This has been a busy Fall on the road for CC Science. The road trip started with a joint OKF/OpenUCT/IDRC workshop titled Towards a Southern-led Research Agenda on Open and Collaborative Science for Development at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. The objectives were to forge stronger community links and explore potential areas of open science for development which merit further research or action. Scientists from Latin America, Africa and Asia attended the workshop.

The Cape Town workshop was followed by a presentation at the OKCon in Geneva where we presented our plans for developing a CC Science Affiliates Network with particular focus on scientists in developing countries. The new network, which was introduced to our existing affiliates at the recently concluded CC Global Summit in Buenos Aires and whose details are under development, will augment the existing Affiliates Network with practicing scientists. These new Science Affiliates will serve as a two-way conduit between CC HQ and regional and disciplinary scientific concerns.

Finally, CC Science is helping organize a couple of science focused events in India. The two events will serve to bring together Indian science and technology community focused on Open Science and Data and identify potential CC Science Affiliates.

The first event titled Workshop on Open science for higher education and research is on Oct 3, 2013, at the Delhi University South Campus, led by CC community member Dr. Savithri Singh of Acharya Narendra Dev College. We have confirmed participation from:

• Gnowledge Lab of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai
• Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) group from the Coucil of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in New Delhi
• The Sarai Programme, CSDS, New Delhi and HasGeek Media LLP, Bangalore

The second event titled Workshop on Open Science and Open Data (workshop link) is organized by Dr. Devika Madalli of the Documentation and Training Centre of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Bangalore. It will be held on ISI campus on the outskirts of Bangalore on Oct 7, 2013. Confirmed participants include:

• Centre for Internet and Society, India
• Open Governance India
• Arghyam, a grants making NGO focusing on groundwater and sanitation
• Hackteria
• India Biodiversity Portal
• Indian Institute of Public Administration

This past August, I facilitated an online peer-learning course in the School of Open introducing open science to newcomers, and Michelle Sidler worked behind the scenes to keep things glued together. This guest post was written by Michelle, and gives a look at how things went teaching an entirely free course on open science over the web. It’s pretty cool.

Guiding Students through the Course

During last month’s round of School of Open courses, I helped out with a facilitated version of the Open Science course supported by Creative Commons, the Open Knowledge Foundation, and PLOS. On four Tuesdays in August, Billy Meinke hosted online discussions with a handful of well-known members of the open science community while participants from around the world completed course modules and blogged about their experiences. Here’s how things went down.

Note: The course materials and online discussions are available on the Open Science P2PU course page, and will continue to grow over the next few weeks as participants share blog about their experiences working with aspects of science that are either open or not.

Participant Blogs

While completing course units, participants blogged their experiences, offering reflections and insights about open science and sharing online resources they found. Participants were researchers and scientists from around the world, including biologists, climatologists, librarians, and even musicians.

Though we are still working through much of the blog posts, here are some examples of people learning about open access, open data, and open research for free through the School of Open:

The first of three modules introduced the topic of open access (OA), and after browsing through content about OA, learners were to report on the openness of published research articles they found on the web. A learner named Peter Desmet provided a fine overview of the history of open access and the different “flavours” of open access in an entry on his blog. The second module led folks to the topic of open data for science, where a peer by the name Odon shared her process of learning through her blog, Odonlife. Her writings offered definitions and descriptions of open data and assessed the openness of datasets she found online. Drawing from these lessons, she also described her experiences contributing to open data crowdsourcing projects and how they inspired her to start a similar project. For the third unit on open research, a peer in the course named Nicki Clarkson described the work of Jon Tennant, a paleontologist and open science advocate who deposited the data from his PhD research into the Paleontology Database, a repository for similar data. Jon even commented on her post, thanking her for the shout-out—another example of the ways in which open information brings researchers together!

Featured Speakers

In addition to supporting the online course participants, Billy Meinke hosted online discussions with many open science friends and advocates from many locales and types of involvement with science around the world. Guests from a variety of organizations joined open, broadcasted Google Hangouts and shared their experiences in open science with dozens of learners watching each stream. Thanks to all the guests who took the time to chat with us about open science! Links to the video and etherpad notes (taken during the live sessions) can be found on the Open Science course page.

Taking the Open Science course further

The Open Science course doesn’t end when we complete the units and assignments. Continue the conversation by spreading the word to other scientists about this resource and encouraging them to participate. There has been interest in volunteer translation efforts and other adaptations of the material. Anyone is free to do so, in compliance with the CC BY-SA license on the course. Much of the material is licensed CC BY or CC0, which give even more open reuse rights!

If you’d like to find out more about what’s happening with this course and others in the School of Open, head on over to the School of Open Google Group and join the discussion! You can also sign up to be notified when the next facilitated course launches, likely in Spring 2014.

Adventures in copyright / opensourceway / CC BY-SA

It has come to our attention that the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and top internet service providers are drafting curriculum to teach kids in California elementary schools that copying is wrong, or as Wired.com puts it, “Downloading is Mean!”

This message is way too simple. In this digital age, the most important thing we should be teaching kids is to be creative and take full advantage of all the web has to offer. Copyright, asking permission, open licensing, and all the other legal nuances, should be seen as secondary (and even complementary) to this purpose. We should be starting with the things kids can do versus what they can’t do.

In addition to the campaign’s overly simple and negative approach, other issues include the complete absence of fair use from the curriculum — exceptions and limitations to copyright that allow various uses of copyrighted materials for educational, journalistic and other purposes. Wired.com reports, “Its president, Marsali Hancock, says fair use is not a part of the teaching material because K-6 graders don’t have the ability to grasp it.”

Assuming the net generation and their younger counterparts are as dumb as assumed in the above statement, the curriculum still leaves out a crucial and growing part of the Internet landscape — the commons of free and open materials in the public domain and/or released under open licenses that actually encourage copying, redistribution, revision, and remix! In short, everything this simplified anti-piracy campaign is conveniently leaving out in its copyright curriculum for kids.

There is a more balanced approach to educating kids about copyright that includes the alternatives, and here are some organizations and experienced educators who have developed copyright curricula. The following list of resources are open educational resources (OER), licensed under a CC license that enables free and legal reuse, redistribution and remix. In short, stuff that is free and just fine and even great to copy!

Copyright curriculum for kids

Common Sense Media’s K-12 Digital Literacy & Citizenship Curriculum

Common Sense Media has developed a comprehensive K-12 Digital Literacy & Citizenship Curriculum for educators to use in their classrooms. Part of the curriculum focuses on Creative Credit & Copyright, which you can navigate easily via their Scope & Sequence tool. The resources are aligned to Common Core standards and licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.

New Media Rights Copyright FAQ Videos

New Media Rights has developed a series of short Copyright FAQ YouTube videos (because what better way to interact with youth but through YouTube?) answering common questions about copyright and the public domain. These videos are drafted by lawyers and read by students and are licensed under CC BY.

Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Teaching Copyright Curriculum

EFF developed this copyright curriculum for teachers to use in the classroom several years ago to counter campaigns like the one above, proving that topics like fair use can be taught! Teachingcopyright.org is available under CC BY.

Australia’s Smartcopying Guide for Schools and Interactive Resource for Kids

Australia has an official website for its schools regarding copyright for educators and students. However, this website, called Smartcopying, doesn’t just cover Australian copyright law — it also covers open educational resources and Creative Commons licenses. It’s quite the comprehensive resource with lesson plans, info sheets, videos, and more, and is licensed under CC BY-SA. This includes All Right to Copy, an interactive web activity “designed to teach students about copyright, and how it impacts them as both users and creators.” These resources are useful even if you’re not Australian, so check it out at http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/ and navigate using the horizontal menu to the topic of your choice.

National Library of New Zealand’s Free to Mix Guide for Educators

The National Library of New Zealand takes a different approach to copyright education; instead of focusing on what students can’t do, it focuses on what teachers and students can do with its Free to Mix guide. The guide was popular enough to spin off its own remix by CC New Zealand (pdf) with beautifully done graphics. Both versions are licensed under CC BY.

Shared Creations: Making Use of Creative Commons

Emily Puckett Rogers and Kristin Fontichiaro with the University of Michigan created this short and colorful lesson plan book for elementary school teachers that covers copyright, the public domain (even trademarks and patents!), and Creative Commons. This book is short and sweet with age-appropriate activities (that are even fun for adults). You can browse the book for free online or purchase a hard copy at the publisher’s website. The book is licensed CC BY-NC-SA.

School of Open’s Copyright 4 Educators

The School of Open, a community of volunteers around the world providing free education opportunities on the meaning and impact of openness in the digital age, offers an online course called Copyright 4 Educators. While this course (offered as adapted to both US and AUS law, but open to anyone) is primarily designed for educators and not kids, teachers can take what they’ve learned and then relay it to their students. The School of Open also offers more kid-friendly resources such as Get CC Savvy, Teach someone something with open content, and numerous lesson plans and activities integrated in CC for K-12 Educators. All School of Open courses on the P2PU platform are licensed under CC BY-SA; others hosted elsewhere may be licensed under CC BY.

This list is not exhaustive; if you know of other copyright education resources, please share them below! And if you would like to contribute to providing free copyright, OER, or CC education opportunities for kids (or adults), please join the School of Open community in its efforts! Visit http://schoolofopen.org/ to get started.

European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes and Commission Member Androulla Vassiliou today announced Opening Up Education, an initiative that looks to increase the use of digital technologies for learning and spur the development of Open Educational Resources and policies across the European Union.

The Opening Up Education communication (PDF) indicates a strong support for Open Educational Resources. On the subject of OER, the Commission will:

• Ensure that all educational materials supported by Erasmus+ are available to the public under open licenses and promote similar practices under EU programmes;
• Use the new programmes Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020 to encourage partnerships between creators of educational content (e.g. teachers, publishers, ICT companies), to increase the supply of quality OER and other digital educational materials in different languages, to develop new business models and to develop technical solutions which provide
  transparent information on copyrights and open licenses to users of digital educational resources;
• Launch with this Communication the Open Education Europa portal linking it to existing OER repositories in different languages and bringing learners, teachers and researchers together, so to improve the attractiveness and visibility of quality OERs produced in the EU.

The communication also urged Member States and education institutions to:

• Stimulate open access policies for publicly-funded educational materials;
• Encourage formal education and training institutions to include digital content, including OERs, among the recommended educational materials for learners at all educational levels and encourage the production, including through public procurement, of high-quality educational materials whose copyrights would belong to public authorities.

Kroes and Vassiliou also introduced Open Education Europa, a portal for high quality OER available in a variety of languages. The default licensing for the resources in the portal is CC BY.

The communication document defined OER as “learning resources that are usable, adaptable to specific learning needs, and shareable freely.” We think that it would be better for the Commission to adopt the longstanding and well-understood OER definition promoted by the Hewlett Foundation, which defines OER as “teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.”

Creative Commons provided feedback last year when the Commission was gathering information from stakeholders on how to proceed around the issues of ICT and OER. Congratulations to the EC on what looks like a promising initiative that will increase access to and reuse of open educational resources and technologies for a wide range of learners in Europe.

Download the press release. (63 KB PDF)

Mountain View, CA, September 25, 2013: Catherine Casserly announced that she will transition out of her role as CEO of Creative Commons in early 2014. Creative Commons, a Silicon Valley nonprofit that provides legal and technological tools for sharing and collaboration, was launched in 2002. Casserly became the organization’s first full-time CEO in 2011 after serving on the board of directors. Casserly helped to secure the organization’s considerable gains from its first decade and to lay a foundation for its second. She worked with the board and staff to integrate and grow existing programs, increase public impact, articulate key priorities and outcomes, and strengthen core operations.

One of Casserly’s significant accomplishments was Creative Commons’ role in the development of open education policies, both in the United States and around the world. In 2012 alone, the governments of Poland and California passed major legislation in support of open educational resources (OER) and others, like British Columbia, provided major public funding for OER. Similarly, the US Department of Labor is currently awarding $2 billion in grants for OER development through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program.

In an email to Creative Commons’ global network of volunteers, Casserly expressed pride in three years of growth as a movement and optimism about the possibilities for the organization’s new leadership. “Together, we’ve grown our community and movement tremendously — both in size and in our ability to impact the world. For me and for the organization, the three-year mark is the right time to usher in a new generation of leadership.”

Creative Commons board chair Paul Brest noted that Cathy’s tenure as CEO has brought major changes to the organization. “The focus that we’ve seen over the past three years is remarkable, and what’s even more impressive is the clarity of mission and priorities that Cathy has brought to the organization. Under her leadership, the growth in the use of CC licenses generally, in the field of OER, and particularly in government-adopted OER mandates, has brought us substantially closer to our vision — universal access to knowledge and culture — than ever before.”

Casserly agreed, and predicted that the next CEO will play a major role in scaling Creative Commons’ achievements. “We’re currently developing products and tools with the potential to transform how sharing and collaboration work on the internet. Realizing that potential will require a CEO who deeply understands both our mission and the broader technology landscape.” The Creative Commons Board of Directors plans to formally begin the search for a new CEO in October.

Edited October 2: Previous version incorrectly listed British Columbia as a government that had passed OER legislation. Read this article for information on British Columbia’s support for OER.