CC Happy Birthday CC10 / @saidRmdhani

On day 7 of our CC10 celebrations we have an exciting announcement: the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) has announced a 3.5 million dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a new program to help adult English language learners improve their language skills — Integrated Digital English Acceleration (I-DEA). Importantly, all online learning modules developed for I-DEA will be made available under a Creative Commons Attribution license — the most liberal of our licences, allowing all teachers around the country and the world to reuse, remix and reinterpret them.

In honor of this announcement, we focus on education for today’s CC10 featured platform and resource. We take a look at Open content licensing for educators, one of the many courses provided by Wikieducator, a community-developed resource of free elearning content – created by the public, for the public. The Open content licensing for educators course, an initiative of the OER Foundation, has been running all this week, training educators both how to make full use of the wealth of educational resources now available for free download under CC and other open licenses, and how to share their own materials with others.

We also celebrate a milestone by another great community-created platform, as Wikicommons hits 15 million files, just in time for CC10. Wikicommons is one of the world’s oldest and largest resources of CC licensing and public domain media, from photos to videos to sound files. It’s the source of all the media you find on Wikipedia, and its files are used extensively by cultural and educational institutions to share and create open education resources. Check out our post on this great achievement to see two videos by our friends at WikiAfrica, explaining how and why a cultural institution might want to share their resources on Wikicommons.

Finally – everyone should take a moment to appreciate the fabulous CC10 poster above by @saidRmdhani. It was produced by attendees to our Arab World Regional Meeting, which has been running all this week in Cairo, and finishes up today. Congratulations to all the attendees, and we can’t wait to hear more about your workshops.

Just in time for CC10, Wikimedia Commons just announced its fifteen millionth upload. That’s fifteen million files that anyone can reuse, remix, and share for commercial or noncommercial purposes, many of them licensed CC BY or CC BY-SA.

The fifteen millionth file, pictured to the right, is a public domain photograph of Tropical Depression Seventeen-W, produced by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In a way, the photo is the perfect distillation of why an archive like Wikimedia Commons is important. The photo was already in the public domain, but it’s more useful when catalogued in a well-maintained repository.

As Peter Weiss explained the significance of the announcement, much of the growth of the Wikimedia Commons collection can be attributed to adoption by galleries, libraries, museums, and archives (GLAMs). When cultural institutions share their collections in a form that others can access and reuse, everyone’s better off for it.

These two videos from WikiAfrica explain why a cultural institution might want to share artifacts in Wikimedia Commons, and how to do it.

Congratulations to Wikimedia Commons on this amazing milestone, and thanks for being a part of the CC family.

Just in time for CC10, Wikimedia Commons just announced its fifteen millionth upload. That’s fifteen million files that anyone can reuse, remix, and share for commercial or noncommercial purposes, many of them licensed CC BY or CC BY-SA.

The fifteen millionth file, pictured to the right, is a public domain photograph of Tropical Depression Seventeen-W, produced by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In a way, the photo is the perfect distillation of why an archive like Wikimedia Commons is important. The photo was already in the public domain, but it’s more useful when catalogued in a well-maintained repository.

As Peter Weiss explained the significance of the announcement, much of the growth of the Wikimedia Commons collection can be attributed to adoption by galleries, libraries, museums, and archives (GLAMs). When cultural institutions share their collections in a form that others can access and reuse, everyone’s better off for it.

These two videos from WikiAfrica explain why a cultural institution might want to share artifacts in Wikimedia Commons, and how to do it.

Congratulations to Wikimedia Commons on this amazing milestone, and thanks for being a part of the CC family.

Just in time for Creative Commons’ 10th birthday celebration of its license suite, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) announced a 3.5 million dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a new program — Integrated Digital English Acceleration (I-DEA) — that will help adult English language learners improve their language skills while simultaneously providing career and college readiness training through technology-based tools and resources.

by blogefl / CC BY

The I-DEA program targets community college learners in the state’s lowest three levels of English as a Second Language courses, and aims to help learners achieve their language goals in tandem with career goals — with fewer hours of instruction than traditional programs that teach basic language skills separately from job-specific skills.

I-DEA derives its dual approach from the state’s I-BEST model (Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training), which U.S. Department of Education Under Secretary Martha Kanter recognized as furthering adult education faster than any other program: “51 percent of I-BEST students completed a certificate in two years, vs. 14 percent of the comparison group…” (Change Magazine of Higher Learning).

A significant part of this grant is that all online learning modules developed will be made available openly under a Creative Commons Attribution license, allowing anyone to access, reuse, translate, and remix the modules as long as attribution is given. I-DEA learning modules will be added to the Open Course Library, Washington State’s collection of high quality CC BY-licensed educational resources for its 82 highest enrolled community college courses.

The grant also includes the creation of new technology tools, laptop computers on loan, Internet access, and online advising and tutoring. From the press release:

Among other goals, college and partner community-based organizations (CBOs) will create open source curriculum and identify best practices of technology-enhanced instruction that allow more students to be served with less in-class instruction. Courses and techniques developed with the grant will be open sourced, allowing colleges and CBOs in Washington and around the world to replicate I-DEA.

This is fantastic news that couldn’t come at a better time. Thank you for this birthday gift to CC! Thanks to the SBCTC for spearheading this initiative and to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for making it possible.

For more details, including a list of the initial 10 colleges to receive and implement the grant, see the press release (pdf).

Just in time for Creative Commons’ 10th birthday celebration of its license suite, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) announced a 3.5 million dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a new program — Integrated Digital English Acceleration (I-DEA) — that will help adult English language learners improve their language skills while simultaneously providing career and college readiness training through technology-based tools and resources.

by blogefl / CC BY

The I-DEA program targets community college learners in the state’s lowest three levels of English as a Second Language courses, and aims to help learners achieve their language goals in tandem with career goals — with fewer hours of instruction than traditional programs that teach basic language skills separately from job-specific skills.

I-DEA derives its dual approach from the state’s I-BEST model (Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training), which U.S. Department of Education Under Secretary Martha Kanter recognized as furthering adult education faster than any other program: “51 percent of I-BEST students completed a certificate in two years, vs. 14 percent of the comparison group…” (Change Magazine of Higher Learning).

A significant part of this grant is that all online learning modules developed will be made available openly under a Creative Commons Attribution license, allowing anyone to access, reuse, translate, and remix the modules as long as attribution is given. I-DEA learning modules will be added to the Open Course Library, Washington State’s collection of high quality CC BY-licensed educational resources for its 82 highest enrolled community college courses.

The grant also includes the creation of new technology tools, laptop computers on loan, Internet access, and online advising and tutoring. From the press release:

Among other goals, college and partner community-based organizations (CBOs) will create open source curriculum and identify best practices of technology-enhanced instruction that allow more students to be served with less in-class instruction. Courses and techniques developed with the grant will be open sourced, allowing colleges and CBOs in Washington and around the world to replicate I-DEA.

This is fantastic news that couldn’t come at a better time. Thank you for this birthday gift to CC! Thanks to the SBCTC for spearheading this initiative and to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for making it possible.

For more details, including a list of the initial 10 colleges to receive and implement the grant, see the press release (pdf).