You’ll notice a focus on our blog and social media this week: With millions of students around the world heading back to school, we thought we’d highlight some of the most exciting OER news from around the world.
To begin, we’re recapping the work from CC HQ to promote and facilitate the spread of OER. Working with open education leaders around the world, our community of educators has been busy and excited to be involved with a number of projects this year.
Some highlights from Cable Green, Director of Open Education at Creative Commons:
In September 2017, we’ll be at the UNESCO 2nd World OER Congress in Ljubljana, Slovenia. We’re working with a team from UNESCO, the Commonwealth of Learning, the Hewlett Foundation, and the country of Slovenia on open education for governments regional consultations.
Learn more about the Creative Commons Certificate for Government, part of the Creative Commons Certificate program. (Stay tuned for exciting news from that project this week!)
Our posts from the CC Legal and the Open Education community on defending the printing of NC licensed OER.
Cable and others are co-writing an Open Licensing Playbook for Government, designed for government employees responsible for implementing open licensing policies to ensure publicly funded education resources are openly licensed.
We’re helping the Open Textbook Network and Library think through how to remix collections of OER (with different CC licenses) into open textbooks.
What are you doing for OER? Let us know! Tweet @creativecommons or post on our Facebook to highlight your work for students and teachers globally. Welcome back, educators!
You may have seen our recent blog post explaining Creative Commons’ involvement in a court case between Great Minds, a publisher of educational materials, and FedEx Office, the retail chain that provides on-demand copying and printing services.
To recap, Great Minds created educational materials under a U.S. federal government grant that required them to be shared under a Creative Commons noncommercial license (specifically, CC BY-NC-SA). Public school districts—those that did not have the means or resources to make the tens of thousands of copies of the publicly-funded materials needed for use in the classroom—paid FedEx Office stores to make copies of some of this material. The copies were to be used by the school districts noncommercially. Great Minds claims that because FedEx Office charged its typical fee to make these copies at the direction of the school districts for use in the classroom, it violated the CC license.
We’re following up here with a few words about why we’re getting involved in this particular case, and why we believe it’s important for us to do so. Put simply, we believe that any entity—whether it’s you or me or a public school district—should be able to pay a copy shop to make copies of a work that has been published under one of CC’s noncommercial licenses, in order to use those copies noncommercially.
We feel that Great Minds’ interpretation in this instance is wrong. We also believe that this incorrect interpretation would dramatically reduce CC’s noncommercial licenses’ usability and usefulness. It would negate what Creative Commons—and more importantly, what innumerable users in our community—believes to be true about CC’s noncommercial licenses.
All around the world, people, companies, and institutions use our noncommercial copyright licenses to make their work available to the public for noncommercial use. They do so because they want to share and allow re-use of their work. There are uses that CC licensors clearly intend to allow and that licensees clearly expect to be granted through our noncommercial licenses. We strongly believe that one of those uses is the ability to have a company like FedEx Office make copies of that content so that licensees can make their own noncommercial use.
If this sort of use is not permitted by CC’s noncommercial licenses, then, in the real world, that means that anyone wanting to make copies of the content for noncommercial use must own a printing house, or a parcel delivery service if they want to send a hard copy by mail. We do not believe that this is a reasonable expectation or interpretation of the license. To keep the commons usable for all, we felt that we had to step forward on this case to help prevent a negative outcome.
For more on this case as it develops, please keep an eye on our blog and follow us on Twitter.
We’re pleased to announce that the next Creative Commons Global Summit will take place in Toronto, Canada from April 28-30, 2017. This vital event will gather a global community of technologists, academics, activists, creatives, and legal experts to work together on the expansion and growth of the commons, open knowledge, and free culture for all. Previous summits were held in Seoul (2015), Buenos Aires (2013), and Warsaw (2011). As one of the most multicultural cities in the world, Toronto is a perfect location for this important meeting of the top minds in our field.
CC Korea, Global Summit 2015, CC-BY 2.0
The Toronto summit will be a launchpad for the next phase of work for Creative Commons and its global communities. Earlier this year, we unveiled a new Strategic Plan, which focuses on collaboration, vibrancy, gratitude, and usability as our key principles. This is our first summit since this announcement, where we expect to draw together nearly 500 participants from a variety of disciplines including policy and law, arts and culture, open education, GLAM, free culture, open science, open access, and technology. This event is for the global open community, broadly construed, and its focus all aspects of “open” work in education, free culture, open data and research, open knowledge, and more.
David Kindler, CC Summit 2011, CC-BY 2.0
Communities around the world are at the heart of our work. Without activists, advocates, professionals, and supporters around the world, Creative Commons would not be the globally recognized standard it is today. Our summits have historically kickstarted actions to help creators make connections and celebrate the commons, and the 2017 summit is poised to be our most successful yet.
We wholeheartedly invite you to join us in Toronto next April. For information about how to participate, please sign up for our special summit email list below. Thank you for your support.
The CC Asia Pacific Regional Meeting 2016 was held in Beijing, People’s Republic of China, From July 2 to July 3 which was hosted by CC China Mainland and attended by 19 representatives from 10 CC affiliates in the region with the support of CC. Liu Ping, one of the core members of the host team, shares her experience as the organizer of the event.
For all team members of CC China Mainland, to organize an international or regional meeting has been our long cherished wish. Finally in 2016, the year that marks the 10th anniversary of CC China Mainland, with the strong support of CC HQ and our Asia Pacific Coordinator SooHyun, and endeavors from all CC China Mainland volunteers, we made our dream of a Beijing gathering come true.
In early April, we got the encouraging and challenging news that the Beijing meeting would be in early July. After initial internal discussion, our small group of a lawyer, teacher, web developer, photographer and marketing manager were willing to contribute from various aspects even though they were based in different locations – Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Wenzhou.
As the capital city and a metropolitan, Beijing is well-known for its history, culture and diversity, It’s also a bit noisy considering more than 20 million population! We hoped our first Beijing gathering would be impressive and exciting and show the other side of the capital to all participants. Based on this goal and limited budget, we chose National Judges College Beijing Branch near Yanqi Lake.. Located in Northeastern part of Beijing, the lake is a quiet, beautiful place far from the city center, where 2014 APEC Meeting was held.
Attendees from Bangladesh, Japan, Mongolia, Philippines, Taiwan, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia and South Korea arrived in Beijing 1st of July. CC China Mainland were excited to see all our colleagues from different countries and regions.The spirit of volunteerism was strong – a university student volunteered for airport pickup – a well done job!
On July 2, the regional conference started with affiliate updates in the morning. Representatives from each region gave an update over what happened since the last regional meeting. Apparently many interesting and meaningful actions were taken to either reinforce the concept of CC or to promote understanding and adoption of CC licenses.
In the afternoon, international and regional issues such as affiliate network strategy discussion, regional website, and how to collaborate in open policy advocacy were covered. All of us agreed that being an important member of global CC family, we could and should do more in advocating CC. Also we spent some time for a license translation & translation sprint, community building, fundraising, and technology related issues.
3rd of July’s meeting was dedicated to Chinese speaking affiliates. In addition to follow up some discussion from the previous day, the group shared ideas to resolve key issues they faced during their translation while discussing how the group could move the 4.0 and CC0 collaborative translation project move forward. In order not to miss the rare chance to enjoy the beauty of suburb Beijing, afternoon’s meeting location was changed from indoor to outdoor.
Thanks for everybody’s endeavors to make our Beijing gathering happen, especially our Asia Pacific Coordinator SooHyun. With these experiences, we hope we will be able to hold a global summit in near future with existing & potential volunteers of CC China Mainland.
More details about the event, meeting notes, and photos are on the Wiki.
Citizen science is the powerful idea that communities should be empowered to participate in the process of scientific inquiry, investigating the world around them and creating societal change in the process. One of the most prominent projects within the citizen and civic science movement is Public Lab, a community of individuals using inexpensive DIY techniques to act locally on environmental concerns. At Public Lab, participants are empowered to revolutionize the research process: What would it look like if collaboration started at the earliest stages of research? How can communities be involved with scientific research at all levels?
From perfecting do it yourself spectrometer mapping to monitoring pollution emissions, Public Lab believes that environmental science can be everyone’s responsibility, and that collaboration should begin at the earliest stages of scientific investigation in order to change the way people see the world around them socially, politically, and environmentally.
Interview with Stevie Lewis (Outreach Manager), Liz Barry (Director of Community Development ), and Mathew Lippincott (Director of Production)
How does Public Lab view open science and citizen science as a pathway to participation in civic community? Traditional science researcher-subject relationships remove people from the inquiry process. In Public Lab, local environmental questions are asked by people living nearby, and can be explored with tools that are low cost and easy to use. Practicing open source science increases not only the number of people who engage on environmental issues, but creates the space for everyone to explore, generate data, and define the outcomes they seek. Open science and citizen science put people in the center, empowering them with tools and resources to speak substantively about their environmental concerns.
Open licensing is built into all the Public Lab’s projects. In what ways have you seen open source effectively foster collaboration through open processes and licensing? Open licenses set a basic expectation of sharing. Public Lab’s friendly community norms around sharing are backed with legal structures, so participants know that their authorship will be credited and downstream contributions will continue to grow the commons. When working with community groups, open licensing is the basis for community ownership and provides a sense of security. This transparency increases conversation and discussion, which reinforces the community’s ability to pursue long-term environmental justice outcomes.
Why is “open” important to the Public Lab? How do you use openness to support scientific and educational communities? Science is fundamentally about replication, and truly independent replication without openness is impossible. Closed licenses and proprietary hardware limit independent evaluation and access to knowledge. Openness has many aspects, however, and we see openness as about more than just licenses. Consider the accessibility of communications and data: Translating content out of difficult expert discourses expands the number of people who can interact with the issues and concepts. Accessible data, such as photographic monitoring, and other visual data, helps people to engage with results. So being open isn’t only about the science itself, but about making the process accessible.
How does openness drive innovation within environmental science and other scientific work? It is exciting to see science today thinking a lot about openness at the publication stage with a push towards publishing full datasets and articles in the open access movement. However, there is even more work to be done at the pre-press stage. This is not just about “open source between scientists” — but a project to use the principles of open source from problem identification to publication. This helps to break down barriers between science practitioners and the public, to the benefit of both. In many fields there’s little or no open collaboration, especially with the public in other parts of the process. This has contributed to a wide gap between science practice and the public; a gap which keeps key environmental and pollution knowledge from communities which need it.
When openness is the part of the focus, and communities are part of the entire process, we all work in the same space. This means that we can more easily share ideas, learn from each other, and collaboratively generate more knowledge.
Thespectrometry project has been through many variations, and builds. There are over 70,000 spectra from these and over 8,800 contributors:https://spectralworkbench.org/stats. Where originally this project aimed at exploring questions such as “can I tell if this sample contains petrochemical oils?”, people have built and used spectrometers that look different and explore all kinds of other questions such asfood oil fraud and thepresence of organophosphate pesticides.
What environmental challenges are you solving for with your community right now? How do you initiate projects? Examples of some of the challenges people have been working through on Public Lab recently have included things like: How can I measure the size of a landfill in my community, and can I determine when it has reached its capacity? Can I monitor emissions from polluters with any body sensing methods such as visual or odor monitoring, and if so, what types of violations can I catch with these? How do I capture a pollution runoff event from a development or a facility? These challenges come into Public Lab from people who bring them to the website, the online forums, and in-person events.
What’s coming up for the Public Lab? How can people get involved? There is a lot of exciting activity in Public Lab right now. We are working to bring structure and strength to the research culture of the community by creating systems for publishing assistance and tool versioning. There are also new ways to interact on Public Lab with the creation of activity grids on tool pages and a new “Question/Answer” feature that’s helping people to interact and share information. We also have a number of live spaces where people can collaborate, from our monthlyOpenHour, to the upcomingAnnual Barnraising in Louisiana this coming November. Everything from building the questions and the knowledge base on Public Lab, to creating the website itself is an open process that people can get involved in. Join us online or in person!
