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cc-education - RE: [cc-education] Making it easier for educators

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Subject: development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

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  • From: Heather Ford <heather AT gn.apc.org>
  • To: development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons <cc-education AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [cc-education] Making it easier for educators
  • Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 22:28:37 -0700

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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