I’m happy to share Flickr’s announcement today that all CC-licensed and public domain images on the platform will be protected and exempted from upload limits. This includes images uploaded in the past, as well as those yet to be shared. In effect, this means that CC-licensed images and public domain works will always be free on Flickr for any users to upload and share.

Flickr is one of the most important repositories of openly-licensed content on the web, with over 500M images in their collection, shared by millions of photographers, libraries, archives, and museums around the world. The company was an early adopter of CC licenses, and was bought by Yahoo! and later sold to Verizon. Last year, Flickr was sold again, this time to a family-owned photo service called SmugMug. Many were justifiably concerned about the future of Flickr, an essential component of the digital Commons.

Once the sale of Flickr was announced, CC began working closely with Don and Ben MacAskill of SmugMug, Flicker’s new owners, to protect the works that users have shared. Last November, Flickr posted that they were moving to a new paid service model that would restrict the number of free uploads to 1,000 images. Many, including Creative Commons, were concerned this could cause millions of works in the Commons to be deleted. We continued to work with Flickr, and a week later, they announced that CC-licensed images that had already been shared on the platform would be exempted from upload limits.

Today’s announcement takes that commitment one step further, and ensures that every CC-licensed or public domain image shared on Flickr is protected for all to use and re-use. It’s a significant commitment. Don and Ben MacAskill and the whole Flickr team have been supportive of CC and Flickr’s responsibility to steward the Commons from day one, and have been open and collaborative with Creative Commons all along.

For users of Flickr (and no doubt also for Flickr staff) it’s been a tumultuous time. Migrating to new business models is difficult, and will undoubtedly anger some users, especially those used to getting things for free. However, we’ve seen how unsustainable and exploitative free models can be, and I’m glad that Flickr hasn’t turned to surveillance capitalism as the business model for its sustainability plan – but that does mean they’ll have to explore other options.

Choosing to allow all CC-licensed and public domain works to be uploaded and shared without restrictions or limits comes at a real financial cost to Flickr, which is paid in part by their Pro users. We believe that it’s a valuable investment in the global community of free culture and open knowledge, and it’s a gift to everyone. We’re grateful for the ongoing investment and enthusiasm from the entire Flickr team, and their commitment to support users who choose to share their works. We will continue to work together to help educate Flickr’s users about their options when sharing works online, and to support the communities contributing to the growth and preservation of a vibrant collection of openly-licensed and public domain works.

The post Big Flickr Announcement: All CC-licensed images will be protected appeared first on Creative Commons.

We are proud to announce that Creative Commons has been accepted as a mentor organization for the 2019 Google Summer of Code program.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a annual global program through which Google awards stipends to university students who write code for free and open-source software projects during their school break. CC has been a mentor organization for GSoC on seven previous occasions, but our last participation was in 2013, so we are glad to be reviving the tradition and hosting students again.

We’ve compiled a list of project ideas for students to choose from when submitting their work proposal. There’s a lot of variety to choose from – adding features to CC Search, reviving older CC products, creating entirely new tools that increase the reach of CC licenses, figuring out ways to better present our legal and technical work, and more. There is definitely room for creativity – the project ideas are defined in broad terms, and students may also choose to submit a proposal for an original idea.

One of the goals of the CC engineering team this year is to build an active developer community around our projects. We’ve been writing free and open-source software for over a decade. Lately, we haven’t done the best job of enabling external developers to contribute to those projects. Hosting Google Summer of Code is our first step to change that for the better, and we’re also actively working on several other improvements to our code and processes, such as:

• Creative Commons Open Source, a hub for the CC developer community.
• Making CC Search’s development more transparent. Our current sprint workload is already public and we’ll be releasing a roadmap soon.
• General cleanup, documentation, and contribution guidelines for our projects.
• A technical blog.

If you want to stay updated on our work, join our brand new developer mailing list, the #creativecommons-dev IRC channel on freenode, or the #cc-developers and #cc-gsoc channels on our Slack community. And if you’re a student (or know a student), please consider submitting a Google Summer of Code proposal! It’s a great way to get an introduction to open-source, build real-world skills, work on interesting technical challenges, and help advance CC’s mission.

The post CC + Google Summer of Code 2019 appeared first on Creative Commons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open Education Week is an annual convening of the global open education movement to share ideas, new open education projects, and to raise awareness about open education and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Each year, the Creative Commons global community participates, hosts webinars, gives local talks and shares CC licensed educational resources.

As part of the event this year, the Creative Commons Open Education Platform and CC Poland are hosting a 24-Hour Web-a-thon: 5-6 March (depending on your time zone).

We have amazing speakers from around the world presenting in multiple languages. Experts from Algeria, Nigeria, Argentina, South Africa, Italy, Chile, United Kingdom, Afghanistan, United States, Ireland, Sweden, Canada and Poland will present their open education projects.

Time: All times are UTC (check your local time using worldtimebuddy.com)

Webinar Room: All sessions will be in: https://www.uberconference.com/creativecommons

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Day One – March 5

9:00-9:20 – Open Networked Learning – a collaborative open online course on open networked learning
Presentation of the Open Networked Learning course – an initiative from Karolinska Institutet, Lund University, Linnaeus University and Karlstad University with Partner Universities and Organizations in Brazil, Finland, Ireland, Singapore, South Africa, and Switzerland. In particular, we will focus on the new course homepage powered by WordPress and BuddyPress. Jörg Pareigis, Karlstad University

10:00-10:20 – Open Education Initiatives in Francophone North African countries
In this presentation, we will share the state of Open Education initiatives in Francophone North African countries. Kamel Belhamel, University of Bejaia

10:30-10:50 – Open for Educators: Stirring Action via Support Services
Adoption of OER and OEP by educators (K-12 to HEI) strongly depend on support services available. This presentation considers various support services needed by educators to start to shift and implement OER and OEP using a case study of educators in Nigeria. John Okewole, Yaba College of Technology

11:00-11:20 – Open Education to build a Latin American community of information professionals. Fernando Lopez, Aprender 3C

12:00-12:20 – Creating Educational Equity through OER and Open Degree Plans
This presentation will address OER and open degree as a means for reducing the high cost of earning a college degree, providing equity and access to higher education. Carolyn Stevenson, Purdue University Global

12:30-12:50 – Open is an Invitation: Exploring Use of OER with Ontario Post-Secondary Educators
In this short presentation, with lots of time for conversation, I will share the key findings of my doctoral research conducted in partnership with Ontario post-secondary educators in 2018. Jenni Hayman, Cambrian College

13:00-13:20 – Exploring the multiliteracies to support access to OER in South Africa
This presentation explores the specific multiliteracies required within a South African context in order to support epistemological and demiurgic access to OER. This research took the form of a conceptual study with an integrative literature review and document analysis of selected open educational resources and repositories. A broad framework of multiliteracies is presented for use within the Southern African context. Jako Olivier, North-West University

14:00-14:20 – Design process for an open educational resource: a case study
In this presentation we described an experience of creation of an open educational resource following an interactive design methodology, working with design students. The work was carried out within the framework of a university seminar, aimed at introducing students of audiovisual design in technical, legal and design issues and their articulation with pedagogical objectives in an interactive design process. The tasks carried out included the creation of a “user” profile of the target students, analysis of the use situation and the needs of the teachers. The process concluded with the creation of an OER prototype for use in secondary schools. Lila Pagola, Universidad Nacional de Villa María

14:30-14:50 – Open Education Cooperative Educoop
Presentation of the method of co-creation of open educational resources by teachers based on 4 values: cooperation, learning, openness and adventure. I will also show the effects of the first edition of the project. Aleksandra Czetwertyńska, Centrum Cyfrowe

15:00-15:20 – OEGlobal19 call for proposals – tracks and ideas
We are going to briefly present the main topic of next OE Global 19, the main tracks in the call for proposal and give our support to colleagues who might want to ask questions about how to submit their proposals, according to the different formats available this year. Susan Huggins, OE Consortium. Chrissi Nerantzi, University of Birmingham. Paola Corti, Politecnico di Milano.

15:30-15:50 – Open Education in Chile: small steps in an adverse context
Nosotros hablaremos sobre los pequeños pasos y complejos contextos en el donde la educación abierta en Chile, a transitado en los últimos años, con algunas experiencias interesantes y relevantes, ademas del esfuerzo en compromisos concretos a través de los Planes de Acción de Gobierno Abierto. En nuestra opinión, los desafíos presentes y futuros para la educación abierta en el país son enormes, existiendo proyectos e iniciativas importantes, las que esperamos puedan representar nuevos escenarios favorables de mayor equidad y calidad educativa para los estudiantes. Werner Westermann, Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional

16:30-16:50 – OER news from the UK and OER19
We will share news of developments of OER in the UK and the OER19 Conference, taking place in Ireland in April – we will share how you can participate remotely and highlight important new resources and research. Maren Deepwell, Association for Learning Technology

17:00-17:20 – OpenEd in Oklahoma
The purpose of this presentation will be to share the state of Open at Oklahoma State University where we have been, where we are going, and why. Cristina Colquhoun, Clarke Iakovakis, & Kathy Essiller, Oklahoma State University

17:30-17:50 – One adult student’s perspective on open education opportunities
Older than most teachers and administrators, I’m the first online student at Metropolitan State University’s College of Individualized Studies authorized to use my own eportfolio to demonstrate my prior learning for assessment to complete a bachelor’s degree. An EdTech intern, I study open learning technologies and heutagogy. (self-directed learning) Mark Corbett Wilson, Metropolitan State University

18:00-18:20 – A Quick Look at the Future of OER
This talk will look at the impact of new technologies – specifically, open data, cloud technologies, AI and distributed ledgers (blockchain) – on the future shape of OER – what they will look like, how they will be used, and what skills and knowledge will be needed to develop and use the. Stephen Downes, National Research Council Canada

18:30-18:50 – Going beyond the classroom: Digital Humanities OER powered by the European research infrastructure DARIAH
This talk will showcase two types of OER for Digital Humanities that allow for flexibility with different teaching/learning contexts, enable peer learning, and empower teachers and students
to see beyond their institutional perspectives. These are: the Parthenos Standardization Survival Kit and the OpenMethods metablog. Erzsébet Tóth-Czifra

19:00-19:20 – OER Momentum in the Rocky Mountains: Policy, Practice and Purpose
Colorado’s unique leadership with statewide OER efforts is steered by the OER Council, a legislatively created advisory group comprised of representatives from a variety of disciplines and institutional types. This session will highlight how a diverse group of individuals in the Rocky Mountain state have advocated and executed OER efforts at the state level, while also highlighting future ambitions in policy, practice and purpose. Meg Brown-Sica, Colorado State University. Brittany Dudek, Colorado Community College Online. Spencer Ellis, Colorado Department of Higher Education. Jonathan Poritz, Colorado State University-Pueblo.

19:30-19:50 – State of Open Data: Data and Education
This talk will showcase the findings of the chapter about data in education on the book State of Open Data. It aims at presenting the benefits of the use of open data in education, and its value for developing data literacies, but also, it highlights the risks of datafication of education with the aim of giving a wide landspace and perspectives on data in education. Javiera Atenas, ILDA

20:00-20:20 – An OER Library in Afghanistan
OER in Afghanistan? Yes, it’s true! For several years, we have been making and translating OER into Afghan languages, as part of the Darakht-e Danesh (‘knowledge tree’ library). We will tell you about our small but fierce digital library, we will share our lessons learned doing OER in this part of the world, and we will tell you about how we innovate around challenges like insecurity, connectivity and digital literacy. We’ll highlight some of our exciting future plans, and hopefully, leave you inspired. Lauryn Oates, Abdul Parwani, Darakht-e Danesh Library

20:30-20:50 – New open education initiatives in Ireland
Ireland’s ‘National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’ is a unique body, tasked with supporting & fostering T+L enhancement & collaboration across all HEI’s in Ireland. Terry & Catherine will describe national plans in the area of open education – and are open to ideas & feedback. Terry Maguire & Catherine Cronin, National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education

21:00-21:20 – Alquimétricos, Open source DIY didactic building blocks
Near past, present and what’s next on building our open tech, didactic content, and branding model. Alquimétricos is a collaborative open project on designing, content developing and DIY (handcraft or digital) fabricating of tech-oriented didactic materials. A word on sustainability on open tangible stuff. Fernando Daguanno, Alquimétricos

21:30-21:50 – OER19 Conference – themes & conversations
Following on from earlier presentation by Maren Deepwell & Martin Hawksey, Catherine (and an OER19 guest, TBC) will explore themes of the upcoming OER19 Conference taking place in Galway, Ireland, April 10-11. The overall conference theme is: ‘Recentering Open: Critical and Global Perspectives’. Catherine Cronin, National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education

22:00-22:20 – State of Open Education in Canada
We will share the projects and initiatives happening in Canada around open education. Specifically looking at Provincial initiatives in postsecondary education as well as policies in Open Education in Canada. We will also highlight what is next for Canada, and what we hope to see for the future of Open Education. Amanda Coolidge, BCcampus. Lena Patterson, eCampusOntario.

22:30-22:50 – Creative Commons Certificates
The 10-week CC Certificates course for educators and librarians provides an in-depth study of CC licenses and develops participants’ open licensing proficiency and understanding of the broader context for open advocacy in the Commons. Will also discuss: new CC Certificates in process, facilitator training, translations, and scholarships. Cable Green, Creative Commons

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DAY TWO – MARCH 6

7:00-7:20 – Equity-oriented Open Learning in the Marginal Syllabus
A presentation about equity-oriented open learning as supported by the Marginal Syllabus project. The presentation will review design and learning practices summarized in Kalir (2018). Additional information about open learning via the Marginal Syllabus project. Remi Kalir, University of Colorado Denver

10:00-10:20 – Online roundtable on Growing Open Education Policies in 2019
This session is an opportunity for all activist to join and briefly present their organisations and plans for 2019. Host of this session is Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation from Poland – we will present some details about Open Education Policy Forum 2019. Alek Tarkowski, Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation

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Be sure to share your Open Education Week activities with: #OEWeek

See you online!

The post Open Education Week: 24-Hour Global CC Network Web-a-thon: 5-6 March appeared first on Creative Commons.

I’m thrilled to share the first episode of our podcast, Plays Well with Others, with our community. It’s about the art, science, and mechanics of collaboration.

Ask yourself: How often have you walked into a room where you were about to work with colleagues, friends, or even strangers, and thought, “I’m going to focus on being a great collaborator today”? We spend so much time on leadership, and hardly any time on helping each other do great work together.

We hope to change that, in our own small way, with Plays Well with Others.

I couldn’t be more excited about this project — I’ve always wanted to produce radio journalism. I love interviewing people and helping them tell the best version of their stories. And it’s been a joy to work with my colleague and collaborator Eric Steuer on the podcast’s design and development. I’ve loved the opportunity to do creative work, and to work directly on something like this that is close to my heart, and that I feel is really good. We’re incredibly proud of how it’s turned out, and we hope you’ll enjoy it and learn something along the way.

Collaboration is a natural topic for me. My job at CC is all about making collaboration happen, and it’s been at the centre of my work for my entire career — across cultures and timezones. I’m fascinated by the things that we can only do together. Collective action — from the power of a union to build a more equitable world, to the ability of shared public investments to strengthen communities, to the potential of the commons to democratize knowledge — these ideas inspire me. It’s why I do what I do.

The first episode of our show focuses on the writer’s room on a comedy show. Our guests, Anne Lane and Wayne Federman, deserve our thanks for trusting us with their stories. They had no idea if what we were making would be any good, and there was no body of work to look at, since it was our first episode. Anne and Wayne were open and honest, and they gave us a view into a special room that very few people get to visit. But they also helped reveal insights into how collaboration works in groups: how to deal with the disappointment of watching your joke fall flat; the importance of picking up what other collaborators are laying down (“yes, and”); and an acknowledgment that many ideas, combined with the need to ship an episode, yields better results than writing alone in your basement.

I hope each episode yields such great insights — that’s certainly our goal. Our operating thesis is that digging into how collaboration really works might help us all become better collaborators ourselves.

Each episode homes in on an element of collaboration, told by some of the world’s great collaborators. We’ll publish one episode each month, and the first season will likely run around eight episodes. I hope you’ll join us along the way, and that we’ll all learn some new tactics, techniques, and approaches — together.

Listen now

The post Announcing Plays Well With Others, a new podcast about the Art and Science of Collaboration appeared first on Creative Commons.

In September 2018 the European Parliament voted to approve drastic changes to copyright law that would negatively affect creativity, freedom of expression, research, and sharing across the EU. Over the last few months the Parliament, Commission, and Council (representing the Member State governments) were engaged in secret talks to come up with a reconciled version of the copyright directive text.

The closed-door “trilogue” negotiations are now complete and a final compromise has been reached. The text is not yet published but MEP Julia Reda has shared unofficial versions of Article 13 (upload filters) and Article 11 (press publishers right). Both of these carried through with no major improvements on behalf of user rights and the public interest.

For an overview and evaluation of the key issues, check out Communia’s website: https://reform.communia-association.org/

 

Article 13 and 11: Still bad (or worse) for creators and users

It’s more clear than ever: Article 13 will require nearly all for-profit web platforms that permit user uploads to install copyright filters and censor content. While there was an earlier version that included an exclusion for small companies, that provision has been reeled in. Now only services that have been operating for less than 3 years, with annual revenue below €10 million, and with fewer than 5 million unique visitors each month, will be excluded from the rule. And the filters need to process all types of content — from music to text to images to software — anything that can be protected by copyright. If platforms don’t take action, they assume liability for what their uses publish online. This will surely harm creativity and freedom of expression in Europe. Some types of services will be exempted, for example Wikipedia, or open source software platforms such as GitHub. But for the vast majority of online platforms in Europe this will mean more regulatory burden and costs, and it will make it more difficult to compete with the big established platforms.

Article 11 got no better. It would force news aggregators to pay publishers for linking to their stories. The counterproductive press publishers right would last for 2 years. The text claims that the right will not apply to “individual words or very short extracts of a press publication.” At least openly licensed works such as those under Creative Commons or in the public domain would be exempted.

What’s next?

The final text of the directive will be released soon. While the trilogue negotiators focused on Articles 13 and 11, there were some productive changes that will improve the situation of the commons, cultural heritage, and research sectors. For example, we know that the negotiators agreed upon a provision to ensure that reproductions of works in the public domain will also be in the public domain. They included text to improve the ability for cultural heritage institutions to better serve their users online. And the negotiators slightly improved the exception on text and data mining by making mandatory an earlier optional provision that would expand the possibilities for those wishing to conduct TDM.

The European Parliament elections are coming up in May, and the existing Parliament will vote on the final text of the copyright directive beforehand. The plenary vote will take place between late-March and mid-April. This is when all 751 MEPs will get a chance to vote Yes or No on adopting the text as finalised by the trilogue.

With Article 13, it’s no exaggeration to say that it’ll fundamentally change the way people are able to use the internet and share online. And the European copyright changes will affect how copyright develops in the rest of the world. Even with some of the minor improvements to other aspects of the copyright file, it’s hard to see how the reform — taken as a whole — will be a net gain except for the most powerful special interests.

There is still time to make your voice heard on stopping the harmful upload filters and press publishers right. If you’re in Europe, visit www.saveyourinternet.eu to get more information and contact your MEPs before the vote.

The post EU copyright directive moves into critical final stage appeared first on Creative Commons.