development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[Laura Lynch <llynch AT stanford.edu>]

I'm writing to introduce myself to the list.  I work with Creative 
Commons and have followed the education list from the beginning. 
Recently I've been providing weekly updates to the team about the 
latest happenings on the education list.  From here on out, I'll be 
an avenue for the team to offer insights and suggestions, as well as 
my own suggestions.  I'm not in any way stepping into David Wiley's 
role as the list manager, I'm simply the team liaison.

I think the idea of branding the license as educational rather than 
creating an entirely new license makes good sense.  It seems clear 
that with proper marketing the education license will appeal to 
educators and increase the number of licensors.  The works that are 
education friendly will be highlighted by some kind of education logo 
or addition to the license URL and therefore searchable.  This will 
certainly be useful to educators, students, researchers, etc. who can 
make use of the material in their own work.  I'm wondering if this 
newly licensed material could  become even more useful to educators. 
What if the licensor was given the option to include a lesson plan or 
project idea with their work?

So far the team has expressed curiosity about the implementation of 
this option/license. Would works licensed as education friendly be 
highlighted by a new logo?  If so, what would it look like?  Where 
would the option to license your work as education friendly come into 
the licensing process?  From David Wiley's last email it might make 
sense for this option to be added to "Step 2-Review Your Choices." 
If you choose a BY-NC-SA license, you would be given the option to 
make your license education friendly.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Laura Lynch

> George Siemens wrote:
>
> > "What if we simply "rebranded" the 
> > Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license the "Educational Use 
> > license," got a different colored icon, and took advantage of the 
> > name and icon change to make marketing inroads with educators?"
> >
> > I like the idea. Marketing and awareness is the biggest challenge. I feel
> > the existing CC licenses cover the needs of most educators.
> I agree that marketing and awareness are the main challenges. I also 
> think its true that existing licenses cover the needs of most 
> educators. As I have read, reread, and pondered both the 
> conversations we've been having on the list and my own desires to 
> increase the amount of freely available educational materials, I've 
> tried to understand the best path forward for this project. The 
> whole goal is to increase the net amount of materials available for 
> educational use. This means we need to target the largest possible 
> group of people with this new license, if the assumption is true 
> that larger numbers of people using the license will mean larger 
> amounts of content made available.
>
> > Curious: David, obviously, this is a big change from the original proposal
> > (and I think a positive one)...but how does this relate to the posts you've
> > made previously about the needs of some educators, due to the nature of
> > their work, to be able to limit the license only for educational use. One of
> > the main premises of the original proposal was the exclusion of
> > non-education uses. Are you dropping that requirement? Intending to include
> > in the future? Or how is that need expressed in the "new" version? (I'm
> > assuming noncommercial still allows military use, as an example)
> I'm increasingly convinced by this conversation that the group of 
> educators who would be willing to use the By-NC-SA as-is, if only 
> they knew about it, is larger than the group who don't use it 
> because the license is not restrictive enough. (This may seem 
> obvious when stated this way, but is the kind of thing that becomes 
> clearer through conversation -- who says we don't have a process 
> here?)  If there is consensus around this conjecture, then our 
> mission becomes how to evangelize some configuration of the current 
> CC to educators. So, giving the "By-NC-SA" another, more marketable 
> name, like the "Education License," would be the first step toward 
> reaching that broader audience.
>
> "CC Education License" doesn't have to be the only name this 
> particular configuration has. Other projects might want to give the 
> By-NC-SA another label, and that would be just fine.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> D
>
> _______________________________________________
> cc-education mailing list
> cc-education AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-education


--
*******
Laura E. Lynch
Office Manager
Creative Commons
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
vox: 650.725.2565
fax: 650.723.8440
llynch AT stanford.edu