its potential is hindered by archaic copyright laws and incompatible technologies. We at Creative Commons work to minimize these barriers, by providing licenses and tools that anyone can use to share their educational materials with the world. Our licenses make textbooks and lesson plans easy to find, easy to share, and easy to customize and combine
We work with the global Open Educational Resources movement, providing the legal framework for Open Educational Resources (OER)
commercial textbook publisher that incorporates CC licenses into its business model. Co-founded by the Director of Marketing for Prentice Hall Business Publishing, FWK makes higher education textbooks freely available via CC BY-NC-SA
Bloomsbury Academic publishes “world-class research-based books across the humanities and social sciences
works with its authors to use CC licenses, and has several publications available via CC BY-NC, including Lawrence Lessig’s Remix.
“flexbooks” that are free to use and adapt via CC BY-NC-SA. The CK-12 Foundation is a major contributor to the California Free Digital Textbooks Initiative, a CA initiative that aligns open textbooks to state standards.
MIT OpenCourseWare has been releasing its materials under a CC BY-NC-SA license since 2004.
The U.S. Department of Education announced today the hiring of the first ever open education adviser to lead a national effort to expand schools’ access to high-quality, openly-licensed learning resources
Marcinek will serve in the Office of Educational Technology (OET) and focus on helping both K-12 and higher education connect with teaching, learning and research resources in the public domain that are freely available to anyone over the web
Open educational resources are an important element of an infrastructure for learning and ranges from podcasts to digital libraries to textbooks and games
penly licensed learning resources
frees up funding to support the transition to digital learning
a visit to Williamsfield Community School District in Illinois, where U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stopped as part of his annual back-to-school bus tour
produced with public funds or foundation grants
there likely will be other rules – such as curricular standards – that limit who can update or change the content of the resource for use in the classroom or by others.
let the applicable rules defining appropriate uses of educational resources to come from educators and not publishers
Are the materials that the Williamsfield School District is using fully open?
No. Most of the materials in the EngageNY collection for example use one of the most restrictive Creative Commons license.
Cable Green, September 15th, 2015
the progress the rural school district has made in shifting to digital and open educational resources (OER) to connect their students to the world. “The walls break down,” Zack Binder, the Pre K-12 Principal said. “You’re no longer in Williamsfield, Illinois. You have the same access to this information that anyone in the world does.”
er the past two years, the 310-student district decided to adapt and adopt OER
Secretary Duncan announced today the hiring of the Department’s first full-time OER position to lead a national effort to expand schools’ access to high-quality, openly-licensed learning resources and help districts and states follow the path of Williamsfield.
von Initiativen in anderen Ländern könnte Deutschland aber noch eine Menge lernen.
Schulbuch-o-mat sollte genau so ein Ort werden: eine Plattform, auf der Lehrer Material zusammentragen und sich darüber austauschen können – eine Art Wikipedia für Lehrmaterialien
Sandra Schön von der Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft, die sich auf Informationstechnologien spezialisiert: „Klar müssen dann auch Geschäftsmodelle umgestellt werden. Warum sollten ausgerechnet Schulbuchverlage gegen Veränderungen gefeit sein?“
Dabei wollten wir nicht zeigen, dass man mit wenig Geld ein solches Buch produzieren kann, sondern wie sinnvoll OER ist“, sagt Schön. In Österreich hat das Bildungsministerium zum Beispiel ein Einmaleins für Lehrer mit Unterrichtsbeispielen und Erfahrungsberichten entwickeln lassen und finanziert
Zwar gibt es in den meisten Bundesländern eine Genehmigungspflicht für Schulbücher, sie gilt aber nur für kostenpflichtige Lehrbücher. „Es ist nicht aufzuhalten, dass der Schulbuchmarkt umgekrempelt wird“, sagt Wedenig. „Dass der Wandel kommt, kann man beim regulären Buchmarkt und der Musikindustrie doch schon längst sehen.“
Yvonne Pöppelbaum arbeitet als freie Redakteurin in Hamburg
make research and education more open and equitable
OpenCon’s community has made it clear that equity is essential and inclusion is non-negotiable
In redesigning systems for creating and sharing knowledge to be open, we can address deep inequities in the current system.
Openness can enable equity, but does not ensure it. Equity can only be achieved by design, with accountability, and in partnership with those who have been excluded.
The goal is to move from conversations to commitments and to create accountability in making progress together
as a conduit with underrepresented groups to address inclusion
Over the next year, we will also focus on developing a long-term sustainability plan to provide the support the community needs