In just over a year, we’ll celebrate our 20th anniversary—and although this is the perfect time to reflect on our history, we’re also looking to the future by improving our products and services in order to serve you better. 

With that in mind, we’re excited and proud to announce that we’ve been awarded an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine Grant—a public grant for non-profit organizations that are “using technology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.”

As recipients of this grant, we’ll receive $100,000 in unrestricted financial support and $25,000 in AWS promotional credits, as well as training, marketing, and technical support to improve CC Search and the CC Catalog API through image recognition and machine learning (ML). 

How we’re going to improve CC Search

We believe that CC Search and the CC Catalog API will drive greater use of openly licensed content and public domain works across the Web, but we know its capabilities can be vastly improved, particularly in regards to cataloguing and discoverability.

That’s why our technical team will use the AWS Imagine Grant to apply artificial intelligence (AI) image analysis and machine learning (ML) technology to enhance the metadata of the openly licensed content that we’ve indexed, starting with 100 million of the highest quality images in our database. 

“By making these improvements, we want to build the foundation for better discoverability and curation of openly licensed works…”

Currently, CC Search is powered entirely by manually entered data, but this system has its limitations. For example, users might tag an image with a few descriptive words or none at all. However, with the application of metadata enhancements, a significant number of openly licensed images integrated into CC Search will come with a robust, searchable list of descriptive language. This additional language will not only help our algorithm surface more interesting content, but also make it easier for users to find specific types of content. This data will also be available through the CC Catalog API for use in other applications.

“By making these improvements, we want to build the foundation for better discoverability and curation of openly licensed works, as well as contribute to the body of openly licensed works online by making this data available to everyone,” explained Director of Engineering Kriti Godey, “Through sharing our source code, infrastructure, and data, we’re helping to strengthen the global commons, which is what CC is all about.”

What’s next?

Our technical team will be working on this project over the next few months, with the goal of completing the improvements by the end of 2020.

Of course, as we embark on this project, we want you to be involved. Please follow CC Open Source on Twitter, check out the CC Open Source blog, join #cc-usability in the CC Slack, or keep an eye on the Active Sprint and Backlog in GitHub for the latest technical updates, as well as open calls for research volunteers and more. 

We’re incredibly excited for this next phase of CC Search and the CC Catalog API, and sincerely grateful to AWS for helping us move it forward. We would also like to send congratulations to the other recipients and runner-ups of the AWS Imagine Grant. Here’s to the future!

The post Creative Commons Receives an AWS Imagine Grant to Improve CC Search appeared first on Creative Commons.

The term “global commons” usually brings to mind the biosphere’s natural resources that everyone shares and benefits from, like water or air.

But the global commons is also home to what’s called the noosphere—all the resources and artifacts created by human reason and scientific thought, such as music, art, language, and research.

Creative Commons has fostered a movement reimagining the idea of the commons as a digital environment of infinite abundance rather than scarcity and red tape. We believe that an open, shared noosphere is key to expanding innovation, quality education, and equitable collaboration around the world.

Today, on Giving Tuesday, make a gift to Creative Commons and support greater access to the noosphere!

The Creative Commons team works to ensure that people around the world can access and contribute to the global commons through tools like CC Search, advocating for open education, supporting a vibrant community through the growing CC Global Network, and consulting with national galleries, museums, universities, and governments to adopt open policies and practices. The more people who can access historical and current ideas, art, and data, the better our world will be.

Our goal is to give everyone access to resources to change the world—but we can’t do it without you. Donate today to help keep the noosphere open and thriving!

Thank you!

The post What’s New in the Noosphere? appeared first on Creative Commons.

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 of recommendations to support open education in their countries and to collaborate with other nations.

Creative Commons is thrilled with this important milestone! We’ve been working on open education with UNESCO, the Commonwealth of Learning, and multiple national government and institutional partners for over 15 years. CC was on the drafting committee for both the 2012 UNESCO OER Declaration and the 2019 UNESCO OER Recommendation. In 2015, CC worked with UNESCO on its Open Access Repository. CC also attended and keynoted the 2017 UNESCO OER Global Congress. 

Recognizing the importance of the UNESCO OER Recommendation, a coalition of organizations active in advancing open education globally has joined forces to support its implementation. Coalition partners, in alphabetical order, are:

• Commonwealth of Learning
• Creative Commons
• International Council for Open and Distance Education
• Jožef Stefan Institute
• Knowledge 4 All
• Open Education Global (formerly Open Education Consortium)
• Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO
• SPARC Europe
• SPARC North America
  

The coalition will collectively leverage these organizations’ strengths and expertise, combining and coordinating efforts to create and deliver comprehensive resources and services in support of implementing the Recommendation across all UNESCO member states. The coalition will meet in early 2020 to develop a list of services, materials, activities, and communication plans that we will use to support national governments. Implementation support will be focused on providing assistance for the Recommendation:

Five areas of action:

• Building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, use, adapt and redistribute OER
• Developing supportive policy
• Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER
• Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER
• Facilitating international cooperation
  

Monitoring and reporting:

• Deploying appropriate research programmes, tools and indicators to measure effectiveness
• Collecting, presenting, and disseminating progress, good practices innovations and research reports
• Strategies for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness and long-term financial efficiency of OER

For more information contact:

Dr. Cable Green
Interim CEO & Director of Open Education
Creative Commons
cable@ creativecommons dot org

Jennryn Wetzler
Assistant Director of Open Education
Creative Commons
jennryn@ creativecommons dot org

The coalition also welcomes questions, requests, and suggestions using this form.

CC is excited to work together with stakeholders around the world in building open education capacity and effectiveness. Together we can fulfill the aims and objectives of the UNESCO OER Recommendation and make significant progress in achieving access to quality education for all. Let’s get to work.

The post A Coalition to Support Implementation of the UNESCO OER Recommendation appeared first on Creative Commons.

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. Paola Corti and Lokesh Rajendran have made CC Certificate content translations available in Italian and Arabic. With these translations, over 483 million additional people around the world have access to the course content in their first language.

In addition to these translations, the first country case study was debuted today in English and Italian at the Open Education Global Conference in Italy. The country case study, titled General Principles on “Diritto d’Autore” and Related Rights in Italy provides supplementary information on the rules regulating authors’ rights in Italy.

How are these additions and translations possible?

Upon successfully completing the CC Certificate*, Paola Corti (METID – Politecnico di Milano Project Manager and Instructional Designer) and Lokesh Rajendran (National Center for e-Learning Project Manager) downloaded the CC BY course content and applied their open licensing expertise to create the first translations of the CC Certificate to meet their communities’ needs in Italy and Saudi Arabia. They licensed the works CC BY 4.0 to enable maximum reuse. Their work with METID – Politecnico di Milano colleagues (Deborah de Angelis and Laura Sinigaglia) and National Center for e-Learning’s Saudi Open Educational Content Program team members (Ahmed Al Mobarak, Saleh Al Khaliwey, Rabah Al Bawardi, Sara Mazen, and Maha Al Sheikh) took between 3-5 months to complete.

Their work exemplifies what’s possible when educational resources are openly licensed. Creative Commons has licensed its CC Certificate content CC BY with the intent of making the content as useful and accessible as possible. The CC BY license enables anyone to create adaptations (also known as derivatives), such as language translations, to better meet the needs of different audiences.

We laud these Certificate graduates for their fantastic work, and look forward to highlighting future translations of the CC Certificate content! If you are interested in this work, please contact certificates@creativecommons.org.

*The CC Certificate provides an-in depth study of Creative Commons licenses and open practices, uniquely developing participants’ open licensing proficiency and understanding of the broader context for open advocacy. The training content targets copyright law and CC legal tools, as well as the values and good practices of working in the global, shared commons. The CC Certificate is available as either a 10-week online course or a one-week, in-person training to educators and academic librarians.

 

The post Millions Now Have Access to the CC Certificate in Italian and Arabic! appeared first on Creative Commons.

This is part of a series of posts introducing the projects built by open source contributors mentored by Creative Commons during Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019. Ahmad Bilal was one of those contributors and we are grateful for his work on this project.

WordPress is one of the top platforms for creators on the internet who both produce and consume CC-licensed content. Therefore, it’s important that we are able to integrate with WordPress as seamlessly as possible in order to promote the use of CC licenses. With that in mind, we recently added new features to our WordPress plugin—which are now live!

This plugin is an attribution and marking tool. It has multiple features that allow users to publish their content on WordPress under a CC license.

Previously, WordPress blog/site owners needed to manually type out instructions specifying to their readers what content they can share and how. But this plugin makes it simple to specify which CC license a single page, post, or even a whole site/network is published under.

Installation

You can install this plugin from the WordPress.org plugin marketplace. Once installed and activated, you can change the license settings from your WordPress (WP) dashboard.

The latest features added to our plugin:

• Setting a default site license

The plugin allows a default site-wide license to avoid any confusion regarding the attribution of content. After activating the plugin, head to Settings > Creative Commons to set up the default license or to change it to one of the other CC licenses.

There are multiple options available for the license. You can add:

• Additional attribution text for a custom note
• Title and Title URL
• Author and Author URL
• Display options

This default license can be displayed either as a widget or in the footer. The widget can be pulled to any area and will display the default license.

• License blocks

Our plugin also supports WordPress’ new editor, Gutenberg. The plugin adds blocks for each CC license. You will find these blocks under a separate category.

These blocks can be used to quickly mark or attribute any page/post/image or other media. Choosing a block will provide you with fields to add details. 

In the image below, you can see how the block will look in a post.

At a glance, with the WP CC Plugin you can:

• License your site with a default license
• Display the default license in the footer or as a widget
• Display a license for the entire site, or for individual posts and pages
• License your WordPress Network (WordPress Multisite install)
• License some posts, pages, or images differently from your default license
• License posts and pages by simply including CC Gutenberg blocks for each license required

What’s next for the CC WordPress plugin?

The CC WordPress plugin is an open source project aimed at simplifying the process of applying CC licenses to content on WordPress. A few upcoming milestones include internationalization, as well as the integration of CC Search and CC Vocabulary (coming soon). 

Finally, this project is community-focused and we want your help. Do you have comments or suggestions? Maybe a few ideas for new features or thoughts about improving the user experience? Check out the plugin’s GitHub Repository and Contribution Guidelines to get started. You can also join the discussion on the #cc-dev-wordpress Slack channel or the GitHub repository. 

 

The post Introducing the Updated Creative Commons WordPress Plugin appeared first on Creative Commons.