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Πρόσφατη Αμερικάνικη Έρευνα του Pew Research Center έδειξε ότι οι καθηγητές χρησιμοποιούν στον ίδιο βαθμό με τους μαθητές τους την Wikipedia! To Pew Research Center με το πρόγραμμα “Internet & American Life Project’ διοργάνωσε έρευνα και ρώτησε 2462 καθηγητές και δασκάλους της πρωτοβάθμιας και δευτεροβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης για τις επιπτώσεις των ψηφιακών τεχνολογιών στους μαθητές και [...]

Open formats and open standards are excellent causes, but without free/open source software implementations and widespread adoption thereof, the causes are uphill battles, at best. So I’m appalled that the Document Freedom Day (which is today, March 27) website information and suggested actions are merely conceptual. Let’s fix that, here’s the deal. Download, try, become [...]

Οι Σκανδιναβικές χώρες οργανώνουν για πρώτη φορά στις 30 Αυγούστου με 8 Σεπτεμβρίου το Σκανδιναβικό Φεστιβάλ Κινηματογράφου Creative Commons! Το Σκανδιναβικό Φεστιβάλ Κινηματογράφου Creative Commons είναι το πρώτο φεστιβάλ που θα λάβει χώρα στην Σκανδιναβική περιοχή με ταινίες που δημιουργήθηκαν και διανεμήθηκαν με άδειες Creative Commons. Πάνω από 50 ξεχωριστές και πρωτοποριακές ταινίες από όλο [...]

Kluun heeft zijn website op zwart gezet. De schrijver van onder andere “Komt een vrouw bij de dokter” is het zat dat hij potentieel aangeklaagd kan worden door fotografen waarvan hij foto’s gevonden heeft op het internet. We zagen ongeveer hetzelfde nieuws toen de BUMA in de clinch lag met de muziekblogs. Hoewel het gebruik van plaatjes [...]

Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt: Polska organizuje warsztaty eksperckie, z których powstanie raport dotyczący dozwolonego użytku edukacyjnego w Polsce i zarys propozycji reformy autorskiego dla edukacji. Przy okazji Centrum prosi nauczycieli/ki i osoby zajmujące się zawodowa edukacją o wypełnienie krótkiej ankiety. Jak czytamy na blogu Centrum: Celem projektu Centrum Cyfrowego jest opracowanie raportu będącego próbą rozwiązania praktycznych problemów z jakimi spotykają się nauczyciele [...] 2013-03-25T08:03:52Z

1. Gdzie są teraz e-podręczniki? To tytuł wywiadu Piotra Peszko z koordynatorem projektu otwartych e-podręczników w ramach programu Cyfrowa Szkoła Krzysztofem Wojewodzicem. 2. Po kilku latach intensywnych doświadczeń projekt UK OER prowadzony przez brytyjski JISC CETIS wydał ich podsumowanie ze stosowaniem rożnych technologii tworzenia i wspierania powstawania Otwartych Zasobów Edukacyjnych. Książka skierowana jest do zaawansowanych czytelników zainteresowanych doświadczeniami [...] 2013-03-25T08:03:52Z

  On 20 March 2013, the U.S. Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante called upon Congress to consider an overhaul to U.S. Copyright Law. In Ms Pallante’s statement to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, she … Continue reading →

創用CC4.0的版本目前已經進行到第三版草案的討論，第三版草案公布後，亞太地區各分支機構的CC代表於台灣時間2013年3月20日上午9點中舉辦了創用CC4.0草案的遠端討論會議，對於第三版草案內容展開討論，藉由此一意見交流的機會發現問題並凝聚共識。 關於此次會議的討論重點，首先是關於當著作分享的平台上設置科技保護措施（technological  protection measures，簡稱TPMs，我國著作權法稱為｢防盜拷措施｣）時，若被授權人為使用著作而為規避TPMs，會有何法律效果？依據目前創用CC4.0草案之規定，使用者若是為了行使創用CC授權所給予的權利，而為規避TPMs時，著作權人不得有異議，換言之，依據新版的創用CC4.0草案，這類的規避行為在授權者與被授權者之間是被允許的。 其次，關於「姓名標示」的部分，這次的討論重點放在討論當使用者對於創用CC授權之著作為改作時，是否應要求使用者必須指出修改的地方(Indicating modifications)，並且附上超聯結以供大家能連結到原來的著作上？若於授權條款中作此規範，則是否對授權利用行為造成不必要的限制與成本？閱讀全文 2013-03-24T10:59:33Z emyleo

Música Popular ha liberado una biblioteca con un completo catastro de libros sobre música popular chilena, publicados desde 1940 hasta hoy. Un trabajo que complementa su imprescindible enciclopedia sobre músicos populares nacionales. Todo, licenciado con Creative Commons. Si te gusta la música, imposible no consultarlo.

On April 8 & 9, 2013 BCcampus hosted, and Creative Commons facilitated, an Open Textbook Summit in Vancouver British Columbia Canada. The Open Textbook Summit brought together government representatives, student groups, and open textbook developers in an effort to coordinate and leverage open textbook initiatives.

Participants included:

BCcampus
BC Ministry of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology (AEIT)
Creative Commons
eCampus Alberta
Alberta Enterprise & Advanced Education
The 20 Million Minds Foundation
Washington Open Course Library
University of Minnesota Open Textbook Catalogue
Lumen Learning
Siyavula
Open Courseware Consortium
OpenStax/Connexions
Student Public Interest Research Groups
Right to Research Coalition
Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA)

California and British Columbia recently announced initiatives to create open textbooks for high enrollment courses. Susan Brown in her welcoming remarks on behalf of the Deputy Minister of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology noted the Open Textbook Summit was “a unique opportunity to share information about the work underway in our respective jurisdictions and organizations to capitalize on lessons learned; to identify common areas of interest; and to discover potential opportunities for collaboration. The real power of a project like this is only realized by working together.”

On the summit’s first day the BC government announced it was “Moving to the next chapter on free online textbooks” releasing a list of the 40 most highly enrolled first and second-year subject areas in the provincial post-secondary system.

Over the course of the summit participants identified existing open textbooks that could be used for BC’s high enrollment courses. Development plans for creating additional open textbooks were mapped out. Strategies for academic use of open textbooks were discussed ranging from open textbooks for high enrollment courses to zero textbook degree programs where every course in a credential has an open textbook.

Open textbook developers described the tools they are using for authoring, editing, remixing, repository storage, access, and distribution. Participants discussed the potential for creating synergy between initiatives through use of common tools and processes.

Measures of success, including saving students money and improved learning outcomes, were shared and potential for a joint open textbook research agenda explored. The summit concluded with suggestions from all participants on ways to collaborate going forward. David Porters recommendation of an ongoing Open Textbook Federation was enthusiastically endorsed.

Mary Burgess created a Google group called The Open Textbook Federation for further conversations and collaborations. This group is open to anyone currently working on, or thinking of working on, an Open Textbook Project. Notes from the Open Textbook Summit are posted online. Clint Lalonde created a Storify of the Twitter conversation captured during the summit.

The Open Textbook Summit was an incredible day and a half of learning. The sharing of insights, experiences, hopes, and ideas left everyone energized with a commitment to join together in a cross-border federation that collaborates on open textbooks.

El francés Vincent Moon es uno de los cineastas más reconocidos que hoy licencia su trabajo con Creative Commons, incluso permitiendo la posibilidad de hacer uso para obras derivadas de la suya, y experimentando de forma decidida con el crowdfunding. Conoce más de su increíble filmografía, acá.

[04/12最新快訊] 主辦單位中華民國維基媒體協會表示：4/13說明會已經爆滿，但仍歡迎去信(info@wikimedia.tw)詢問加入各工作小組事宜。如果已經去信詢問，但未收到回覆，請看一下垃圾信箱，或者再寄一次喔......閱讀全文 2013-03-22T08:18:05Z emyleo

This post by Creative Commons’ Timothy Vollmer was originally posted on the 20th of march on the Creative Commons blog (‘Pallante’s Push for U.S. Copyright Reform‘) and is reposted here with permission from the author. Today, U.S. Register of Copyright Maria Pallante stood before Congress to say: we need a new copyright law. Pallante’s prepared [...]

Today’s latte, HTML5
Yuko Honda / CC BY-SA

Creative Commons strongly believes in the respect of copyright and the wishes of content creators. That’s why CC has created a range of legal tools that rely in part on copyright to enable our vision of a shared commons of creative and intellectual works.

But when creators’ rights come at the expense of a usable internet, everyone suffers for it. Over the past 15 years, various companies have started using mechanisms to limit the ways in which users can use their content. These digital rights management (DRM) techniques make the internet less usable for everyone. CC believes that no DRM system is able to account for the full complexity of the law, since they create black-and-white situations where legally there is wiggle room (such as for fair use, for example). This failing causes DRM to limit consumer freedoms that would otherwise be permitted, and that can create very real harm to consumers. Examples abound, but a recent one can be seen in this report on how DRM and the DMCA have seriously limited the ability of the visually impaired to have access to e-books they can use over the past 15 years.

The W3C recently published a draft proposal that would make DRM a part of HTML5. While CC applauds efforts to get more content distributed on the web, DRM does more harm than good. In addition to limiting consumer freedoms, it’s not at all clear this proposal would even be effective in curbing piracy. Given the proposal’s architecture, it will cause dependence on outside components which will not be a part of the standardized web. A standardized web is essential to allow anyone to participate in it without locking them into giving any one player a say on what proprietary device, software, or technology they need to use. The proposal opens up exactly such a dependency: it allows web pages to require specific proprietary software or hardware to be installed. That a dangerous direction for the web, because it means that for many real-life uses it will be impossible to build end-to-end open systems to render web content.

Read EFF’s post on defending the open web from DRM for more details on the proposal, history, threat. Get the facts and, if you’re interested, sign the Free Software Foundation’s petition to oppose DRM in web standards.

Bassel / Joi Ito / CC BY Download press release (36 KB PDF) Palestinian-born Syrian software engineer Bassel Khartabil is the winner of this year’s Index on Censorship Digital Freedom Award, sponsored by Google. Khartabil is a free internet pioneer who has spent his career advancing open source technologies. On March 15, 2012, he was [...]

Last week a researcher and educator by the name of David Liao contacted our team at Creative Commons about open courseware he had created, which we tweeted:

“A mathematical way to think about biology.” Really well put-together CC BY-SA course. qbio.lookatphysics.com @lookatphysics #oer

— creativecommons (@creativecommons) March 25, 2013

I sat down last Wednesday to speak with David about his course, motivations for using a CC-license, and about other challenges in scholarly communication and education that are being changed by new ways of “open.” He’s created a set of videos and curriculum titled A Mathematical Way to Think about Biology, released under a CC BY-SA license. David, an Analyst with the University of California, SF and a member of the Princeton Physical Sciences-Oncology Network, recognized that quantitative research is fundamental to hard science disciplines, but there are few openly licensed training resources on these methods that can translate to Biology as well as other non-scientific fields.

Screenshot from David’s Udemy course

Already a proponent of Open Access (OA) to research publications, David sums up his view on how principles of OA can be applied to education:

”Speaking loosely along the same lines of sentiment [of Open Access], it is likewise preferable to release, as free cultural works, both scientific literature and the instructional materials by virtue of which that literature becomes readable.”

As David explained, there is a gap between the highly-technical aspects of training future researchers and the practical resources available; one that he hopes to begin to fill by making his materials available online. He has developed more than ten learning modules ranging from fundamental mathematical concepts of algebra and geometry to more complex areas of spatially-resolved models and cellular automata, all described in ways that apply to the biological sciences. The slide decks and tutorial videos have all been released under a CC BY-SA license, which allows reuse and remixing the content, so long as any adapted content carries the same copyleft license. David’s content has been structured as a course, is available on the Udemy online learning platform and has had nearly one thousand participants use the material.

An advocate of many things Open for some time, our conversation shifted from OER to OA. David offered his take on Open Access and how scholarly communication has reached a point where tools like CC licenses are needed to maintain progress in a digital age.

“Ten years ago, when it came to negotiating legal matters around copyright and intellectual property, we would need to be able to do some serious Jiu-Jitsu, and likely involve a team of lawyers. Creative Commons [licenses] makes this communication so much easier.”

Fort Worth MMA and BJJ_5896 / ironsidemma / CC BY 2.0

By making his content available on the web and applying a CC license to his work, David has taken steps to not only make his educational media openly accessible, but also explicitly describe how others can reuse his work. A longstanding problem in defining the core characteristics of “open”, digital media that is freely accessible but does not allow for reuse or remixing is often confused with open content. David has been pleased to see learners using the materials in his course, as well as having had fellow college professors contact him about using his content to supplement their own teaching. When asked about his thoughts on others who likely will be remixing and building upon his learning content, David welcomed it fully, and is interested to have others to contact with links to derivative works.

A case study on the CC Wiki for A Mathematical Approach to Biology can be found here.

David’s course can be found on Udemy here, and his personal website is here.
You can also follow David on Twitter here.

Segnaliamo che Subcava Sonora, etichetta partenopea di musica rilasciata con licenza Creative Commons, si è dotata di una nuova veste grafica, ampliando i contenuti a disposizione degli utenti: "Non solo vetrina: il sito si configura, infatti, anche come uno spazio vivo e dinamico, attraverso l’introduzione di una sezione blog, in continuo aggiornamento, che ospiterà preziosi contributi di personalità che operano in campo culturale nazionale ed internazionale". L'ettichetta si è fatta inoltre promotrice del concorso Rock'n'Law, dedicato a band e musicisti che annoverano tra i propri componenti almeno un iscritto o un laureato alla facoltà di Giurisprudenza dell’Università Federico II di Napoli. Le selezioni per la partecipazione al Festival, aperte sino al 12 aprile 2013, avverranno online attraverso dei form di votazione sulla piattaforma facebook e attraverso il forum del portale www.giuristifedericiani.com. Subcava Sonora lancia il suo nuovo portale online: comunicato stampa. Rock'n'Law - Diritti al Suono: informazioni sul concorso. leggi tutto 2013-03-21T08:40:46Z Claudio Artusio

Fotografen Odd Andreas Østtveit har tatt et bilde av en kjent FrP-politiker, og lagt bildet ut på WikiMedia Commons under lisensen: “Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication”.read more 2013-03-21T05:07:26Z Gisle Hannemyr

Today, U.S. Register of Copyright Maria Pallante stood before Congress to say: we need a new copyright law. Pallante’s prepared remarks (127 KB PDF) to the U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet called for “bold adjustments” to U.S. copyright law. This is a most welcome aspiration. A strong push [...]

On the first weekend of March, Wikimedia Germany and CC Germany hosted a workshop around the School of Open’s official launch. Attending were professionals and enthusiasts from various fields, some lawyers but mostly teachers and education managers as well as activists of the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Internet & Society Co:llaboratory in Berlin. School [...]