Monday night I joined the first creative commons conference call, and although pretty tired after a day at work (conference was 9pm GMT) It was a very interesting and informative affair, what I was not expecting was it would get me thinking about open education resources as Professor James Boyle talked about the ccLearn project, and the ideas and aspirations for the project.
ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons dedicated to support open learning and open educational resources. Our mission is to minimize barriers to the creation, sharing, and reuse of educational materials—legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.
At the University of Southampton I have participated in and had some lengthy conversations and meetings about EdShare ( I question the © symbol on the page, what is copyrighted ?) We also have another project called Kulture, both of which have some funding internally and externally, I know a number of UK HE institutes working on or have similar projects and I asked how Creative Commons could officially work with these projects, especially ones already self funded, Creative Commons had found many not to be as open as the said at first and pointed to Learn NC as a example of what to do. I know within EdShare we already use Creative Commons licences, however it has already been noted that getting staff to share with the world is not just as easy as picking the menu option.
The University of Southampton also created Eprints and the project director Les Carr set up the open repository conference.
Within Winchester School of Art (WSA) one of my self imposed first projects was to set up an open access Technical Services wiki,this was set up with a Creative Commons license, and although the resources are geared towards WSA students technical requirements and guides particular to WSA by having an 'open platform' students can get to the resources simply and easily. TechShop:Wiki removing the restrictive or closed nature of using a VLE such as blackboard that require registration to a 'course'.
Taking things to today I was really pleased to find my good friend Jason Wilson has also recently started to publishunder a Creative Commons licence material from his recent module New Media: Histories, Industries, Practices.
here at the University of Wollongong, we’re experimenting with Twitter used in combination with extension Twitwall as a teaching and learning resource.
This was great news as I wanted to talk to him about our recent module Digital and Analogue Practice for all our Level 1 students that amongst other things try's to engage students in digital media practices and the use of web 2.0 through blogs and social networking ideas and its outcomes. Jason's puts it so well in his guide (substitute Twitter with a web 2.0 technology )
Learning how to use social media is a significant element in contemporary information literacy. You don’t need to come to university in order to use Twitter, but we can help you put it in a longer context, and help you use it in ways that are critical, smart and directed at enhancing course content and objectives.
Taking this into the other half of myday job, running Technical Services, I have been finding out more about the HEATED Project which
is designed to bring the Higher Education Technical/Specialist community together across the whole of the UK.
and has created access to a number of resources, as long as your institute has signed up.
In a highly competitive market like the UK HE sector I also wonder how all this sharing will work out, I guess even I am starting to think hey
I am giving away stuff that is part of my employability
however I do firmly believe that holding back cards to try to keep yourself employable will ultimately lead to your own down fall and given the pace of technology and the consumerism, I guess we get closer and closer to you are what you share.
In all of this 'open education' I am sure Creative Commons could and should play a role in moving forward.
I expect others know more about this subject than me and so comments, links, complaints and recommendations very welcome.
A couple more links
Shortlink: http://adamprocter.org/s/
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