All Badges Complete

I have completed all badges required to obtain an "A" in this course! Thank you for teaching this semester!

-Wendy

http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/novice-badge-complete.html

http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/journeyman-badge-complete.html

http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/opened-evangelist-badge-complete.html

http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/opened-researcher-complete.html

OpenEd Researcher Complete

OpenEd Researcher Complete*

http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/open-access-part-2.html

http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/open-access-part-2.html

http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/open-licensing-part-2.html

*I am re-reviewing the open licensing suggested materials in greater depth before I check myself off, but I will complete this before the class lunch tomorrow, and I am not certain what computer access I will have between now and then, so I decided to report.

Open Licensing: Part 2

3 Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles (will provide summaries in comment to this post later, thanks!):

The four ‘R’s of openness and ALMS analysis: frameworks for open educational resources

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02680510903482132

This article introduces a spectrum of openness, using the 4 Rs: Reuse, Redistribute, Revise, and Remix. Even if a resource is “open” under this definition, there may still be technical barriers to openness, especially regarding revising and remixing. These include whether there is access to editing tools, the level of expertise required to revise/remix, whether the resource is editable in a meaningful way, and access to source file.

Impediments to Learning Object Reuse and Openness as a Potential Solution

http://ceie-sbc.tempsite.ws/pub/index.php/rbie/article/view/1022

This paper seeks to expand the definition of reuse (i.e. using 4Rs). The article further argues that the use of an open license that provides 4Rs usage rights will have the benefits, includingexpanding understanding of reuse and increasing the availability of educational materials to individuals and organizations with limited resources. The article also asserts that open licenses are easy to use.

The Creation and Use of Open Educational Resources in Christian Higher Education http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15363750903181906

This article describes the different levels at which open educational resources are “open” (4 Rs). It also explores motivations and obstacles to creating OERs, including copyright issues. Further, the article defines and explains the uses of Creative Commons licenses.

5 Additional Resources:

A Shared Culture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DKm96Ftfko

This video provides an explanation of Creative Commons Licenses.

Wikipedia: Creative Commons License

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license

Provides an overview of the types of licences and combinations of licenses.

New YouTube Uploading Feature Creative Commons License:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv87mz1bA00

The producer explains creative commons licenses as they pertain to YouTube videos. Ironically, the video does not feature a CC license itself. :)

Creative Commons Advertisement!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKQmj56MLVg

Propaganda + examples of how to use the licenses!

Creative Commons Kiwi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeTlXtEOplA&NR=1&feature=endscreen

CC explanatory educational video combined with accelerated illustration art. If you have 5 minutes, this offers a great overview of combinations.

OCW: Part 2!

3 Peer-reviewed Articles

The Creation of OpenCourseWare at MIT

http://www.springerlink.com/content/1n61648287674187/

This article embraces a historical tenor and explores the creation of the MIT OCW project. The article includes the strategy behind the launch, its precursors, and its evolution. Key players identified and discussed include: administrators, advocates, and others on/off campus. The article concludes by identifying sustainability challenges.

What is OpenCourseWare and Why Does it Matter?

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/40177912

This article provides a mile-high view regarding the history of OCW (e.g. Sharewared, Linux). It then suggests why OCW is/will have an impact. Reasons include OCW’s impact on traditional schools, copyright law, and its worldwide potential.

OOPS, Turning MIT Opencourseware into Chinese: An analysis of a community of practice of global translators

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/viewArticle/463

Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS) in Taiwan was designed to translate open source materials from MIT’s OCW site into Chinese. This article explored how OOPS collaborated while interpreting the materials in order to provide a window into the emergence and functioning of an online global education “community of practice” in the OER movement.

5 Additional Resources

(1) MIT OpenCourseWare 1800 Event Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbQ-FeoEvTI

MIT showed this video to celebrate the publication of the 1800^th course on MIT OpenCourseWare. It is an advertisement-style (mile-high) overview of some of the benefits of OCW at MIT.

(2) Bill Gates on MIT OpenCourseWare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfvxfkBVLqQ

Bill Gates provides some informal comments about MIT’s OCW, including noting that he took a class OCW.

(3) OpenCourseWare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcMHBushl00

Note: Good video short included here showing the benefit of OCW to those in 3^rd world countries with Internet access (i.e. man trying to water his field watches agricultural lecture and adopts idea).

(4) OpenCourseWare—Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCourseWare

This submission defines OCW, notes its beginnings (e.g. MIT, Yale) and discusses how it is developing in China and Japan.

(5) Utah State OCW Link

http://ocw.usu.edu/

I have a guess regarding who facilitated this . . . J

USU offers a number of courses (http://ocw.usu.edu/courselist/index.html) via OCW.

OpenEd Evangelist Badge Complete

OpenEd Evangelist Badge Complete. Thanks!

http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/opened-evangelist.html

http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/opened-evangelist-interview.html

OpenEd Evangelist Interview

I spoke with a member of BYU's Computer Science Department ("the Professor"). He has worked there since 1984, timely received tenure, and is currently approximately 4-6 years from retirement.

I originally intended to discuss Open Data with the Professor; however, he was well-versed in Open Access and expressed a preference to discuss that topic instead if possible. I obliged. I was into my second sentence of the overview, and the Professor excitedly began his own overview of the topic, the arguments on both sides, his conclusions, and noted briefly the current research he is doing in the area. :)

Overview/Prediction: The professor predicted that OA will eventually overtake the scholarly journals just as Internet resources have overtaken Encyclopedias. There are, however, unique barriers OA faces that will cause non-OA sources to survive longer than Encyclopedias.

Advantages of OA:

The Professor noted that open access (OA) is a win-win situation. Authors gain a wider audience for their work, and students and teachers gain greater access to scholarly work. I added other advantages to the list (e.g. Internet publications could receive more hits and draw more advertising). The Professor acknowledge these advantages.

OA Questions/Barriers:

The Professor focused his remarks on the questions regarding and the barriers to OA.

Questions

The Professor quickly listed a number questions; he focused on these two:

(1) Who will pay for storage/retrieval of materials?

Response: (See "Current Research" section below)

(2) How do you determine the quality of the material?

Response: Peer review is intended to monitor quality. OA could still feature peer review. In the alternative, qualifying readers could “rate” articles in OA journals/publications.

Barriers

(1) Momentum is still behind traditional journals. “Old people” (i.e. those currently in power) don’t like new technology/ideas beyond those that have served them well during their careers and are less likely to abandon text and tradition for OA and computer-mediated journals. "Young people" (i.e. those just starting their career) rely on those currently in power to obtain career advancement and recognition. Tenure, for example, is still based on the metrics of prestige of journal over number of citations.

Personal observation: This is why Christensen's "disruption" is difficult in OA. Potential disrupters heavily rely on those they would disrupt.

(2) Publishers of traditional journals do not have incentive to stop charging money at this time, period.

Consequently, the most likely actors, old people, young people, and publishers, are not acting at this time. I pointed out that if the so-called young people came to power and changed the standards for tenure, the cycle would discontinue. He agreed, but expressed that many of the incentives that old people enjoy would be offered to young people.

Current Research: Professor is currently determining if there is a way to decrease the costs associated with mass storage and retrieval (to address cost issues like those Wikipedia is facing). He terms the concept “distributed systems."

Open Access: Part 2)

OPEN ACCESS

· 3 peer-reviewed articles

1. Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles

Summary: The authors compared OA and non-OA articles published in specified issues (2004) of a certain journal to determine whether OA facilitated the dissemination of the article. Significantly, the authors found that "[t]he average number of citations of OA articles was higher compared to non-OA articles."

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0040157

2. Open Access Publishing, Article Downloads, and Citations: Randomised Controlled Trial

Summary: The authors examined 11 journals published by the American Physiological Society "[t]o measure the effect of free access to the scientific literature on article downloads and citations." The authors found that OA articles may reach more readers, but no evidence was found of a citation advantage for the OA articles within a year of their publication.

http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a568.abstract

3. Perceptions of Open Access Publishing: Interviews with Journal Authors

Summary: Authors conducted telephone interviews with authors who published in BMJ in 2003 to gauge their attitude towards OA and their willingness to submit to OA journals. Almost everyone supported the concept of OA, but few had submitted to an OA journal other than BMJ and many said they would most likely continue to submit to journals they perceived as "high quality," whether or not they were OA.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15677363.1 (Note: I located and cited to the summary of this article)

· 5 additional resources (videos, readings, podcasts)

1. Open Access

This video provides a brief cartoon/series of sketches to introduce the concept of open access in a university setting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Jh_GffRPU

2. Benefits of Open Access

BioMed Central authors and editors outline the benefits of open access/publishing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2JT23E1bRE

3. Comparing the Impact of Open Access (OA) vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals

This article compares the citation counts of individual OA and non-OA articles appearing in the same (non-OA) journals.

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/260207/

4. The Library Minute: Open Access

General propaganda piece with some excellent video effects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO38zHPhNQI

5. Open Access 101

Enjoyable overview of the journal submission and publication process via the traditional route and using open access methods...with subtitles in French!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6wjh2I2Ggg&feature=related

OpenEd Evangelist

Arguments for Open Data

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data#Arguments_for_and_against_open_data

1. "Data belongs to the human race" (e.g. medical science)
2. Public money was used to fund the work http://www.publictechnology.net/sector/central-gov/dispatch-box-road-open-data
3. It was created by a government institution
4. Ideas cannot be copyrighted
5. Sponsors of research do not get full value unless the resulting data are freely available
6. Restrictions on data re-use create an anticommons
7. Data is required for communal human activities (maps)
8. The rate of discovery is accelerated by better access to data http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/dsj/6/0/6_S116/_article

Apprentice Level Badge Complete

Apprentice Level Badge Complete:

http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/earn-my-badge.html

Novice Badge Complete

Novice Badge Links:

Open Licensing: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html

Open Access: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012_02_01_archive.html

Open Content: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/open-content-first-of-all-i-cheered.html

Open Courseware: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/open-courseware-open-courseware-has.html

Open Data: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/open-data.html

OER: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/open-educational-resources-definitions.html

Open Source: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-wanted-to-memorialize-few-resources-i.html

Open Science: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/open-science-why-did-poly-math-project.html

Open Business Models: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/open-business-models.html

Open Assessment: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/open-business-models.html

Open Teaching: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/open-teaching-wait-this-isnt-open.html

Open Policy: http://wendyopenedblog.blogspot.com/2012_04_01_archive.html

Open Policy

I thoroughly enjoyed facilitating the discussion on open policy today. In that discussion, we touched on three main examples of open policy. I used text from the noted websites below for future reference:

NIH

· The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.

· Policy requires papers on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.

http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

Federal Research Public Access Act

The Federal Research Public Access Act proposes to make manuscripts reporting on federally funded research publicly available within six months of publication in a journal.

http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/issues/frpaa/index.shtml

Brazil

The bill

1) Open License: requires government funded educational resources to be made widely available to the public under an open license,

2) clarifies that resources produced by public servants under his/her official capacities should be open educational resources (or otherwise released under an open access framework), and

3) urges the government to support open federated systems for the distribution and archiving of OER.

https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/27698

Earn My Badge

I have created a badge:

Open Policy Expert (OPE) (Apprentice Level)

Description: To become an open policy expert, carefully review all readings and video material provided for the class regarding open policy. Conduct additional research to obtain extra resources regarding open policy. Compile your research in a PowerPoint presentation, pamphlet or other distributable format and share the material during a class session of any size or an informal discussion with at least three people.

Open Data

For my own purposes, I wanted to summarize the list of pros and cons regarding open data that were most compelling for me.

The Wikipedia link provided

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data#Arguments_for_and_against_open_data served as the motivator and resource for this personal reference list:

Pros

• Publicly funded research should be available to ... the public (include government research)
• No copyright/property rights on ideas
• Mutually beneficial discovery fueled by information; information sharing accelerates that

Cons

• Cost of compilation for publication/distribution
• Privacy necessary in certain contexts (security systems, safety)
• Profitability disincentives (sharing decreases my profits)
• Fair remuneration necessary for managers of the database

[edit]

Open Science: Why did the Poly-Math project succeed? Why did the quantum wiki fail?

Why did the Poly-Math project succeed? Why did the quantum wiki fail?

Why did the Poly-Math project succeed?

A Nobel prize winner posed a problem and asked for assistance. Nobel prize winners are likely to have an extensive network of contacts. Many of those contacts are likely to have extensive networks of their own. Consequently, when a Nobel prize winner sends a message, a large audience is likely to receive it.

A Nobel prize winner generally carries a sense of unique importance. Those reviewing the problem may feel they can gain a unique sense of importance and attention themselves by mere association. When the [insert person with unique sense of importance and power—President, monarch, etc.] asks for help in a discrete problem, those asked may feel as if they are epic heros by contributing to the timeless solution.

Why did the Quantum Wiki fail?

The unique sense of storybook importance dissipates as the person asking for help is not the sovereign of a country or field (albeit a smart person in his or her own right). A noble purist like the organizer of Q-Wiki may step forward with a vision and succeed among purists; however, he encounters frustration and ultimate failure when marketing to the masses? Why?

Consider what happened in Elementary School. The children entered Elementary School, eager to succeed . . . even though they may not yet know what “success” entails. They look for social cues to answer this question. They quickly gain this information from social learning. Children watch to see why a certain child receives attention, admiration, and rewards from the authority figure and peers. The children then model their behavior to receive similar rewards (Guess jeans, etc. ensues). After some time, identified children are identified as those who choose what the behavior to model should be. They are termed trend setters.

If purists can tap into this primal Elementary School psychology, they too can have the success they dream of. If they themselves are not trend setters, they need to identify current those who are and enlist their aid. They need to get “Q-Wiki contributor” on trend setters’ resume, so it becomes something carrying prestige with it, something that others will also want on their resume to become like the trend setter.

Why do purists neglect this basic psychology and fail? I know I failed to remember this because I counted on others to feel the purity/rightness/virtue I felt and simply act. Understandable, but fatal if you wish to involve non-purists.

Open Business Models

The following is my “cheat sheet” that I could reference to share the advantages of Flat World Knowledge.

Benefits Include:

For Teachers:

(1) Avoid dealing with new editions

(2) Can customize texts and deliver your version to students

For Students:

(1) Free texts online

(2) Different versions available (audio, print)

(3) Can purchase only parts of the book

(4) Supplemental materials available

For Authors:

(1) 20% royalty (5% above average)

(2) The right thing to do

(3) Exposure to a new audience

Upon hearing about the concept of badges, I thought of a basic marketing plan to launch them…

While I acknowledge that this is, apparently, already in play, I had so much fun creating the following simplified plan, I wanted to share it here.

The initial strategy in marketing badges is to identify a niche exemplar market. Identifying a niche exemplar market in which to launch badges would produce several advantages. First, it would allow identifiable success for proponents to share. Advocates of badges could, for example, find a willing business with a large share in the exemplar market that would agree to review applicants with profiles on a given site. The site would feature a searchable database of applicants with individual applicant profiles and prominent lists of badges earned (with the meaning of each when selected with the mouse). Advocates of badges could recruit applicants for the database by advertising that the business would review the database in making identify candidates for positions.

Second, identifying a specific market would allow advocates to focus their efforts and resources on a discrete segment of the market. For example, proponents could focus their efforts on creating badges for computer programmers. Proponents of badges could recruit help, if needed, from the niche market to determine what range of skills exist and which would be most valued by target employers. This would likely increase the quality of the process discussed in the paragraph above.

Third, starting with a niche market would allow advocates to specifically identify a single market more likely to adapt to the badge. For example, computer programmers would be more likely than many other fields to adopt. Programmers are used to adapting to novel ideas, and a tested skill set is vital to employability. Mozilla’s Webmaking 101 http://p2pu.org/en/schools/school-of-webcraft/sets/webmaking-101/ appears to feature an excellent and user-friendly prototype of such a programmer badge. Rather than forcing a less likely adopter to change, proponents could focus on a group with whom the concept of badges is more likely to succeed.

Assuming businesses in the niche market expressed satisfaction, with the applicants selected from the database, advocates could share the success with media outlets and gain publicity for badges. They could then use the publicity to systematically expand the concept of badges to other markets. While initial efforts would begin with fields more susceptible to adoption, it could move to other markets as successes became evident in initial markets.

In sum, the strategy is to (1) identify a niche exemplar market; (2) launch badges in the niche market; (3) advertise success in the niche market among both potential company adopters and potential applicants; and (4) systematically expand badges to the next niche market(s).

I just wish I could have attended class Friday and more fully discover how this plan compared with what actually occurred.

Open Teaching:

"Wait, this isn't Open Teaching!" may be your initial reaction to the idea presented in the post below. Consider, however, that the underlying principles of openess (e.g. accessibility, innovative expansion beyond the four walls of the classroom) are portrayed in a nascent state. In other words, this is an initial step into the world of open teaching.

Frantic teachers confront me with legal questions, wondering whether they will face a lawsuit in the near future. I feel especially attentive because I come from a family of teachers. They teach at every level of public and private education, and they and those confronting me with questions face certain common legal concerns. The most common issues seem to relate to the following: injuries on school property, sexual harassment allegations, discrimination, the legal bounds of discipline, searches and seizures, use of copyrighted materials, and the phenomenon of texting pictures that legally qualify as child pornography.

I would enjoy teaching a course for secondary education teachers in the McKay School of Education and administrators in the EDLF program that would supply them with practical information that they will, unfortunately, be using in the near future. The question I have, based on today’s lecture, is how can I make this information available to the maximum number of people who would benefit from it? Further, how can I involve non-students in the course?

Here are a few ideas:

· While recording and posting lectures is one possibility, brief, on-point videos would likely be more effective. What if students (1) created scripts for on-point videos on each major legal topic; (2) recorded amateur video and posted on Digital Dialog http://digitaldialog.byu.edu/main.php?updates=0; (3) presented their videos in class; and (3) selected the best script for each topic and had the winning teams professionally produce their script in coordination with the production crew at CTL. The final day of class could be a “movie preview” and the official launch of the videos on a website and/or YouTube.

· I could further share the videos during Continuing Legal Education lectures and other events on hot topics in Education Law.

· While the primary target would be secondary education teachers, the administrators in our EDLF program would find ample opportunity to apply lessons learned from these video vignettes. We could certainly invite them to enroll in the course, to attend any lectures they found especially interesting, to comment on student videos shared on Digital Dialog, or to otherwise interact with me and the students on a formal or informal basis. What would likely be even more effective would be to have a lecture specifically on administrators at which current administrators presented the legal difficulties they faced and the solutions they had found. Responding to informed student questions may be the best teaching vehicle we could provide for them. In addition, it would provide my students an opportunity to network with future employers and look sympathetic and well-informed on issues the administrators face.

Open Access

The question I have from the discussion today: Gideon Burton noted that peer review is one bottle neck in getting knowledge from scholars to the public. How can we further promote the distribution of available open access materials from peer-reviewed journals while maintaining quality?

Personal Experience: During law school, I was a member of the BYU Law Review’s Editorial Board. My position required me to review professional submissions and select what the journal would publish and what it would not. I had to open a new, separate e-mail account simply to manage all of the submissions we received. Even if that position would have been full-time and even if I had not required sleep, food, etc. during law school (which some of my classmates did not seem to require by the way), I could not likely have read the entirety of each submission. We accepted and published a spoonful of the lake of articles we received.

We justified the limited number of articles we published because of (1) restraints on the number of editors who could prepare the article for publication; (2) the cost of printing the journal; and (3) we only wanted high-quality articles associated with the BYU name. While we have largely overcome the second hurdle by publishing the journal online (we still print off copies for the library), I wonder how to increase publication of available knowledge while maintaining quality of information.

Random Note: Gideon Burton mentioned "Dance Your PhD" on YouTube. I looked at a few selections. Genius.... :)

Open Content:

First of all, I cheered (internally) when I saw David Wiley's name on the Wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_content

Second, here are a few favorite references I found for future reference on Open Content:

• This is the link to Dr. Wiley's blog, containing what he terms some of the "better things I've written." http://opencontent.org/blog/articles
• Example of Open Content include C-Span's decision to share its archives available: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/arts/television/16cspan.html

Third, a personal story:

My mother recently sought my opinion regarding the legality of sharing publicly-available content (e.g. videos, music) in her classroom. She frequently wanted to drive a point home with a pertinent clip, and she was afraid of doing something wrong or, worse, get herself or her school into legal trouble. After this occurred with my mother, I realized there are a large number of educators, etc. who have these same questions and who are not familiar with copyright law, Open Content, etc. and I wanted to provide them with basic training on this topic.

Open CourseWare

Open CourseWare has a number of uses. One idea that draws my attention is that Open CourseWare could facilitate a revolution in the way in which class curriculum is presented. A current theory percolating through education world is the concept of a "flipped classroom." Advocates of the flipped classroom include proponents of Khan Academy, Mazure of Harvard, and others. Khan provided the following explanation, students could download instructional videos, etc. (e.g. from Khan Academy's website) and teachers could then skip their lecture and use class time to apply the content learned.

In this way, students may absorb the uniform lecture content of "classwork" at home at their own pace and with as many repetitions as necessary. Likewise, students may do their "homework" in class where they have greater resources (e.g. teacher, classmates, T.A.s where available) while they work to apply the content. Open CourseWare facilitates such a flipped classroom atmosphere by providing online content for use for (1) a set of specified, intended student beneficiaries (e.g. Open High School of Utah), (2) a formal group of students/teachers using the available materials for the flipped classroom (e.g. Khan Academy), and (3) any informal learning environment.

Open Educational Resources

Definitions: At first, OER seemed like a rather straightforward matter to define and explain. Research showed, however, that there are a variety of definitions and foci. For example, Guntram Geser claims there is no established definition and, instead, provided three core elements for OER (link provided below):

• that access to open content (including metadata) is provided free of charge for educational institutions, content services, and the end-users such as teachers, students and lifelong learners;
• that the content is liberally licensed for re-use in educational activities, favourably free from restrictions to modify, combine and repurpose the content; consequently, that the content should ideally be designed for easy re-use in that open content standards and formats are being employed;
• that for educational systems/tools software is used for which the source code is available (i.e. Free Software/Open Source software) and that there are open APIs and authorisations to re-use Web-based services as well as resources (e.g. for educational content RSS feeds).

Geser, Guntram (2007-01). "Open Educational Practices and Resources. OLCOS Roadmap 2012". Salzburg, Austria: Salzburg Research, EduMedia Group. p. 20. Retrieved 2010-11-06.

Comparing OER to the Reformation: As a former history major, I enjoyed David Wiley's comparison of policies surrounding the initial distribution of vernacular copies of the Bibles to current policies surrounding open resources. This is an interesting choice of comparisons. In some ways, I can understand the threat the Catholic church felt towards vernacular copies of the Bible more than I can understand the current fear of open resources.

It seems that reverting to an "opt-in" copyright system rather than our current "opt-out" system would allow protection for those who would like to profit from their work. At the same time, this would foster the use of the vast remainder of the resources for educational purposes (e.g. share, modify, combine, re-purpose content).

I wanted to memorialize a few resources I discovered regarding open source to assist with future explanations regarding what open source and the Open Source Initiative entail. The results are below, including, a key link to an old picture of of Richard Stallman I unearthed. Enjoy!

Layman’s Definitions

o Source Code: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/source_code.html

o Open Source: http://www.howstuffworks.com/question435.htm

Open Source Initiative: http://www.opensource.org/

Picture of Richard Stallman (before the beard and long hair): http://www.google.com/imgres?q=richard+stallman&hl=en&sa=X&rlz=1C1LENP_enUS455US455&biw=1627&bih=935&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnso&tbnid=Na1STSwEyoGAZM:&imgrefurl=http://techrights.org/2009/09/26/richard-stallman-smeared-for-truth/&docid=dhLtrwh7HfaPMM&imgurl=http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/richard-stallman-young.png&w=480&h=332&ei=wmsQT7OkB8OOiALarfTYDQ&zoom=1

All,

I have compiled a few of my favorite basic links to open licensing law below.

The Constitution obviously provides the initial, undergirding language for open licensing discussions (see below). Although the Constitution does not specify the length of the "life" of a copyright, its length in the USA expanded from its original 14 years to (more recently) life + 50 years, to its current life +70 years. The twenty-year expansion drew my attention, and I have included links to the extension act's text and the related Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the expansion was constitutional.

The reasoning behind the Court's language presages future similar extensions. Enjoy!!

Copyright Clause: Article I, Section 8, Clause 8:http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Constitution.html

Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act: http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/s505.pdf·

Eldred v. Ashcroft: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12147684852241107557&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr