations, for governments, on the blog post. We have plenty of work to do.

Your partner in all things open,

Cable

PS - Please "tweet": 2012 Paris #OER Declaration passed @UNESCO. Read #CC wrapup & full declaration: http://bit.ly/LFJqzs #openpolicy

Lawrence Lessig's Keynote (added 27 July, 2012):

Open Policies, Hewlett OER Grantees Meeting 2012

2012-06-04T20:21:00.000-07:00

New CC License Chooser (beta)

2012-05-24T13:30:00.002-07:00

Greetings Open Friends:

Creative Commons (CC) has been working on a rewrite of its license chooser: http://creativecommons.org/choose

There are a number of problems with the existing chooser than have caused the rewrite. The most notable problem is a common misconception that the license chooser is a registration process - which it is not.

The new chooser approaches that problem with a different UI design. CC's goal is for the license chooser to both be clear and simple, and to function better as an educational tool. For example, NC and ND are not free culture licenses. That is apparent in the new chooser via interactivity, whereas it is not clear in the existing license chooser.

You can find the new license chooser on our staging site: http://staging.creativecommons.org/choose/

You can read more about the motivations behind this project here: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Interactive_license_chooser

CC is hoping to replace the old license chooser with the new interactive chooser in approximately two weeks. The CC Technology team will be iterating on the new chooser after it goes live, as there are additional features desired but are out of the scope of the first iteration.

If you have any suggestions for adjustments and/or features, please e-mail Jonathan Palecek: jonathan@creativecommons.org

Please keep in mind that beyond design changes and interactivity, features not already present in the old chooser are out of scope for implementation in this first iteration on the new chooser. Suggestions for new features will be logged and considered after this first iteration is launched.

Kudos to Jonathan Palecek and the entire CC Technology and Legal teams for creating an improved and easier to use CC license chooser!

We are eager to hear your comments.

Most gratefully,

Cable

Open Access Needs Your Help! Please sign.

2012-05-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

Everyone please tweet:

Believe in #openaccess? http://access2research.org & sign http://wh.gov/6TH now. You do not need to be in the US to do it. Anyone can sign it!

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CC Post: Sign the U.S. Petition to Support Public Access to Publicly Funded Scientific Research

--------------------------

We petition the obama administration to:

Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.

We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research.

The highly successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process, and we urge President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.

OER Community: Feedback re: CC 4.0 Attribution marking requirements?

2012-05-11T13:42:00.002-07:00

Greetings Open Colleagues:

As many of you know, Creative Commons (CC) is in the process of creating a new version of its licenses - version 4.0. We have published a first draft as a starting point (available at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0_Drafts), and we are in the process of getting feedback to create and publish a second draft in June / July. The full versioning process will probably take until the end of 2012. For more information about the 4.0 schedule, as well as extensive information about the various issues being addressed and debated, please visit our 4.0 wiki (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0). If you have not already, please also join the license discuss email list where many of the issues are being debated (http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses).

We are hoping to receive as much input as possible from the OER community, and while you are all are most welcome to participate in any part of the 4.0 discussion, CC would like your feedback on the following questions about attribution in CC licenses.

Please send your feedback to me (cable@creativecommons.org) and Sarah Pearson (sarah@creativecommons.org).

--------------------

In draft 1 of v.4, we tried to simplify the attribution and marking requirements by putting them all into one section of the license in list form. This is designed to make it easier for licensees to understand and comply with their obligations.

Specifically, when sharing the work, licensees must provide the following information when it is supplied by licensor:

Name of the author
Name of parties designed by licensor for attribution
Title of the work
Copyright notice
URI associated with the work
URI associated with the CC license
Notices, disclaimers, warranties referring to the CC license

(1) Is there any otherinformation we should require licensees to provide when fulfilling the attribution and marking requirements under CC licenses? Alternatively, is there anything in this list that is unnecessary for licensees to provide even when it is supplied by the licensor? Our goal is to make the requirements extensive enough to satisfy licensors’ desire to be attributed and recognized for their work without making the obligations impractical.

(2) All of these requirements may be fulfilled in any reasonable manner based on the medium the licensee is using to share the licensed work. This flexibility is intended to help ease compliance with the license conditions. Does the current language grant licensees too much flexibility? Not enough? Is there anything else we should change to make it easier on licensees that are remixing content from multiple sources – the so-called “attribution stacking” problem?

(3) If the URI associated with the work refers to a resource that specifies the name of the author (or attribution parties, if applicable) and title of the work, licensees may include only the URI rather than specifying that information separately. This is another attempt to make compliance with the license conditions easier and more flexible without compromising the needs and expectations of licensors. Is this shortcut appropriate and/or helpful? If the URI points to a resource that includes the other required information (e.g., the copyright notice), would it be preferable to allow the URI shortcut to satisfy those other requirements as well?

(4) Some licensors have more detailed expectations for attribution of their work. Should we make allowances for licensors who want to include specific attribution requirements (e.g., a particular attribution statement), or would this unnecessarily complicate license compliance? Note that any particular requirements would need to be subject to the reasonableness standard to be consistent with the explicit terms of the license.

(5) Another possibility is to change the language to a more general requirement to acknowledge the author and cite the original work. We could then include the current list of attribution and marking requirements as an example of best practices rather than as a specific legal requirement. This would potentially give licensees more freedom to adapt attribution to their particular circumstances, while maintaining the spirit and purpose of the requirements. Is this a proposal we should pursue? Why or why not?

We sincerely appreciate your feedback!

Cable

Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies... many "Open" chapters ;)

2012-05-10T10:39:00.002-07:00

New Educause book: "Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies"

http://www.educause.edu/game-changers

Note all of the chapters on "Open" topics ;)

Please share, tweet, post....

Thank you,

Cable

Registrations now open for OCL4Ed: Celebrating 10 years of OER with UNESCO

2012-05-10T10:14:00.001-07:00

Please help spread the word!

Sample Tweet: Just announced free online course on #OER & CC licensing. http://goo.gl/rPutY #OCL4Ed

------------------------------------------

2012 is a significant year for open education and OER. We are celebrating 10 years since UNESCO coined the term "Open Educational Resources".

In joining the global celebrations, the OER Foundation will host a free online training workshop on OERs, Copyright and Creative Commons licensing.

When: 20 June - 3 July 2012 (to coincide with the UNESCO World OER Congress in Paris).

Where: Online

Cost: Free

Registrations for this celebratory online workshop are now open: Register today to reserve your seat.

We are aiming to break our previous #OCL4Ed record of 1067 registrations, so please share the gift of knowledge and invite colleagues and friends to join us.

Download a copy of the poster for the OCL4Ed Workshop (614KB) and display on local notice boards.
Blog and share the registration link through your social networks: http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/About

We welcome graduates of former OCL4Ed workshops to join our lead facilitators and assist with peer-learning support for educators around the world who want to learn more about OER and open licensing. More info on how you can assist coming soon.

We look forward to welcoming you to OCL4Ed 2012.06.

With kind regards

The OER Foundation team

COL Chair in OER at Otago Polytechnic

UNESCO-COL Chair in OER at Athabasca University

OCWC (and other OCW) in Money Magazine

2012-04-22T10:57:00.003-07:00

UNESCO Open Access Policy Guidelines

2012-04-08T14:02:00.001-07:00

A careful, thorough, well-informed, evidence-based and comprehensive review and analysis of guidelines for open access policy and promotion -- released by UNESCO and written by Alma Swan.Policy Guidelines FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND PROMOTION OF OPEN ACCESS by Alma Swan

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Communication and Information Sector

EXCERPTS: ...Evidence has unequivocally demonstrated that to have real effect policies must be mandatory, whether institutional or funder policies.... Evidence shows that researchers are quite happy to be mandated to act in this way... Policies can require ‘green’ Open Access by self-archiving but to preserve authors’ freedom to publish where they choose policies should only encourage ‘gold’ Open Access through publication in Open Access journals... The optimum arrangement, one that accommodates the needs of all stakeholders, and has the potential to collect the greatest amount of Open Access content, is for a network of institutional repositories to be the primary locus for deposit and for centralised, subject-specific collections to be created by harvesting the required content from that network of distributed repositories...

Also see page 39 / 40 of the report.

6.2.3.3 Creative Commons Licensing
The Creative Commons organisation has developed a set of licences from which authors or publishers can choose. Some Open Access publishers use Creative Commons licences to ensure that the content of the articles published in their journals are reusable in the widest (libre Open Access) sense: that is, they can be reproduced, abstracted, ‘mashed up’ with other material to produce new information, crawled by text-mining and data-mining tools and so on.

Creative Commons has designed a collection of licences to ensure that there is a suitable licence for every purpose. The explanation of these licences and how they can be used to best effect is provided on the Creative Commons 119 The Directory of Open Access Journals lists 1535 (22% of the total 6873) (note the link show shows: 2162 as of 8 April, 2012) using some kind of Creative Commons licence: http://www.doaj.org/?func=licensedJournals. 763 journals (11% of the total) (note the link show shows: 899 as of 8 April, 2012) have the SPARC Europe Seal of Approval (which requires a CC-BY licence): http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=sealedJournals&ui ui The site has a licence generator tool for publishers and creators to use.

Where publishers and authors wish to make their work as freely reusable as possible, including by other parties who may develop new products to sell by reusing the material in some way, the most appropriate licence for the publisher to use in this instance is the Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ licence (commonly referred to as ‘CC-BY’), a tool that requires the creator of the work to be acknowledged when the work is re-used but does not restrict the re-use in any way.

Where publishers and authors may wish to restrict some forms of re-use, such as not permitting commercial derivatives to be made, there is a Creative Commons licence for these possibilities, too. The key terms of CC licences are Attribution, No Commercial, No Derivatives and Share Alike.

The advantages of using a Creative Commons licence over a custom one are:

◾ There is almost certainly a ready-made licence that will suit the publisher’s requirements, saving time and effort in drawing up a custom licence

◾ Creative Commons licences are easily understood and commonly used, so that a potential reader or re-user of a work will immediately understand the conditions of the licence

◾ The licences have machine-readable metadata, simplifying processes where applications such as harvesters and text-mining tools carry out automated tasks: these tools can recognise, by the machine readable licence, which content they are permitted to gather and work upon

Summary points on copyright

▶ Open Access requires the copyright holder’s consent
▶ Copyright is a bundle of rights
▶ The norm is to sign the whole bundle of rights over to the journal publisher, though it is not necessary to do this in most cases: publishers can go about their work so long as the author signs over the them the right to publish the work
▶ Authors and other copyright holders (employers and funders) can retain the rights they need to make the work Open Access
▶ A premeditated retention of sufficient rights to enable Open Access is the preferable course of action rather than seeking permission post-publication
▶ Licensing scientific works is good practice because it makes clear to the user what can be done with the work and by that can encourage use
▶ Only a minor part of the Open Access literature is formally licensed at present: this is the case even for Open Access journal content
▶ Creative Commons licensing is best practice because the system is well-understood, provides a suite of licences that cover all needs, and the licences are machine-readable ▶ Otherwise, legal amendments to copyright law will be necessary in most jurisdictions to enable text-mining and data-mining for material without an appropriate Creative Commons licence

Cable

OER in Brazil: An Update (Guest Post: Carolina Rossini)

2012-04-05T22:02:00.001-07:00

By Carolina Rossini – OER Brazil Project

Post 1: Brazilian OER: Growth and Maturity

When we started the OER-Brazil (www.rea.net.br) project back in 2008 with the Open Society Foundations - which chose some countries in which to launch beta- projects on Open Education policy and capacity building development – very few people or institutions had heard about OER in Brazil. There were some early experiments in zero-cost online education and distance education – more on that in another post – but little knowledge or connection to the broader world of OER as something that is not just free of cost, but also free as in the freedoms granted by liberal copyright licenses.

Four years later, Brazilian OER is exploding, and gaining real attention internationally as well as domestically. The last few years have brought lots of good news for the OER space in Brazil, as we see new projects flourishing with regularity, and older projects gaining deeper traction through national and international partnerships.

A great place to start is the the Folhas project, an open textbook initiative that started more than 5 years ago sponsored by the government of Parana State and that has not only led to open books, but trained more than 5000 teachers along its way, improving research, collaboration with peers and authorship skill. And we see more and more universities joining the Open Courseware consortium, such as UNICAMP http://www.ocw.unicamp.br/, UNISUL http://www.unisul.br/unisulvirtual/home.html, FGVOnline (http://www.slideshare.net/OCWConsortium/ocwc-fgv-onlinestavros05052011mit), ESAGS http://www.esags.edu.br/ocw/ etc http://www.ocwconsortium.org/en/members/members/country/BR.

OER is also finding its ways from the south to the north of Brazil through more targeted projects. Great examples of include Mais Educacional (http://www.mais.mat.br/), which provides mathematics OER; the Open Dictionary from Hedra (http://rea.net.br/2011/08/05/um-dicionario-livre/), a Brazilian publisher; and OER projects from traditional private K-12 schools from Sao Paulo, such as Dante Alighieri (http://www.colegiodante.com.br/rea/) and Porto Seguro (http://www.ocw.portoseguro.org.br/). A series of new OER are also coming from projects focused on the production of learning materials on feminism, HIV-research and indigenous culture and education (http://www.indioeduca.org/).

OER-Brazil (www.rea.net.br) has supported many of those to understand and adopt open license models that fulfill both the mission of such projects and are compatible with the OER international definitions. We also have talked to publishers about possible open business models that they could beta test in Brazil (http://www.slideshare.net/carolina.rossini/modelos-de-negocio-para-livros).

Finally, there is also very exciting news already in 2012. In the past few weeks three promising projects finally announced their launch schedules. During the first week of March we’ll see the launch of the LATIn Project (http://latinproject.org). This project will address the problem of high cost of textbooks for Higher Education in Latin America. The main actions will be the creation and dissemination of a Collaborative Open Textbook Initiative for Higher Education tailored specifically for the region. This initiative will encourage and support local professors and authors to contribute with individual sections or chapters that could be assembled into customized books by the whole community. The created books will be freely available to the students in an electronic format, and legally printable at low cost because there is no license or fees to be paid for their distribution. This solution will also contribute to the creation of customized textbooks where each professor could select the sections appropriate for their courses or could freely adapt existing sections to their needs. Also, the local professors will be the source of the knowledge, contextualized to the Latin American Higher Education system.

More great news is the launch http://eventos.scielo.org/scielolivros/ of Scielo Books , from Scielo (the largest open access repository for scientific literature in Brazil). SciELO Books http://homolog.search.livros.scielo.org/index.php aims to publish online web collections of scientific books published primarily by academic institutions in order to maximize visibility, accessibility, use and impact of research. Books published by SciELO are selected according to quality controls applied by a scientific committee and the digital texts are formatted according to international standards that allow you to control access and citation. The books are readable in ebook readers, tablets, smart phones and computer screens. All the books published through SciELO Books can be downloaded for free and are licensed, except where otherwise noted, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

Finally, on March 20th OportUnidad - http://oportunidadproject.eu/ - will be launched in Latin America through a consortium of universities (see agenda: http://aisantos.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/programac3a7c3a3o_lanc3a7amento_oportunidad1.pdf ). The OportUnidad project explores the adoption of strategies and channels that embrace the principles of openness and reusability within the context of educational institutions. The project intends to foster the adoption and pilot of open educational practices (OEP), and open educational resources (OER) in Latin America as a bottom-up approach to develop a common Higher Education Area. The initiative also opens the possibility to provide free educational resources for self-learners, in terms of informal and lifelong learning. The OportUnidad project is co-funded with support by the European Commission under the EuropeAidALFA III Programme.

These projects are just the tip of the iceberg in Brazilian OER. Though not all meet the strict, and important, community guidelines and definitions for “true” OER, they show the power and movement of the ideas behind the OER movement in Brazil and demonstrate the significant growth of the OER movement in Brazil in the past four years. We are really excited to contribute to such evolving movement and we will keep the working moving to be sure more flexible and true OER projects are put into place – from the classroom to public policy debate.

Carolina Rossini
Senior Fellow at GPOPAI

University of Sao Paulo

http://www.gpopai.usp.br/

and

Coordinator: OER-Brazil/REA-Brasil
www.rea.net.br
*carolina.rossini@gmail.com*

OER in Poland: USD $14M for a National Open Textbook Program

2012-04-03T22:23:00.001-07:00

CC BY: Self Portrait wearing my favorite Polska hat...

Sharing this good news far and wide.

Congratulations Creative Commons Polska!

Alek Tarkowski writes:

==============

Dear all,

We have good news from Poland.

Today Polish Council of Ministers adopted a regulation concerning the implementation of "Digital School” program for computerization of Polish schools and raising ICT competences. Pilot of the project aimed for 380 schools in Poland will equip them with hardware (tablets, computers for students, additional equipment). Also digital and free (under Creative Commons Attribution or compatible) textbooks for grades 4-6 in primary schools (K4-K6) will be created (45 millions PLN - approx. USD 14m - is assigned for textbooks). This is the first major government project in Poland which creates Open Educational Resources especially textbooks.

All the best,

Alek

==============

Well done!

Cable

Creative Commons: Version 4.0 – License Draft Ready for Public Comment; OER Policy Registry; New CC Video (CC Qatar)

2012-04-02T13:24:00.003-07:00

(1) If you use Creative Commons licenses for your OER (or any other openly licensed creative work), you might want to check out: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/32157

(2) Please contribute to the new OER Policy Registry: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/32072

(3) New video hot off the press from CC Qatar.

Cable

How to Protect Copyright Is Key Topic at Publishers' Meeting (Chronicle)

2012-03-17T00:22:00.010-07:00

Check out this Chronicle article.

This is the paragraph that caught my attention:

Some of the comments, though, sounded more combative than conciliatory. Fritz Attaway, executive vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America, dismissed the arguments of what he and other panelists called the Copy Left, meaning open-access advocates and reformers who want copyright restrictions loosened. "The intellectual base of the Copy Left is pretty flimsy," he said. "Our industries do something that no one else can do. We create content that people want."

And so my comment is:

Fritz Attaway is mistaken on both of his points.

(1) Academic open access advocates are not asking for copyright to be diminished in any way. Open access and the open policies behind it do not seek to remove or weaken the author’s copyright … in fact they work to help faculty / authors keep their copyright.

Open access simply asks that publicly funded resources be freely and openly available to the public that paid for them. It’s a very simple point: when I pay for something, I should get access to what I paid for.

(2) "The intellectual base of the Copy Left is pretty flimsy" is a pretty flimsy argument. The intellectual base of open licensing (which respects and builds on top of copyright law) is
strong and sophisticated. Watch Larry Lessig’s 2009 keynote to Educause.

Maybe the Chronicle could host a debate on these important issues – a live webinar, perhaps?

And then we, the tax payers -- who fund the K-12 textbooks, the college textbooks vis-à-vis students’ state and federal financial aid, and the academic research, data and resulting journal articles – could listen and decide whose view we value more. I expect most tax payers will want free and open access to what they paid for… for themselves, their communities and their children.

I live in Washington State. My state government gives $65M / year to the 295 public K-12 school districts who then spend another $65M in local funds – for a total K-12 textbook annual expenditure of roughly $130M for a mere 1 million students. The results for our investment? 80% of our textbooks are 7-11 years (on average) out of date; and worse - students are not allowed to write or highlight in their books because the books have to last for 10 years. Want a digital version? Sorry – that paper book needs to last for 10 years because it was so expensive. Lose your book? You're parents will need to pay to replace it.

Might it be better for districts to adopt free and openly licensed (CC BY NC SA) CK-12 textbooks that are both aligned with Common Core and WA state curricular standards? Every student could have a new book every year, with updated content, the paper copy costs $4.50 to print so every student keeps their books at the end of the year – building an academic library at home, and they can have iPad, Kindle, Adroid and/or web versions if they choose.

WA State policy makers decided their 1 million K-12 students deserve better and they have acted.

I know what model I prefer (a) as a tax payer and (b) as a parent of two public school children.

Cable Green
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons

Big Surprise: Journal Publishers Oppose Bill That Would Require Access to Published Research

2012-03-06T14:45:00.002-08:00

Chronicle Article
Eighty-one publishers of scholarly journals today expressed their strong opposition to the proposed Federal Research Public Access Act, or FRPAA. The bill, introduced as HR 4004 in the U.S. House of Representatives and as S 2096 in the Senate, would require the results of federally supported research be made public within six months of publication. “FRPAA is little more than an attempt at intellectual eminent domain, but without fair compensation to authors,” Tom Allen, president of the Association of American Publishers, said in a written statement. The association, along with an advocacy group called the DC Principles Coalition, sent letters to Congress on behalf of the journal publishers who oppose the legislation.

Really? That's the best argument the publishers have? See David Wiley's response:

"Without fair compensation to authors?" Do the publishers really want to go here? The hypocrisy is so thick you couldn't cut it with a chainsaw. I've never received ANY compensation under the CURRENT regime. The publishers are in NO sense protecting authors' compensation by opposing open access - they aren't compensating us now!
I'll tell you what would be fair compensation to me, the author, for writing a journal article - let anyone who wants to read my article read it. I don't write to make publishers billion dollar profits. I write for the benefit of my field and, by extension, humanity. An open access requirement like FRPAA is the best compensation I could possibly receive.
And yes, when the public pays with tax dollars for research to be conducted, that same public that paid for the research has an absolute right to read the results of that research. Buy one, get one - when you buy a pizza or a car, you expect to receive a pizza or a car. And when taxpayers foot the bill for a research study, they absolutely have the reasonable expectation of access to the results of that study.

I also added my two cents as a reply under David's good comments.

BIG Day for OER!

2012-03-05T21:59:00.011-08:00

(1) Today was the first day of Open Education Week: http://www.openeducationweek.org

Please join the fun - events are running through the March 10.

(2) Today Creative Commons, the U.S. Department of Education and the Open Society Institute announce the launch of the Why Open Education MattersVideo Competition (CC Blog Post)

(3) Washington State passed its K-12 OER bill.

What a day! Go Open Education!

Cable

... you know OER is on the right track when the Secretary of Education says:

Open Education Week: March 5-10

2012-02-28T21:06:00.001-08:00

Greetings Open Colleagues:

Reminder: Open Education Week is next week: March 5-10.

Will you please forward this note (feel free to edit) to your organization’s listserv(s)? Let's get the word out!

Thank you,

Cable

==============

Subject: Open Education Week: March 5-10

Dear XXXX:

I am writing to ask you to join your colleagues around the world to increase understanding about Open Education!

Open Education Week will take place from March 5-10 online and in locally hosted events around the world, with opportunities to participate in webinars and online discussions.

Participation is free and open to all. The objective is to raise awareness of the open education movement and open educational resources.

First Annual Open Education Week

March 5-10, 2102

http://www.openeducationweek.org

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/openeducationwk

FB: http://www.facebook.com/openeducationwk

YouTube: openeducationweek

#openeducationwk

Open Education Week will feature:

Over 40 webinars open to participation from anyone
Virtual tours, pre-recorded presentations and documents describing open education projects and ideas
Discussion area with blog and twitter feeds
Resource links
Contributions from over 130 organizations and institutions
Offline events and local workshops

Sincerely,

XXXXXX

Legislation to Bar Public-Access Requirement on Federal Research Is Dead

2012-02-27T14:50:00.003-08:00

A huge win for Open today: Legislation to Bar Public-Access Requirement on Federal Research Is Dead (Chronicle).

The community, led by SPARC, rallied to counter this bill.

From the official Issa-Maloney statement:

"The introduction of HR 3699 has spurred a robust, expansive debate on the topics of scientific and scholarly publishing, intellectual property protection, and public access to federally funded research. Since its introduction, we have heard from numerous stakeholders and interested parties on both sides of this important issue.
As the costs of publishing continue to be driven down by new technology, we will continue to see a growth in open access publishers. This new and innovative model appears to be the wave of the future. The transition must be collaborative, and must respect copyright law and the principles of open access. The American people deserve to have access to research for which they have paid. This conversation needs to continue and we have come to the conclusion that the Research Works Act has exhausted the useful role it can play in the debate. As such, we want Americans concerned about access to research and other participants in this debate to know we will not be taking legislative action on HR 3699, the Research Works Act. We do intend to remain involved in efforts to examine and study the protection of intellectual property rights and open access to publicly funded research."

----------------

Moreover, the open community isn't just fighting anti-open bills, but is pushing open legislation (no mention of open license in this bill, but it is a major step in the right direction - it spreads the NIH open access policy to 11 federal agencies and takes the embargo period down from 12 months to 6).

As I like to say, publicly funded resources should be open educational resources.

Kudos to SPARC for their leadership on this one!

Cable

WA State: Publishers Attack Creative Commons

2012-02-17T16:54:00.000-08:00

Full disclosure: I am staff at Creative Commons.

Greetings Open Colleagues:

After this Feb. 15 public hearing publishers are telling Washington State Senators that Creative Commons is “a proprietary interest and not a general licensing entity.”

The sponsor of the bill (HB2337) is responding with the following information (see below).

I share here in case you encounter the need for similar information about Creative Commons.

Cable

-----------------------

The publisher attack on Creative Commons is pretty dubious.

Publishers are desperate to maintain the huge profit margins they make for essentially packaging the same content in new wrappers year after year. If their quality is indeed as superior as they claim, they shouldn't have any trouble competing with open educational resources.

“Creative Commons” is not named in the bill, so attacking CC doesn’t make any sense.

CC has no financial interest in this bill. Ask the publishers about their financial biases in WA K-12 schools using open textbooks.

The Facts:

Creative Commons (CC) is a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.
There are over 500 million pieces of CC-licensed content available on the web, ranging from amateur photography to terabytes of government data to the entirety of Wikipedia.
The Creative Commons licenses have been interpreted as the global standard for open content licensing for a decade.
CC operates in broad consultation with an international network of legal and licensing experts who help develop the licenses and legal tools.
CC has developed a suite of licenses and tools and offers these licenses and tools for free on an "as is" basis for anyone to use.
CC does not require or provide any means for creators or rights holders to register their use of a CC license, nor does CC maintain a database of works distributed under Creative Commons licenses.
Creative Commons has no authority to grant permission on behalf of licensors, and CC does not manage rights on behalf of persons who use the licenses. The CC organization is not a party to the license.
The CC licenses are voluntary and leverage existing copyright law for them to work.
All CC licenses are non-exclusive, which means that rights holders can enter into additional, different licensing arrangements for the same work at any time.
Creative Commons licenses are drafted to be enforceable around the world, and have been enforced in court in various jurisdictions. To CC's knowledge, the licenses have never been held unenforceable or invalid.

Update on Washington’s OER K-12 Bill: HB 2337

2012-02-15T11:52:00.001-08:00

Update (Feb 22, 2012):

BIll passed the Senate Policy Committee - on to the fiscal committee.

You know it's a good day when you testify about how OER will help more students learn; and the Committee Chair so strongly supports the idea that the American Association of Publishers and Elsevier opt not to testify.

The bill passed the WA State House and is making its way through the Senate.

We have the right arguments. When we make them, from positions of strength, the Commons benefits.

Cable

PS - Special thanks to Nicole Allen (PIRGS) and Neeru Khosla (CK-12) who helped me counter publisher misinformation.

Dramatically Bringing Down the Cost of Education with OER

2012-02-10T23:16:00.000-08:00

A new report from the Center for American Progress:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/02/open_education_resources.html

We are in the midst of a revolution in education. For the first time in human history we have the tools to enable everyone to attain all the education they desire. And best of all this education is available at almost no cost....

WA Legislature considers Open Policy Bill

2012-01-31T18:08:00.000-08:00

The Washington State Legislature is considering an Open Policy bill.

Video of House testimony

Video of Senate Testimony

Tom Caswell does a nice job detailing some of the concerns with the bill.

I was not able to attend the hearing and testify. If I was there, I would have asked the committee members:

If state and federal gas taxes were used to build a road to the University of Washington, should the contractor who built the road (paid for with public funds) be allowed to (a) own the road and (b) charge the public a toll to drive on it?
Or, should the public that paid for the construction and maintenance of the road have the legal right to drive on it?
When the public pays for the creation and maintenance of education resources, should the public have access to use the resources it paid for?
It's the same question: Do you think public tax payers should get what they paid for?

----------------------------------------------

HOUSE BILL 2336

Frequently Asked Questions

AN ACT Relating to access to taxpayer-funded educational materials

Rep. Reuven Carlyle

What is the problem?

· The public does not currently have free, easy and legal access to the full range of education resources that tax dollars fund.

· While the State is interested in the widespread distribution of the educational resources it funds, it is not maximizing the reach and impact of those resources in an efficient or equitable fashion.

What is the opportunity?

The Internet, software-as-a-service, mobile capabilities, low-marginal cost applications and technologies, open licensing, and digital education content provide the infrastructure and framework to efficiently and affordably share publicly-funded education resources.
If publicly-funded education resources are openly shared, more Washington faculty, students and citizens will have access to high-quality education resources.
Similar to many international, federal, philanthropic and corporate sources, State taxpayers deserve access to the appropriate work products and results of taxpayer funded education resources.

What will this bill do?

This bill creates a default public policy that is ‘open’ rather than ‘closed’ relative to access to publicly-funded materials.
It provides a policy framework for higher education to ensure the distribution and management of open educational resources so citizens in Washington and worldwide can benefit from publicly-funded investments in appropriate materials.

What are open education resources (OER)?

OER are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.
For more information, see A Basic Guide to Open Education Resources (OER): http://wikieducator.org/A_Basic_Guide_for_OER/A_Basic_Guide_to_Open_Education_Resources:_FAQ

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons (CC) is the global standard for allowing creative works to be shared, modified and distributed legally on the web. Specifically, it is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.^[1] The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy to understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but are based upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, which are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management with a "some rights reserved" management employing standardized licenses for re-use cases where no commercial compensation is sought by the copyright owner. The result is an agile, low overhead and cost copyright management regime, profiting both copyright owners and licensees. For example, Wikipedia is using one of its licenses which allows information to be shared globally.

What are the benefits of OER for Washington educators, students and institutions[1]?

OER provide freedom of access for educators, students and citizens and widens the scope of what is accessible.
Because faculty can freely adapt them, OER encourages pedagogical innovation and experimentation.
Because OER are available free of charge, using them lowers costs to students, education institutions and taxpayers.
Creates opportunities for existing resources to be adapted to fit better the local context – related to culture, access and learning needs – without necessitating lengthy copyright negotiation processes or duplicating development of identical core content.
Faculty and universities may benefit from potential publicity, which can attract new students and advance institutional recognition and reputation.
Supports the public service role of public education institutions.
OER may be helpful to future educators, underserved students and untraditional users.
Using OER puts educators in control and frees them from expensive, proprietary, inflexible materials as the only option for textbooks and materials.

What open license will be placed on publicly funded education resources?

· All education resources created using state funds must be released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license (CC BY SA).

· CC BY SA is a copyright license that grants permission to the public to reproduce, distribute, perform, display or adapt the licensed materials for any purpose so long as the user gives attribution to the author and licenses and shares their derivative works under identical terms. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0

Why require the CC BY SA license?

· Creators retain copyright. CC licenses are built on top of and encourage respect for copyright and copyright holders. CC licenses are non-exclusive. Requiring release under CC BY SA maximizes the public benefit of the funding dollars expended while ensuring the creator retains copyright and the option to offer the work under other terms that benefit their particular business model or education mission.

· Anyone who modifies the work must license and shares their derivative work under identical license terms. This effectively prevents commercialization of publicly-funded work products outside of the construct of public control.

· Compatibility with established policy and practice for open education resources. Publicly funded education materials released under CC BY SA can be easily and seamlessly used in the many systems where CC licenses are already embraced, e.g., Open Courseware at dozens of major universities, innovative community college initiatives in states like Washington, and with leading foundations that support education materials such as many federal agencies, Hewlett Foundation, Lumina Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

· Global standard. Creative Commons licenses have been adopted as the institutional and governmental standard for key education initiatives around the world, and similarly for public sector information, scientific publishing, and works curated by cultural heritage institutions such as national museums and libraries. CC licenses are the legal standard for collaboration on the web, used by communities from Universities to Wikipedia. CC licenses embody established technical standards that allow faculty, students and others to find openly licensed materials using search engines such as Google.

· Maximizes impact. In order to be used dependably and reliably by faculty, students or institutions that desire to innovate, publicly funded materials must be clearly licensed and marked as such in order to modify the default copyright rule that “all rights are reserved.” CC BY SA permits publicly funded materials to be dependably leveraged and used alongside similarly licensed content and in conjunction with existing initiatives.

· The public deserves free access to education materials it funds. This fundamental principle has been validated and embraced through initiatives such as the National Institute of Health’s Public Access Policy. The public should not be required to pay twice to access and use education materials, first via the funding of the research and development of education resources using their tax dollars, and then again when they purchase materials like textbooks they helped fund or when they pay a license fee to a grant recipient to use the materials. Requiring CC BY SA is axiomatic and ensures that education materials developed with taxpayer funds are accessible and usable by those who have paid for their creation.

Are Creative Commons licenses enforceable?

· Yes. Creative Commons licenses have also been upheld in copyright litigation and are enforceable under copyright law. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Law

· Creative Commons licenses are not a replacement for copyright. Creative Commons licenses operate within the current copyright system by allowing authors to retain their copyright but mark their work with the rights they wish to communicate in advance. At the same time, Creative Commons licenses ensure that the rights holder receives credit in the manner they prefer.

Does open licensing mean giving up one’s copyright? [2]

No. A common misconception is that ‘openly licensed’ content belongs in the public domain, and that the author gives up all of their rights to this material. This is not so. In fact, the emergence of open licenses has been driven strongly by a desire to protect a copyright holder’s rights in environments where content (particularly when digitized) can so easily be copied and shared via the Internet without asking permission.

If a professor or instructor creates something with State funds, will she or he still own what is created? Will she or he be the copyright holder?

This bill in no way changes the ownership of who holds the copyright on state funded education resources. If a contract states a person currently owns what is built, they will continue to be the copyright owner.
For example, if a faculty at Western Washington University creates materials and the current institution policy is that faculty own what they create, this legislation does NOT change faculty ownership. It does, however, say this work product will put a CC BY SA license on all education resources that are produced with state funds.

Is the State claiming ownership over state funded faculty created work?

No. Faculty retain ownership and complete control to the copyright of their education resources created with state funds. Authors can exercise their copyright in any way they see fit.
The bill explicitly states faculty will (a) retain copyright and (b) receive credit for their work if others use it (a requirement of the CC BY SA license):

The model policy shall specifically require: (i) That all such courseware be placed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license that grants permission to the public to reproduce, distribute, perform, display or adapt the licensed materials for any purpose so long as the user gives attribution to the author and licenses and shares their derivative works under identical terms, while still allowing the authors or creators to retain the copyright and to receive credit for their efforts;

Does the bill apply to education resources created before the bill is adopted?

No, there is no ‘clawback’ of materials. The policy applies only to state funded education resources created after the legislation is signed into law.

If someone builds education resources using state funds, and the resource are licensed under CC BY SA, can they still sell those resources?

Yes. This bill does nothing to change the copyright owner of education resources created with state funds or the rights of the copyright owner.

Will faculty still invest time and energy if they are required to share the education resources they produce with state funds?

Yes. Faculty are in the business of education and education is about sharing knowledge.
The State is not asking faculty to give up the copyright of what they build with state funds, but it is requiring faculty to share what they create with state funds under a CC BY SA license.

Will faculty be required to use state funded open education resources?

No. This legislation is about sharing education resources produced with State funds. It says nothing about using what others create.

What kinds of State funded education resources will be openly licensed?

The definition of what kinds of state funded education resources will be openly licensed is in the bill:

As used in this section, "courseware" includes materials commonly included in a post secondary education course including the syllabus, instructional materials, textbooks, research articles, laboratory activities, simulations, videos, and any other educationally useful materials. Assessments including instructional notes, quizzes, tests and exams are not subject to this policy and are not required to be shared.

What does the policy do for faculty?

The web makes it possible for faculty to share their education resources widely, openly, and freely.
This policy will require that all state funded education resources be shared so all Washington faculty and students can benefit from public education investments.

Will complying with the policy take much time?

The intention behind the policy is that a relatively small investment of time can greatly increase the overall accessibility and impact of state funded education resources.
Details of how publicly funded Universities and Colleges comply with this policy will be determined by those public education institutions in a process described in the bill.

Course materials often include images and text belonging to others, that faculty use under fair use or other limitations and exceptions to copyright. One cannot unilaterally declare such materials to be covered under a CC BY SA license. Is this a problem?

No. The legislation only requires education resources built with state funds to be shared under a CC BY SA license.
Educators and students would rather have free and legal access to partial education resources than no access at all.
Faculty will need to remove assets they do not own before sharing their state funded education resources under CC BY SA.

There is a well-established principle that faculty members own the copyright to the textbooks they write. Does requiring that state funded, faculty authored textbooks be licensed under CC BY SA place faculty at a competitive disadvantage?

No. Faculty typically write textbooks on their own time and on their own computers. In that case, no state funds were used and the faculty member would not need to openly license their textbook.
If, however, the faculty member writes a textbook on University time while being paid with state funds, then the faculty would need to make sure that their book is licensed under CC BY SA before they transfer the copyright to a publisher and sell the book.

Are there any advantages to faculty who share their education resources?

· Yes. In a survey of MIT faculty who have published courses on MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), 1 in 5 agree that: "Creating my OCW site provided an opportunity to rethink my approach to teaching the subject" and a similar number indicated that: "OCW publication has substantially increased the quality or organization of my course materials." See: http://ocw.mit.edu/about/next-decade

Can anyone use CC BY SA licensed materials created under this open policy?

· Yes and Washington educators can use others’ openly licensed education resources.

· However, if anyone uses the openly licensed materials they must (a) give attribution to the author and (b) license and share their derivative works under identical license terms.

Does sharing state funded content put Washington education institutions at a competitive disadvantage?

No. Today education resources are digital and are increasingly available online at no cost under an open license. As such, content is increasingly becoming a commodity. For example, see Saylor.org, MIT OCW (and now MITx), The Khan Academy or Washington’s own Open Course Library.
Sharing publicly funded content not only helps Washington’s Colleges and Universities leverage each other’s content, but will help connect Washington to the global network of top tier Colleges and Universities who share and collaborate (e.g., http://www.ocwconsortium.org).
Not sharing, not leveraging a global network of partners who will improve, translate and innovate on top of your open content is a competitive disadvantage.

Many educators are willing to share what they create. Why is this bill necessary?

If all of WA public K-20 educators were sharing, with open licensing, all of their state funded education resources, the bill would not be necessary. Because this is not happening, the legislation is necessary to maximize the public’s investment in education resources.
CC BY SA licenses clarify to the public how they may use publicly funded content while at the same time ensuring that authors are credited for their work.

Is this government open policy unique? Who else is implementing open policies?

· Multiple open policies, open legislation, open projects already exist. This is a global movement and Washington State has already been an active participant. Examples include:

Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges Open Policy

www.sbctc.edu/general/admin/Tab_9_Open_Licensing_Policy.pdf
All digital software, education resources and knowledge produced through competitive grants, offered through and/or managed by the SBCTC, will carry a Creative Commons Attribution License.

National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy

http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm
The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.

Department of Labor Open Policy on the $2 Billion Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant.

In order to further the goal of [insert goals here], as a condition of the receipt of a [insert Grant name] Grant (“Grant”), the Grantee will be required to license to the public (not including the Federal Government) all work created with the support of the grant (“Work”) under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (“License”). This License allows subsequent users to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the copyrighted work and requires such users to attribute the work in the manner specified by the Grantee. Notice of the License shall be affixed to the Work. http://www.doleta.gov/taaccct

Commonwealth of Learning releases all of its materials under an open license. http://www.col.org/progServ/policy/Pages/oer.aspx
Brazil: https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/27698

Requires government funded education resources to be made widely available to the public under an open license
Clarifies that resources produced by public servants under his/her official capacities should be open education resources (or otherwise released under an open access framework)
Urges the government to support open federated systems for the distribution and archiving of OER.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Open policy on Next Generation Learning Challenges Grants (NGLC): http://nextgenlearning.org
All content created by NGLC grantees will be available under a CC BY license.

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation: Education Program http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-education-resources

All content created by Hewlett grantees will be available to the community under a CC BY license.

California is working on legislation to create open textbooks, licensed under CC BY, for its 50 highest enrolled courses.

In 2009, California launched the Free Digital Textbook Initiative, calling for free and open high school math and science textbooks that align to California content standards. www.clrn.org/FDTI/index.cfm

Athabasca University (Canada) has a requirement for new course development whereby instructional designers are required to first search for published OER before purchasing proprietary content or committing to in-house development.
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana) has adopted a university-wide open educational resources (OER) policy with CC Attribution as the default license for university material.
Virginia has a policy granting state agencies the authority over the protection and release of patents and copyrights created by employees of the agency. The policy authorizes state agencies to release all potentially copyrightable materials under the Creative Commons or Open Source Initiative licensing system, as appropriate. http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+2.2-2822
The Netherlands: Wikiwijs

http://www.wikiwijs.nl/task/international.psml
Nationwide initiative announced by Dutch Minister of Education 2008. Wikiwijs was developed by Knowledge Network and Open University Netherlands, commissioned by the Ministry of Education. It is based on open content, open source and open standards. "An open, internet-based platform, where teachers can find, download, (further) develop and share educational resources."

Vietnam Opencourse

http://cnx.org/lenses/vocw/affiliation
The goal of this project is to build a rich repository of free, high-quality, open learning materials suitable for Vietnam. Launched in 2007, the Ministry of Education and Training, the VASC Software and Media Company, and the Vietnam Education Foundation.

Open Access (Academic Journal Articles) Policies

List of Open Access Policies: http://roarmap.eprints.org

Universities Join Together to Support Open-Access Policies: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/universities-join-together-to-support-open-access-policies/32632

MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

http://libraries.mit.edu/sites/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-access-at-mit/mit-open-access-policy/
Each Faculty member grants to MIT nonexclusive permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open dissemination.

Harvard Open Access Policy

http://osc.hul.harvard.edu/policies
By means of Harvard’s Open Access Policy, faculty authors in participating schools grant the university a nonexclusive, irrevocable right to distribute their scholarly articles for any non-commercial purpose.

Duke Open Access Policy

http://library.duke.edu/openaccess/duke-openaccess-policy.html
Each Faculty member grants to Duke University permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to reproduce and distribute those articles for the purpose of open dissemination.

K-12 Open Projects

Utah Open K-12 Textbook Project

$5.35 textbook (including shipping) – David Wiley and CK-12: http://utahopentextbooks.org/2011/08/26/the-5-textbook
Open K-12 textbook study in Utah found “no significant difference” between using commercial vs. open textbooks. Simply substituting open textbooks for proprietary textbooks does not impact learning outcomes. http://utahopentextbooks.org/2011/10/12/efficacy-data-are-in

Open High School of Utah

http://www.openhighschool.org
High School uses open source software and openly licensed content and shares all of its content under a CC BY license.

Open High School in New Zealand

High School uses open source software and openly licensed content.
Mark Osbourne, Principal: http://edtalks.org/video/mark-osborne-wikieducator-and-creative-commons

Are other education institutions sharing their education resources?

Yes, there are hundreds of OER projects around the world (see: http://www.ocwconsortium.org). One of the best known was created by Washington’s own Community and Technical Colleges. They call it the “Open Course Library.”

http://www.opencourselibrary.org
The Open Course Library is a collection of expertly developed education materials designed by faculty and openly shared with the world. It includes textbooks, syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments for 81 high-enrollment college courses. 42 courses have been completed so far, providing faculty with a high-quality, affordable option that will cost students no more than $30 for course materials. The Open Course Library is:

§ High Quality – Course materials go through an extensive series of quality checks.

· All course materials are pilot-tested in a college classroom and then further refined.

· Quality checks include peer reviews, instructional designer reviews, and expert reviews by universal design, accessibility, and global education specialists.

§ Affordable – Students pay no more than $30 for Open Course Library materials, including textbooks. Most courses use 100% free materials.

· Students spend $1000 or more on textbooks annually, in addition to tuition.

· Some students even attempt courses without purchasing the textbooks, which affects completion rates.

· Using Open Course Library materials allows students to spend less per course and afford more courses per term so they can graduate faster and get better paying jobs sooner.

§ Adaptable – Faculty can modify and build on some or all of the course materials.

· Faculty adopters can use as much of the course materials as they choose.

· There are no strings attached. The Community Colleges only ask that faculty cite the Open Course Library in their course and fill out our short adoption form.

§ The Student PIRGs has also written a cost analysis of the Open Course Library, which shows that the textbook savings being realized this year alone is already more than the cost of the project itself. http://www.studentpirgs.org/textbooks/documents/affordable-textbooks-for-wa-students.pdf

This FAQ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

[1] From the Wikieducator “OER Handbook for Educators”: http://wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook/educator and UNESCO-COL Guidelines for Open Education Resources (OER) in Higher Education: http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=364

[2] A Basic Guide to Open Education Resources (OER): http://wikieducator.org/A_Basic_Guide_for_OER/A_Basic_Guide_to_Open_Education_Resources:_FAQ