development of an education license or license option for Creative Commons

[Stephen Downes <Stephen.Downes AT nrc-cnrc.gc.ca>]

Hiya,

I think that this is an interesting proposal with a lot of merit.
However,
I do have a suggestion to make.

The proposal described below is what I would characterize as a
'centralized' proposal. By that, what I mean is that it suggests that 
the content and services would be stored on a single, centralized,
web site.

My alternative would be to, instead of developing a single website,
to develop and encourage the use of a set of tools that would
perform the same functions for many websites. To create, for 
example, tools that allow people to create their own version of
the CC-Edu resource base listed here.

This distributed network of CC-Edu sites would be linked 
through a process of harvesting and aggregation. This would
allow individual users to select only those materials that are
most relevant to their needs.

A distributed network is significantly more scalable than
a centralized node, and it spreads the cost of hosting and
administration around. It also allows more flexibility for
individual providers, and lets them manage and control 
their own materials.

-- Stephen 

Heather Ford wrote:

Hi all,

Back in Johannesburg after an epic journey involving 3 days stuck at JFK
Airport due to snow storms. I have been awake since 2.30am - ah, the joys
of travelling ;)

I wanted to aggregate our discussions over the past 2 weeks and apply them
to a specific theme: Creative Commons 101. This would be an online tool
that enables educators to share resources and ideas about how to teach
students about the concepts and philosophy of open content. Pretty much an
extension of the discussions that we've been having about how to make it
easier to actually make practical use of CC content - but starting on a
small scale with a particular topic, rather than dealing with how to find
open content throughout the web.

I know that Lessig and Glenn Otis Brown have been teaching a Creative
Commons course at Stanford this year - so it would be useful if one of
them could provide input here - especially with regard to the mode of
teaching i.e. were case studies used? where were these sourced from? what
lessons were learned? did student assignments produce any new knowledge?

I was thinking about CC South Africa and wondering how we could form a
partnership with universities around the country that would make maximum
use of students as volunteers. One of the major advantages of housing CC
at a university is that one can leverage student support by teaching a
course and perhaps using assignments as a way of generating new ideas and
actions for CC in a particular country. There is also the opportunity to
share case studies and ideas etc across geographical boundaries to give CC
the global context that it requires in order to be truly successful.

So what I propose is a website and accompanying mailing lists that have
the following facilities:

1. Users/curriculum developers sign up as authors and develop personal
profiles detailing: country, institution, reasons for joining, personal
interest, experience (subject/discipline), links to personal websites
etc., rating according to number of times the author has a) downloaded b)
uploaded material etc (lurker, weed, guru etc)

- note: each entry would be linked to other individuals with the same
entries eg if the author enters South Africa as her country of residence,
then they could find all other authors from South Africa (Friendster model)

2. Authors contribute case studies consisting of: legal reports, news
stories/blog entries, images, cartoons, audio, video, multimedia licensed
under open content (authors must upload these resources giving full
license/author details as well as short descriptions/summaries of
materials to enable extensive metadata with which to search) - case
studies can be edited and updated by others when they re-use (wikis?) ALSO
fact sheets with information about a particular country's Internet
penetration (perhaps classified as 'high', medium, low so that authors can
join collaborative groups according to access levels)

 - note: is there a way that we can use the openoffice tool to produce,
edit and update these docs?

3. Teaching tips - authors share stories of: 'what works and doesn't work'
in different learning environments (blog format?)

4. Assignments - authors share examples of assignments that maximise the
student providing useful, practical insight/action for the open content
movement (perhaps choosing from a consistently updated 'to do' list)

- note: there is also the opportunity to get students to partner with one
another for a truly multidisciplinary approach to student assignments -
students could partner up (within a class or even in other
countries/regions) to produce material e.g. a graphic design student could
partner with a law student to produce an animated video describing how the
licenses work to an audience of musicians - you could even make this a
random assignment where you choose: theme, audience and product to get the
name of your assignment

5. Search by: keyword, country, internet penetration group, resource
(image, multimedia, fact sheet, case study etc), discipline (law, social
science, music, journalism etc)

4. Mailing list to alert authors to new resources, changes to their
documents etc

5. Mailing list to discuss progress of the project and ideas for
collaboration (eg volunteer sharing)

6. Opportunity for authors to host mailing lists according to new subjects
eg Teaching Creative Commons in an Anthropology class, or Teaching
Creative Commons to music students etc

7. Links to cc education mailing list

(Mailing lists would link to author IDs so that users could go directly to
the website to find out more about authors of posts and put their ideas in
a particular context - better than having to do your own ineffective
investigations about authors when you join a list)

The project would aim to build a *community* around the cc education
license and to stimulate active engagement in the development of open
content ideas on a global scale.

Once a model has been developed, it could be applied to other subjects or
multi-disciplinary learning areas.
 
So, what do you all think? This probably can't all be done at once but it
would be useful to hear which - if any - are the better ideas.

Best,

Heather.

Heather Ford
************************************************
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Reuters Stanford Digital Visions Program
http://reuters.stanford.edu
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Stanford, CA 94305-4115, USA
Cell: 650 380 4227

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