[cc-education] Making it easier for educators
Heather Ford
heather at gn.apc.org
Wed Oct 22 23:28:37 EDT 2003
Hi all,
Some really great points here - and very timely, since I have been thinking
of how you would implement the cc license for educational materials in
South Africa.
>David: "1. Are members of this list interested in seeing more educational
>content
>released under cc licenses?"
>
>GS: I'm interested in seeing more content sharing in education. CC is the
>current incarnation of this...but my commitment is to the concept of open
>education...not limited to only a type of license. The distinction may be
>small...but my commitment to CC only extends to the degree that it fosters
>the greater view - namely an environment where educators freely share
>resources.
HF: I agree with George, but I also think that, in order for more people to
share content in an open forum, the process of sharing needs to be made
easier and more intuitive to the teacher's needs. If, for example, I need
to develop some lessons on how to build a website, I want to be able to go
to a place on the site where I can search for similar materials that I
could adapt for my own use and then give back to the cc community. I've
made this point before, but perhaps I wasn't been clear enough: the fact is
that, for educators (and I've been in this position myself), cc does a
really great job of telling you how to donate your materials to the
commons, but doesn't do a good job of helping you to find materials in the
first place. I think that it is *essential* for the portal to look at a way
of doing this before we can begin to talk about the need to get more works
licensed.
One way of doing this would be, along with the 'click on this link if
you're an educator' on the home page, there would be two options as
follows: 1. license educational content 2. find educational content. You
would then have to have a page where you could actually search for
available resources. This is a website with open educational content that
makes a good go at it: http://www.itrainonline.org - but I'm sure there are
other/better ways.
>David: "2. Do members of this list think that in order to get more
>educational
>content licensed by a cc license we need more educators to understand the
>cc message and how it relates to education?"
>
>GS: I think the main message that should be presented to educators is how
>sharing resources benefits the learner, educator, and institution. The CC
>license is a subset of that discussion. Promoting CC without promoting open
>sharing of content first seems backwards. Licensing under CC is a message
>that is largely geared to the end content creator. In education, for many,
>the challenge will be to get administration to by into the concept of
>sharing (instructors often do not own the copyright to their work - it's the
>institution). CC is an enabler of the process...not the process itself.
George is spot on here - there needs to be a process of buying in to the
philosophy of open content and the benefits that this holds for education,
since the people who actually handle the technicalities of putting the
materials online and inserting the code for the license etc, will not
always be the people who go through the tutorials on the website. I think
that one of the major things that cc needs to do in this regard is to do a
lot of community-building - i.e. building a community of educators that
share the beliefs and that take the message to others. Feedback will be
really critical in this next stage, and it's important to have a set of
users on hand that can steer the development of the tool.
>David: "3. Do members of this list think that someone has to purposefully
>intervene in order to efficiently and effectively help a significant
>number of educators understand the cc message and how it relates to
>education?"
>
>GS: I'm a little unsure of how you mean intervene. Could you please detail
>what that would look like?
>Again, understanding the CC message is secondary to understanding the value
>of sharing content. It's cultural. Promoting CC assumes people understand
>the "Internet age" (the value of networking, sharing, collaborating). I
>don't think we are there yet. We have work to do before we are even at a
>point to promote CC. To promote CC without having first advocating for open
>education/content will be a huge challenge (I'm sure the message can be
>packaged to pitch both concepts at the same time...just as long as the CC
>part of the conversation comes after the conversion...:)).
HF: Yes, it is important to look at the particular cultural context.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure it would be pretty safe to assume
that educators are generally not too technologically savvy - or at least,
they haven't grasped the very new concepts that open source and sharing
over the Internet has initiated. Again, I think that the growing of a truly
interactive community of educators would be essential for the growing of
the movement.
>David: "4. Do members of this list think that a branding of a cc license
>configuration as an "Education License" and an awareness campaign are a
>good way to bring about this understanding, and hence, more cc-licensed
>educational materials?"
>
>GS: As stated, I think the awareness campaign should focus on the openness
>of content creation, sharing, collaborating. CC is a subset. There are many
>more components and aspects to openness than simply a license format (though
>that is certainly needed). If we end up thinking that creating and marketing
>a license is the next needed step, I think we could well position ourselves
>for failure. Our message has to be on openness. What if someone, somewhere
>comes up with a far better concept than CC (unlikely, the way it looks
>now...but, you never know...)? If our focus is CC, our success rises and
>falls with CC adoption. If it's openness...we can respond to trends and
>occurrences beyond our current views.
HF: I would tend to disagree here - I think that the different audiences
that cc attempts to address is *VAST*. The openness factor is definitely
important in all types of content creation, but it is really important to
adapt the use of different types of content to the experience of particular
users. In terms of the cc website, the introductory video introduces the
concepts really well *in general* - but there are not too many references
to *educational* uses here. I think that it would be really useful to look
at developing more specific-to-education materials that give examples of
how the license could be useful in the educational context. Educators may
not, for example, be able to associate themselves with the examples of the
musicians and the rock bands on the cc website, but if you developed
instructional materials that presented 'Mr Mafuti, the social science
teacher' or 'Dedlila Doolittle, the Zoology lecturer' and set them up with
particular examples, then educators may be able to relate better to the
concepts.
For me, the most interesting question is around the issue of *motivation*.
What would motivate the educator to share their materials and comment on
what has come before?
Heather.
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