Open Education Week 2016: Call for Participation, by: Open Education Consortium, CC BY 4.0

The Open Education Week planning committee invites your contributions to and participation in the 2016 Open Education Week (#openeducationwk), featuring online and in-person events around the world. There are many ways to participate – including but not limited to:

• host an event
• help someone find and reuse open education resources (OER)
• run a webinar
• commit to openly license your educational resources
• submit a video
• make a commitment to advance OER
• use the week to highlight the benefits of open education in your institution
  

Open Education Week is a celebration of the global Open Education movement. The purpose of the week is to raise awareness about the movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide, and there is always a need for the Creative Commons (CC) community to highlight how CC licensing makes OER “open.” Moreover, the CC community continues to innovate in open education and this is an opportunity to share your amazing work with the world. Participation in all events and use of all resources is free and open to the public.

Please submit your ideas on how you will contribute to Open Education Week by 12 February, 2016. You are welcome to submit multiple resources or events. Please fill out one form for each contribution.

Submitting your event / resources through this form will show the strength of commitment to openness around the world – all languages and time zones are most welcome!

Your event will be featured in the Open Education Week schedule, on the world map of events, and will be promoted through Open Education Week social media channels. You’ll also receive the official Open Education Week badge to display on your webpage or event promotional materials.

Kudos to our friends at the Open Education Consortium for organizing Open Education Week 2016!

The post Open Education Week: 7-11 March, 2016: Call for Participation appeared first on Creative Commons.

Cheers to an incredible 2015. With your support, creators around the world have now shared over 1.1 billion, including NASA’s iconic images, educational materials in every subject, scientific research, government open data, 3D models, and more. Thank you!

And as we head into 2016 and beyond, there is much more to do. We’re thrilled to have you among our community as we continue to advocate for the widespread adoption of CC licenses, open policy, and the growth of the commons. And what’s more, we’ll be working hard to build an even more vibrant, usable, and collaborative commons. We look forward to sharing all our big wins with you.

The post Thank you and Happy New Year! appeared first on Creative Commons.

You’ve heard about the incredible 1.1 billion CC licensed works available to be reused, revised, remixed, and redistributed in infinite ways. You’ve heard about huge gains in OER and Open Policy. You’ve heard about the threats to our shared global commons, and that we now find ourselves in one of the most restrictive eras of copyright in recent history.

Creative Commons needs you right now to stand with us. We are a small team, working to solve global challenges. We have ambitious year end fundraising goals, and we’re not there yet. We rely on you, our Creative Commons community, to help support our work.

Our year end fundraising deadline is in 48 hours. Please take a moment to donate $10, $25, $50, or more to Creative Commons right now to join the movement and help us build a creative, free, and more connected global commons.

With thanks,

Ryan Merkley
CEO, Creative Commons

The post Keep the commons thriving appeared first on Creative Commons.

Below is a guest post by Esther Wojcicki from the Creative Commons Advisory Council.

As a lifelong educator and recent author of Moonshots in Education, I’m proud to serve on Creative Commons’ Advisory Council and to have served as Chair of the CC Board. CC is at the very heart of the open education movement — our licenses put the “open” in Open Educational Resources (OER).

I’m writing to ask you to support CC’s high impact work in open education. Will you make a contribution of $25, $50, $100 or more today?

At a time when the cost of higher education is skyrocketing, OER has delivered $174M in textbook savings to students to date. At a time when people around the world are demanding equitable access to education, CC and our open education partners make it easy for educators and students everywhere to freely share curriculum, textbooks, and research at near zero cost.

What’s more, our advocacy has helped direct a shift at the government level. The United States Department of Education just outlined a major open licensing policy, and today over 19 countries around the world have legislation supporting OER.

I’m proud of our work in OER, but there are too many more students around the world waiting for easy access to education. We need your support. Make your contribution to Creative Commons today. Thank you!

 

The post Special request from Esther Wojcicki, Creative Commons Advisory Council appeared first on Creative Commons.

It’s hard to believe that it was 13 years ago today that we shipped the very first version of the CC license suite.

Before then, without the CC licenses, the barriers to collaborating in a global commons were too high. The benefits of shared educational content or scientific research, or paving the way for creators who could easily innovate as artists have throughout the ages, were hampered by complexity and confusion.

I never would have imagined the global commons as it stands today: over 1 billion CC licensed works, and millions of public domain materials. It’s incredible, and it’s because of all of us. We chose to build this together. And we need to remember that this has been the first step. We need to do more.

To help steward the continued growth, vibrancy, and usability of the commons, will you make a contribution of $10, $25, $50 or more today?

Join us as we continue to advocate for the widespread adoption of CC licenses, open policy, and the growth of the commons. And join us for the work ahead that will ensure that the very best content in the commons is easy to find, engaging to use, and that its data is accessible to both the contributor and the user.

We need to light up the content and creators of our shared commons.

Tonight is the night. Tonight you can help us soar past our first year-end campaign benchmark and kick off our next ambitious goal. In celebration of the 13th birthday of the CC license suite, will you help us raise $45,000 by next Tuesday to keep us on track toward our year-end goal?

Make your contribution to Creative Commons right now.