development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

["David Palmer." <davidpalmer AT westnet.com.au>]

On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 00:33, Stephen Downes wrote:
> Heather Ford wrote:
> > Thanks Stephen and David for your great comments on this.
> > > >
> > > > It is worthwhile to think of setting up an open system whereby
> > Open Office
> > > > users are able to tap directly into (CC and equivalent licensed)
> > RSS feeds
> > > > distributing free content. For example, a direct connection
> > between
> > > > OpenOffice and Wikipedia would be most useful.

This is actually relatively simple, dependent on degree of integration
required. Foldocs' button for Mozillas' bar, for example.

> > 
> > This sounds really interesting, Stephen - would love you to explain
> > more 
> > about how you think this could work/look. I've been thinking a lot
> > about 
> > how to make this connection more direct than just having a list of
> > open 
> > content on the cc website. I'd love to find a way of extending the 
> > user-friendliness that CC is becoming well-known for, in developing
> > this 
> > side more - but I'm still trying to work out how it would look.
> > 
> Obvously I don't have all the details worked out in my mind. But there
> are two major aspects and an optional:
> 
> 1. Treat the internet (or more specifically, the network of free
> content repositories) as though they were a local file system

This would require organizing the internet to the same degree as your,
if you are running Linux, /user and /home partitions. Don't get me
wrong, this could be done, the technology is available, just giving some
idea of the magnitude of the project.

> 2. Create more mechanisms within the software itself to access that
> file system

This is the crux. External to the programme this means search engines.
Incorporated into the programme, a combination search engine/specialist
browser.

> 3. (Optional) Provide usage metadata back to the system

An almost minor detail that could be incorporated into the server end,
and in many cases, already is.
> 
> On the first point, the idea is that free learning (and other)
> resources are available for access from within the OpenOffice software
> in a manner analagous to the way that files are currently accessible.
> Thus, the system would allow anybody to open such material straight
> from the content repository into an OpenOffice application.
> 
> This would most likely be instantiated as a three step operation:
>    - locate materials

Search engine or equivalent.

>    - view materials

Browser or equivalent.

>    - select (all or part) of materials for use

Editor, - Open Office Writer/Abiword, or in the case of images,
imagemagic, eye of gnome, or the gimp.
> 
> The first part is key, since you can't simply browse hundreds of
> thousands of resources the way you can browse your hard drive

PLoS, etc., sites registered with a specialist search engine, or an
aspect of an already existing one.

Your hard drive _is_ browsed with a browser.

>  (you can't even browse some hard drives any more, including mine).
> Thus, an effective search mechanism would be required. Parts of the
> search criteria would be specified automatically by the means of
> access (see the second point). For example, if a user selected 'Insert
> an Image' then the search would look for free images, not text
> documents. The search should also try to draw on other environment
> variables. Knowing the user's language or country of origin would also
> provide preferences. If I were designing the search, I would allow the
> searcher to select default content repositories so I could pick
> repositories dedicated to a specific topic. For example, I would
> probably use something like Edu_RSS to search for related articles.
> The idea here is to treat the network of content repositories as a
> self-organizing networks, as described in the last section of my
> paper, Resource Profiles.
> http://www.downes.ca/files/resource_profiles.htm
> 
> The second part is a mechanism to preview items before inserting them
> into your document. I don't know what to say about this, really.
> 
> The third part is the payoff. Once the user has reviewed the resource,
> she selects either all or part of it. The resource is then copied
> directly into the docuemnt in the appropriate format. For example,
> suppose the user found a text on owls, and located a paragraph worth
> quoting. She highlights the paragraph and then double-clicks (say).
> The paragraph is then copied into the document, and a tag or caption
> is placed into the document identifying the bibliographical
> information and the creative commons (or equivalent) license
> information (this latter is key for commercial users, who will not
> reuse content unless they are certain, and can prove, that they have
> permission to use the content).
> 
> On the second major point, we want to make access to these resources
> integral to the application itself. It is worth noting in passing that
> this is a service that should be provided by repositories (including
> the ContentForge being discussed) into any application, not just
> OpenOffice, though the authors of those applications would each need
> to write code to provide access and use of the content.
> 
> In a program like OpenOffice, I would certainly include a function
> such as this into an 'Insert' option. But more. I would also allow a
> user to highlinght a word, double-click (say), and be shown a default
> set of resources for that word, such as definitions, encyclopedia
> entires, etc. Highlighting a person's name would yield a list of
> resources authored by the person, or (switch a toggle) a list of
> resources about that person. Certain keywords in the highlighted text
> would trigger certain sorts of search results (the user wouldn't need
> to learn these, the idea is that the system responds to what the user
> is asking for). For example, 'graph' would tend to return graphs,
> 'map' would return maps, 'flag' would return flags. Different
> repositories could handle this in their own way.

This is what I meant in an earlier post.
All of this would need to be established as a standard (W3C?) or your
search utility would be ineffective. On top of the basic established
standard 'tag', you could establish variants to differentiate a text
resource, say, from an image resource.
> 
> On the third point, I would suggest that users be given the option to
> report usage of materials back to the system, much like RSS trackback,
> except that only metadata would be sent back (since the document does
> not have a URL just yet). The usage metadata sent back captures the
> context of use and helps describe the resource being used. This helps
> the aggregator more accurately process search results for future
> searches.
> 
> Now again, this sort of content distribution system should not be
> restricted to open access. The same mechanism ContentForge uses to
> make content available to OpenOffice should also be available to allow
> people using Moodle to import (free) content into an online course. It
> follows, therefore, that the sort of content that could be offered
> through such a system could be something as simple as an image all the
> way to something as complicated as an animation, simulation, or port
> into an interactive environment.

This is important.
'If we do not believe in free speech for those we despise, we do not
believe in it at all.' - Noam Choamsky.
This information should be available 'cross platform' as previously
noted, so that it is freely available even to those who employ 'Internet
Exploiter.'
> 
> -- Stephen

Regards,

David.
> 
> 
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