Open Education Week: March 5-10

Greetings Open Colleagues:

Reminder: Open Education Week is next week: March 5-10.

Will you please forward this note (feel free to edit) to your organization’s listserv(s)?  Let's get the word out!

Thank you,

Cable

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Subject: Open Education Week: March 5-10

Dear XXXX:

I am writing to ask you to join your colleagues around the world to increase understanding about Open Education!

Open Education Week will take place from March 5-10 online and in locally hosted events around the world, with opportunities to participate in webinars and online discussions.

Participation is free and open to all.  The objective is to raise awareness of the open education movement and open educational resources.

First Annual Open Education Week

March 5-10, 2102

http://www.openeducationweek.org

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/openeducationwk

FB: http://www.facebook.com/openeducationwk

YouTube: openeducationweek

#openeducationwk                                         

Open Education Week will feature:

• Over 40 webinars open to participation from anyone        
• Virtual tours, pre-recorded presentations and documents describing open education projects and ideas
• Discussion area with blog and twitter feeds
• Resource links
• Contributions from over 130 organizations and institutions
• Offline events and local workshops

Sincerely,

XXXXXX

Legislation to Bar Public-Access Requirement on Federal Research Is Dead

A huge win for Open today: Legislation to Bar Public-Access Requirement on Federal Research Is Dead (Chronicle).


The community, led by SPARC, rallied to counter this bill.


From the official Issa-Maloney statement:

• "The introduction of HR 3699 has spurred a robust, expansive debate on the topics of scientific and scholarly publishing, intellectual property protection, and public access to federally funded research. Since its introduction, we have heard from numerous stakeholders and interested parties on both sides of this important issue.
  
• As the costs of publishing continue to be driven down by new technology, we will continue to see a growth in open access publishers. This new and innovative model appears to be the wave of the future. The transition must be collaborative, and must respect copyright law and the principles of open access. The American people deserve to have access to research for which they have paid. This conversation needs to continue and we have come to the conclusion that the Research Works Act has exhausted the useful role it can play in the debate. As such, we want Americans concerned about access to research and other participants in this debate to know we will not be taking legislative action on HR 3699, the Research Works Act. We do intend to remain involved in efforts to examine and study the protection of intellectual property rights and open access to publicly funded research."

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Moreover, the open community isn't just fighting anti-open bills, but is pushing open legislation (no mention of open license in this bill, but it is a major step in the right direction - it spreads the NIH open access policy to 11 federal agencies and takes the embargo period down from 12 months to 6).


As I like to say, publicly funded resources should be open educational resources.


Kudos to SPARC for their leadership on this one!


Cable

WA State: Publishers Attack Creative Commons

Full disclosure: I am staff at Creative Commons.

Greetings Open Colleagues:

After this Feb. 15 public hearing publishers are telling Washington State Senators that Creative Commons is “a proprietary interest and not a general licensing entity.”

The sponsor of the bill (HB2337) is responding with the following information (see below).

I share here in case you encounter the need for similar information about Creative Commons.

Cable

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The publisher attack on Creative Commons is pretty dubious.

Publishers are desperate to maintain the huge profit margins they make for essentially packaging the same content in new wrappers year after year. If their quality is indeed as superior as they claim, they shouldn't have any trouble competing with open educational resources.

“Creative Commons” is not named in the bill, so attacking CC doesn’t make any sense.

CC has no financial interest in this bill. Ask the publishers about their financial biases in WA K-12 schools using open textbooks.

The Facts:

• Creative Commons (CC) is a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation. 
• There are over 500 million pieces of CC-licensed content available on the web, ranging from amateur photography to terabytes of government data to the entirety of Wikipedia. 
• The Creative Commons licenses have been interpreted as the global standard for open content licensing for a decade.
• CC operates in broad consultation with an international network of legal and licensing experts who help develop the licenses and legal tools. 
• CC has developed a suite of licenses and tools and offers these licenses and tools for free on an "as is" basis for anyone to use.
• CC does not require or provide any means for creators or rights holders to register their use of a CC license, nor does CC maintain a database of works distributed under Creative Commons licenses.
• Creative Commons has no authority to grant permission on behalf of licensors, and CC does not manage rights on behalf of persons who use the licenses. The CC organization is not a party to the license. 
• The CC licenses are voluntary and leverage existing copyright law for them to work. 
• All CC licenses are non-exclusive, which means that rights holders can enter into additional, different licensing arrangements for the same work at any time. 
• Creative Commons licenses are drafted to be enforceable around the world, and have been enforced in court in various jurisdictions. To CC's knowledge, the licenses have never been held unenforceable or invalid. 

Update on Washington’s OER K-12 Bill: HB 2337

Update (Feb 22, 2012):



BIll passed the Senate Policy Committee - on to the fiscal committee.






You know it's a good day when you testify about how OER will help more students learn; and the Committee Chair so strongly supports the idea that the American Association of Publishers and Elsevier opt not to testify.

The bill passed the WA State House and is making its way through the Senate.

We have the right arguments. When we make them, from positions of strength, the Commons benefits.

Cable

PS - Special thanks to Nicole Allen (PIRGS) and Neeru Khosla (CK-12) who helped me counter publisher misinformation.

Dramatically Bringing Down the Cost of Education with OER

A new report from the Center for American Progress: 

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/02/open_education_resources.html

We are in the midst of a revolution in education. For the first time in human history we have the tools to enable everyone to attain all the education they desire. And best of all this education is available at almost no cost....