消委會會談：皮特福賽斯和維基公共政策倡議：開放教育和政策

蒂莫西福爾默，2011年6月6日

消委會會談：保羅與Stacey從BCcampus：開放教育和政策

蒂莫西福爾默，2011年3月28日

保羅與Stacey由BCcampus / 消委會分

保羅史戴西的傳訊，在利益相關者和學術關係BCcampus 。總部設在溫哥華，BCcampus提供服務支持和在線教育技術學不列顛哥倫比亞省的25公立學院和大學，他們的學生，教師和行政人員。在卑詩省提供資金，先進的教育課程發展。在2003年，他們將資金轉投支持一個新的主題方向網上學習。通過這種轉變的優先次序，BCcampus看到了機遇，連接到開放教育的上升空間，看到有趣的例子，其他項目，如麻省理工學院開放式課程開放教育資源和Connexions的。保羅支持戰略發展的信貸在線課程，開放教育資源的形式，通過合作夥伴關係在公元前的公共專上院校。他還幫助協調範圍的開放在線社區來支持學術成長和教師發展的BC和超越。

基金會資助的對比公帑資助的開放教育資源

去年，保羅提出了一份文件名 ​​為基金資助工作開支償還款額主場迎戰納稅人資助的開放教育資源，一個故事的兩個任務在開放Ed會議在巴塞羅那。在此介紹他比較屬性的目標和基金會資助和公共資助的開放教育資源項目。私人慈善基金會提供了最大的投資在開放教育資源，在過去 10年，但有越來越多的例子納稅人資助的開放教育資源的政策。新增Stacey指出，基礎和公共部門的目標是相似的希望擴大受教育的機會，但手段，使他們做到這一點不同。 “基金會的主要職責是創始人，而政府的一個部的主要責任是其納稅公民，”保羅說。雖然經常有基礎的全球和人道主義任務和目標，政府各部委，另一方面，地理上更趨於當地特定國家，省，或狀態。他們專注於提供公共服務，有利於該地區所有公民，而不是整個世界。 “公共部門支持開放教育資源往往超過經濟效率目標的人道主義的，”保羅說。隨著公共部門的資金緊張，政府機構要充分利用其資金在盡可能最有效的方法，並提供受教育的機會，作為它的許多成員公開進行。對於目前正在進行的工作開支償還款額的問題是，能兩者都做？

保羅注意到其他差異基金會資助和政府資助的開放教育資源。基金會贈款主要是去單名校，並已用於發布現有講座，課程筆記，學習活動與校園為基礎的課堂活動。基金會的贈款有一個明確的開始和結束日期，通常沒有提供持續運作。政府各部，主要投資於有正式工作開支償還款額的信用為基礎的學術目的是實現教育機會，社會和勞動力市場需要他們的地區。政府補助是給予，而不是單一的名校，而是合作夥伴關係的學校和機構在其管轄範圍內，經常為開發新的課程旨在為網上交付。政府各部常常關心既啟動和正在進行的行動提供資金。

頻譜牌照：選擇或不選擇呢？

保羅已經構建了一個有趣的圖表，繪製各種開放教育資源項目，其相關許可條款。

新增Stacey指出，基金會資助的開放教育資源項目一般需要一個單一的知識共享許可協議（通常是按消委會按或CC - NC的- SA）的。但是，對於政府資助的開放教育資源，通常有多個許可證選項。保羅的建議之一是開放教育資源，使項目提供的授權選項的範圍沿“開放”的統一體。 “多個選項提供更大的買進和降低門檻的開放教育資源的參與，”建議保羅。他承認，有缺點要允許個別項目，以選擇自己的牌照：牌照作出各種混音和適應開放教育資源更加複雜，並能創造互操作性問題和孤立的內容。雖然他的發現內容沒有開放教育資源項目的地方進入公有領域，保羅認為，這種做法可能受到考驗。

公元前百科全書和建議，創意的百科全書

新增Stacey說，知識共享組織已發揮了核心作用，使開放教育資源可能在首位。現行的發牌解決方案中使用的BCcampus直覺，不列顛哥倫比亞省的百科全書，是仿照風景。卑詩百科全書許可證不同於 CC授權。凡創作共用許可證適用於全球，在公元前的百科全書許可證申請內容的使用和機構之間的交流，教師和學生附屬於公元前公共專上教育制度。 BCcampus通過了公元前Commons許可協議，支持教育逐漸進入開放水域。 “如果你說的一名教師，你希望他們和大家一起分享他們的資源，他們擔心自己可能會失去控制的完整性，他們創造的資源，”保羅說。 “即使有公元前共用許可，這些問題不完全消失，但恐懼是緩解由於共享是包含在該省。”與 Stacey認為更有說服力的理由圍繞團結公元前百科全書許可證是由當地的合作產生它的使用。 “當你創建一個許可證，支持本地共享，它創建了一個地方的百科全書，”保羅說。當地教育工作者之間的聯繫常常遠強於關係之外的社會。而且，BCcampus積極培育夥伴關係，鼓勵多個機構共同合作開發的內容，“我們共同發展和共同的資源再利用，”保羅說。

保羅提出了若干建議，供風景：

• 開發一個跟踪代碼中嵌入一塊 CC授權，在每個報告回工作開支償還款額的創造者的重用。我們知道，從社會媒體，看到的使用做更多的激勵因素。

• 鼓勵 CC授權選擇沿連​​續開放，使簡單的人開始用一個許可證，然後過渡或遷移一種資源，更開放的許可證，因為他們沿著連續獲得舒適與共享。

• 與那些試圖建立地區性版本的CC協議，（就像我們已經做到了與 BC公元前共用許可），以工藝的區域牌照而以類似消委會越好。根據我們的經驗是至關重要的補充，其全球共享的選擇與當地區域的。

• 完善決策與 CC授權選擇。歸因，商業 /非商業化，衍生物，並分享都走很長的路要走，但與其他可以補充的決策點，針對開放教育資源。

• 考慮添加元數據字段的CC授權，讓創作者添加額外的信息資源，包括他們的興趣與他人合作，改善和修改它。

• 與國家，州和其他公共部門的機構和組織創作共用許可證選項納入到教育政策，知識產權和版權的管轄，使教育工作者消委會的選擇內置的協議。

• 繼續推進與軟件公司開發應用程序用來創建和提供教育資源，整合為默認選項 CC協議在應用程序中。

未來的開放教育資源

新增Stacey推測，雖然政府部委尚未確信，使得他們的公共資助的教育資源，向世界開放的最佳利益是其公民，他預測，這將最終被證明是如此。 “基金會和公共部門實體將共同制定工作開支償還款額的價值主張的方式，以滿足這兩套任務和目標，是互利互惠的區域和全球範圍內，”保羅說。

保羅認為，兩者的基礎和公共部門的資金將越來越多地看，實現了正規的學習成果在信貸是與開放式教育資源，“他說。開放教育資源將有助於刺激其他改變我們的教育體系也並繼續影響動力學的教學 /學習環境。新增Stacey預言：“學生與學生和基於網絡的學習將產生全球開放式教育資源教育網絡，最終將證明，提供比目前更好的教育可以通過現有的傳統教育提供者。”與 Stacey強化了需要對包括學生在開放教育資源創作過程中，因為它們是主要的受益者，開放的學習材料。 “我們傾向於把學生作為消費者的開放教育資源，”保羅說，“但我相信最終會產生更多的學生開放教育資源比教育工作者。”也許有一天學生獲得學分課程內容生產工作開支償還款額。但是，需求的訓練有素和資格的教育工作者是不會消失。一個老師的作用將繼續得到發展。講授出去了。促進，指導，連接在一起的學生最有成效的方式為他們的學習 is英寸和批判地重要的是需要專業人士擔任的角色裝配 OER到sensible課程，並提供它的方式，可以採取為正在進行的評估地方。

新增Stacey認為，有沒有一個放之四海而皆準的對未來的願景開放教育資源。開放教育可以在各種變革的方法，並應能夠適應環境的同時也更為傳統。他認為這是令人興奮想像各種可能性，並描述了一個理念，這可能看起來如何作為開放大學 。他還指出，領導工作的韋恩麥金托什是圍繞一個OER的大學 。保羅認為，素質教育是每個人的一個共同願望世界各地。 “我們看到OER的變化教育，從一些定義的基礎上稀缺的東西的一個想法很多，”他說。 “開放教育資源，再加上學習能力，形成全球網絡，使全民教育的一個可以實現的目標。”

消委會會談：有權研究聯盟的尼克肖基：開放教育和政策

蒂莫西福爾默，2011年1月20日

尼克肖基是主任權研究聯盟 （R2RC）和學生宣傳處長在學術出版和學術資源聯盟 （SPARC）的。該 R2RC是一個國際聯盟 31研究生和本科生的學生組織，代表近700萬學生，是促進一個開放的學術出版系統為基礎的信念，任何學生都應該被拒絕訪問的研究，他們需要為他們的教育，因為他們的機構不能負擔的成本通常很高的學術期刊。我們採訪了有關相似之處尼克在開放式訪問和開放教育資源運動，全球學生運動的支持獲得學術研究，而且收益採用知識共享工具，開放獲取文獻。

尼克肖基由右到研究聯盟/ 消委會分

“這一切都在酒店房間開始在巴黎，”解釋肖基，誰同時在牛津大學留學和在法國發生了短暫訪問，趕著CNN的特別之處麻省理工學院的開放課程項目（OCW）計劃。尼克立即留下深刻印象的理念開放式課程，並呼籲他重返競選三位一體大學獲得他的學校實施類似的計劃。一個數字的原因，沒有趕上開放式課程在三位一體，但取得的經驗肖基在宣傳它為他提供了兩個關鍵件，導致他工作的SPARC：一個濃厚的興趣在開放教育的工具，並黛安格雷夫斯的介紹，三位一體的大學圖書館館長，然後 SPARC的督導委員會的成員。肖基began主張在開放獲取研究三位一體，並說服學生政府通過一項決議，支持聯邦研究公眾檢索法 （FRPAA），以及作為一個後來決議，贊同學生發表的聲明權的研究。聲明呼籲學生，研究人員，大學和研究，使學術研究的資助者公開向所有人提供。這些原則為基礎，形成了後來成為權研究聯盟。

生長R2RC

在夏天，肖基搬到華盛頓特區，他能夠增加新的學生簽署的聲明權的研究，包括全國協會的研究生專業學生（NAGPS）和全國研究生核心小組的加拿大學生聯會。顯然，它很快成為一個更大的影響可能會提出一個聯合舉辦，積極倡導和教育學生對開放存取，和尼克加入SPARC的專職領導權的研究聯盟。

R2RC已發展到包括31個會員組織和企業代表近700萬世界各地的學生​​。 “令人難以置信的多樣性我們成員說話的重要途徑，研究如何對學生說，”肖基。 R2RC的成員範圍的大小從組，不到一百年的學生組織超過一萬元。但尼克指出，所有會員團體有兩個共同的地方：他們認為學生應具備的好處和充分的學術記錄（不只是一小部分，他們或他們的機構有能力），他們認識到，互聯網已經可以自由訪問通過降低邊際成本幾乎為零分發知識。

美國聯邦公開訪問的宣傳

SPARC和權研究聯盟都表示支持聯邦研究的公共訪問法（FRPAA），一項法律，要求11家美國政府機構，年產量研究經費超過 1億元，使手稿雜誌文章所產生的從研究經費由該機構可通過互聯網公開。雖然 FRPAA沒有通過，2010年，肖基很高興取得了顯著進展，這最終導致去年在國會聽證會上就這一問題的公眾獲得聯邦政府資助的研究。肖基，同事朱莉婭 Mortyakova，並 R2RC成員一直主張支持FRPAA以各種方式，如寫信​​運動和人的就診。肖基估計他的成員已經接觸了超過二百國會辦公室。

學生支持世界各地的辦公自動化

肖基介紹，目前的局勢對學術研究的機會有限，是一個普遍的問題，影響到世界各地的學生​​。但是，他解釋說，真正的區別不在於美國和世界其他地區，但發達國家與發展中國家。 “支付30元獲得一篇文章是昂貴的，甚至對許多研究人員在美國，說：”尼克，“但是當你認識到30美元是一個完整的平均月工資在馬拉維，你可以看到巨大的差距在獲取面臨著巨大的大片對世界各地的人們。“

在去年夏天的終結，R2RC開始了他們的一致努力，擴大聯盟，加入國際學生團體，並推出了他們的訪問世界各地的博客系列專題報導和活動，向來自世界各地的學生。在2010年秋季，肖基高亢，重要的是學生獲得學術研究向歐洲醫學生協會大會在雅典和歐洲大學生會議在柏林舉行。 “學生們馬上明白了問題，並已得到有關各方立即說，”尼克。主席，歐洲醫學生協會已經作了介紹開放存取和R2RC在重大國際醫學會議，並就在這個月，該聯盟歡迎國際聯合會醫學生協會 （IFMSA）是世界上最大的醫學生組織，業務遍及97個國家的世界各地。

訪問蹣跚成本;辦公自動化使小說下游利益

高費用用戶訪問學術期刊和教材是一種批評的倡導者們所共享的開放存取（OA）和開放式教育資源（OER）。學術期刊價格上漲 200％的水平，通貨膨脹，類似的大學教科書價格。肖基認為，最大的開放獲​​取的價值是幫助打掉難以克服的障礙，高油價構成對個人用戶。 “一個美國大學我們辛格研究花費了大約 90萬美元的只有96訂閱期刊，而那是在資金充足的學校，說：”肖基。 “在不那麼富裕的機構，或那些在發展中世界，價格往往證明不可逾越的障礙。學生和研究人員必須做什麼他們的學校可以負擔得起，而不是他們需要什麼。“

尼克解釋說，通過開放存取，整個學術記錄可以供任何人閱讀和借鑒，導致無數的公共利益。但他最興奮的用途開放獲取獎學金，我們甚至不能想的時刻。 “勞倫斯萊斯格指出，真正的'秘訣'的互聯網是你不需要任何人的允許創新上，說：”肖基，“我相信訪問將最終實現開放這一學術研究的能力。”尼克描述了一個開放的世界中，研究人員將訪問不僅能夠閱讀任何文章，但也應允許執行語義的文本挖掘發現的趨勢沒有一個人可以發現並連接在一起。但這個承諾得到履行，他加強了，研究人員需要訪問整個學術記錄，不能只是一個選擇的子集，再利用的必要權利這些條款在新的和有趣的方式。

開放獲取和知識共享

肖基解釋，風景起著至關重要的作用在移動辦公提供了一個標準套房預先包裝的開放內容許可證。 “為了使一個明顯的一點，”他說，“很少有研究人員也著作權律師，和CC許可作出簡單的學者和期刊，使他們的文章公開提供。消委會亦有助於防止拼湊系統，在那裡目前還不清楚它使用是允許的，哪些不是。“尼克指出，這有點含糊，可以非常有害的，特別是要重用的內容，因此是很重要的開放獲取社區充分利用社區中心，以確保訪問和交流的權利。

肖基說，署名（消委會所）牌照已成為黃金標準的開放獲取期刊。一般來說，學者要承認他們的工作，通過許可和CC保證歸屬撰文，同時允許任何人閱讀，下載，拷貝，打印，分發和重用他們的工作不受任何限制。肖基指出，許多研究已顯示出強勁增長和引文條意見時，衣物是由公開提供。 “這使直觀的感覺，”尼克說。 “如果一篇文章可以讓更多的人閱讀和借鑒，這是不足為奇的，這也將趨向更經常被引用。鑑於其重要性被引用次數在學術進步，增加可引用一個重要的好處是流量開放許可。“

辦公自動化支持通過大學

Open access (and increasingly, OER) initiatives at universities have been promoted in part through the university library. For example, at some schools librarians help educate faculty and students about the options available to them for scholarly publishing, including administering the Scholar's Copyright Addendum . Shockey thinks that the library is a natural central organizing venue for OA and OER work, and meshes well with the library's fundamental mission to provide their community with access to the educational resources they need. Nick also noted that libraries are perfectly positioned to play an OA/OER organizing role because they are one of the only institutions that reaches every department and every member of the campus community. Shockey said that some libraries have already taken the lead by supporting initiatives such as the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE), which sets aside money to pay for the publication fees that some open access journals charge, in order to help transition to an open model.

OA and OER working together

Open access advocates argue that access to scholarly literature should not be limited to scientists and academics, but available to patients, parents, students at all levels, entrepreneurs, and others. Shockey believes that since the OA and OER movements are both working to enable free access to the tools of education, it's important to explore the ways in which these movements can work together. Even though the R2RC is centered on open access, it's begun to weave OER into its messaging alongside open data and open science. Nick thinks it's important for R2RC members to see the larger network in which they work. “When we hit roadblocks in one area,” said Shockey, “there are often opportunities in others, and advancing one of these pieces (be it OA, OER, open data, open video, etc) opens the door for further progress in other areas. Furthermore, once you've convinced someone about one of these issues, be it a friend, colleague, or the US Congress, it's much easier to engage them on the others.”

Shockey is optimistic with regard to the future of the student open access movement, but stresses the need to move ahead with the clear vision that advancements in education, science, and scholarship require access to raw research materials. “We must always remember what it is we're fighting for,” said Shockey, “academic research is the raw material upon which not only education but also scientific and scholarly advancement depend. When we allow these crucial resources to be locked away, it hinders the entire mission of the Academy – student learning suffers, scholarly research is impeded, and scientific discoveries are slowed.” Nick says that widespread open access promises to benefit science and scholarship in radical ways that are almost unimaginable today. “Open access will improve how we teach, learn, and solve problems in ways that are impossible within a closed system.”

While there are many ways to get involved with the Open Access movement, Shockey stressed that the most important was simply to learn about this issue of access to research and start conversations with friends, colleagues, mentors, and students to raise awareness. The R2RC website has an individual version of their Student Statement on the Right to Research open for anyone to sign, as well as a host of other education and advocacy resources for those interested in Open Access.

CC Talks With: Mark Surman from the Mozilla Foundation

Cameron Parkins, December 13th, 2010

The Mozilla Foundation is unabashedly committed to a free and open web. They see it as a vital part of a healthy digital ecosystem where creativity and innovation can thrive. We couldn't agree more. And we couldn't be prouder to have Mozilla's generous and ongoing support. We were recently able to catch up with Mark Surman, the Foundation's Executive Director, who talks about Mozilla and its myriad projects, and how his organization and ours are a lot like lego blocks for the open web.

Mark Surman by Joi Ito / CC BY

Most people associate Mozilla with the Firefox but you do much more than just that – can you give our readers some background on the different arms of Mozilla as an organization? What is your role there?

Mozilla's overall goal is to promote innovation and opportunity on the web — and to guard the open nature of the internet.

Firefox is clearly the biggest part of this. But we're constantly looking for new ways to make the internet better. Our growing focus on identity, mobile and web apps is a part of this. Also, we're reaching out more broadly beyond software to invite people like filmmakers, scientists, journalists, teachers and so on to get involved.

Personally, I'm most active in this effort to reach out more broadly and to get many more people involved in our work. Much of this is happening through a program I helped start called Mozilla Drumbeat. As Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation, I also manage the overall umbrella legal structure for all of Mozilla's activities.

What is the connection between Mozilla and CC? Do you use our tools in your various projects?

At the highest level, Mozilla and CC are both working for the same thing — a digital society based on creativity, innovation and freedom. And, of course, we use CC licenses for content and documents that we produce across all Mozilla projects.

Mozilla has given generously to Creative Commons – what was the motivation behind donating? What is it about CC that you find important?

I think of both organizations as giving people 'lego blocks' that they can use to make and shape the web. Mozilla's lego blocks are technical, CC's are legal. Both help people create and innovate, which goes back to the higher vision we share.

What do you see as CC's role in the broader digital ecosystem? How does CC enable Mozilla to better innovate in that space?

We need an organization like CC to make sure that the content layer of the web is as open and free as the core tech upon which it's all built. It's at this content layer that most people 'make the web' — it's where people feel the participatory and remixable nature of the web. Keeping things open and free at this level — and making them more so — is critical to the future of the open web.

Help ensure a bright future for the open web and donate to Creative Commons today .

CC Talks With: Jeff Mao and Bob McIntire from the Maine Department of Education: Open Education and Policy

Timothy Vollmer, December 8th, 2010

Maine has been a leader in adopting educational technology in support of its students. In 2002, through the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), the state began providing laptops to all students in grades 7-8 in a one-to-one laptop program. In 2009, Maine expanded the project to high school students. The one-to-one laptops paved the way for open education initiatives like Vital Signs , empowering students to conduct their own field research in collaboration with local scientists, and make that research available online. Recently, Maine has been engaged in some interesting and innovative projects around OER as a result of federal grant funds. For this installment of our series on open education and policy, we spoke with Jeff Mao and Bob McIntire from the Maine Department of Education. Jeff is Learning Technology Policy Director at MLTI, and Bob works for the Department's Adult & Community Education team.

One part of the $700 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was dedicated to creating technology-rich classrooms. This funding was distributed through the existing No Child Left Behind Title IID program. With their one-to-one student laptop program, Maine was already ahead of the game with regard to technology in the classroom, so they decided to focus the ARRA funding on OER projects. “We wanted to create something that had a longer shelf life,” said Bob. Maine's grants were broken into two initiatives: research to identify and annotate high quality OERs, and the creation of professional development models using OER.

Curate metadata, don't stockpile resources

Maine is a “non-adoption” state, which means that teachers at the local level determine the educational resources they wish to use in their classrooms. Most other states adopt educational materials at the state level. For instance, for a class like 9th grade world history, states will approve multiple textbook titles from multiple publishers, and schools will be able to choose from among the state approved list. Since it's up to local teachers to determine which educational resources are good for their teaching, part of the Maine OER grants is devoted to researching the rough process that teachers step through when evaluating content. MLTI has been working on a type of educational registry. This registry will be a website that can house the metadata teachers collect around the resources they wish to use. This website–still in development–will help teachers to be able to find, catalog, categorize, and add other informative data to quality resources. Perhaps as important, it will allow teachers to share with others what they did with the content, whether the material worked (or bombed), and other sorts of useful descriptive information. Right now the team is using the social bookmarking service delicious to add metadata to high quality OERs that they find online. This project is coordinated by the Maine Support Network, a professional development and technical assistance provider, and all the resources are linked through one delicious site at http://www.delicious.com/syntiromsn .

Weaning teachers off of printed textbooks

Jeff talked about a way to restructure the traditional textbook adoption cycle that would result with an end product of 100% OER. Currently, the Maine textbook adoption process goes something like this: After six years of using the same textbook, teachers realize their turn is coming up to place an order for a new textbook. In the springtime, they call publishers and ask for demo copies of new books to potentially be used the following fall. Teachers peruse the books sent to them, and settle for the one that is the least flawed. Teachers use the book for five and half years, after which the process repeats itself. Jeff hopes this inefficient process can be changed. He suggests that rather than waiting until the final year to seek out new, pre-packaged educational materials, why not spend the interim years seeking out individual learning objects to replace every piece of their static textbooks?

Such a process could work to improve some of the content that teachers don't like (and don't use) in their traditional textbooks. And, through this iterative, piecemeal process, they can share their illustrative discoveries (and dead ends too) with other teachers. The Department itself could pitch in providing the tools, software, and other infrastructure to help teachers keep track of which resources have been reviewed, replaced, or modified. Jeff thinks that enabling teachers to operate in a constant revision mode is a better way to structure the acquisition of teaching and learning materials, rather than reviewing textbooks only once every five or six years.

As most open educational resources are digital, Jeff said there's an increasing need to be able to deal with strictly digital materials. Digital materials can be leveraged better because Maine students and teachers already have the laptops to access and manipulate the content (which can't be done with physical books), digital materials can help integrate other best-of types of technology and interactive pedagogy into their lessons, and digital materials helps set up the conditions to support embedded assessment mechanisms.

Share your process as OER; everything is miscellaneous

Maine hopes its work on OER can be used by other states and communities, considering the research and resources will be produced using federal dollars. They will publish their process and offer the resources they create as OER itself online. Jeff said, “the more we can demonstrate this process is effective, the better it speaks to the efficacy of OER.” And, publishing information about resources and processes should be something natural to share. “If a teacher expends six hours finding a great OER for teaching students polynomials,” said Jeff, “it just needs to be done once.” But at the same time, with the diversity of resources available online–and with clear rights statements through the use of Creative Commons–variations on the sets of resources can be nearly infinite. Teachers can have their own educational “iMixes,” just as iTunes users create playlists of their favorite music.

The future classroom

As Maine continues its work on OER research and professional development, Jeff and Bob offer a vision of a classroom where students gather in small groups, talking, exploring and building projects and investigating ideas together. There is no lecturing, and open educational resources integrate with classroom instruction seamlessly. As most kids are naturally inclined to try to find information online, teachers can guide students in using high quality, adaptable OER. Jeff also suggests that we should be investing time and effort into more direct support for students, building or extending the tools being built for teachers, and proactively including students in the resource evaluation and review process.

The success of Maine and others' OER projects is not assured. Dwindling budgets will remain an ongoing challenge, and while there's been some recognition of OER in policy initiatives such as the National Education Technology Plan, Jeff and Bob question whether current budget woes will derail national and state efforts for change. Teachers are increasingly overburdened, and the development and support for a hands-on process like Maine's requires ongoing teacher participation, feedback, and practice.

In the long run, Jeff thinks that OER will challenge the educational content industry in much the same way that the music industry was challenged by–and eventually succumbed to–Apple's “buy-whatever-you-want” model of music distribution, where users could break apart the album format and simply purchase the songs they wish. Jeff predicts that the textbook industry will be forced to break apart their offerings too, and sell individual chapters or lessons, where before they offered only packaged content to a captured education audience. And Jeff says the benefits apply to publishers too–“If they sell you Chapter 1 and it's really good,” he said, “maybe you'll want to buy the whole book.”

CC Talks With: Robert Cook-Deegan of the Center for Genomics at Duke

Cameron Parkins, November 11th, 2010

Sharing becomes a slippery slope when it comes to genomics: we need massive amounts of data in order to understand the human genome, but issues of privacy, abuse, and the distrust of institutions stand in the way. So how do we resolve this?

We talked to Robert Cook-Deegan, the director of the Center for Genomics, Ethics, Law & Policy at Duke University , about how the field of genomics is poised for takeoff, the challenges it faces as it scales, and how CC can step in as a neutral institution that will save the day.

Robert Cook-Deegan
by Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy / CC BY

What is the link between GELP and CC?

Genomics is completely dependent on a healthy mutualism between discovery science and practical application, yet the field is rife with conflict and deeply held ideologies and is rarely fertilized with empirical facts. Creative Commons is all about finding solutions that reduce friction in the intellectual property (IP) system and facilitate sharing of data and materials. So our roles are complementary and mutually dependent.

GELP is a corporate sponsor of Creative Commons–why do you think CC is important?

There are many academic centers with talent–we publish our own research at Duke, but we're just not that good at putting things into action–but Creative Commons is the only place that is actually trying to get things done as a trusted nonprofit intermediary and catalyst.

I'm reminded of the epitaph on Buffy the Vampire Slayer's grave: “She Saved the World. A Lot.” That's what CC has begun to do in the world of art and writing; it's helping save our culture from some of its own worst pathologies. It has the potential to do the same in science.

What do you see as CC's role in the broader digital ecosystem? How does CC enable GELP to better innovate in that space?

The field of genomics is poised for takeoff. This is not pure hype. In 1999, there was no published human genome; by 2003 we had a reference human genome; by 2007 Craig Venter and Jim Watson's genomes were on the Internet. Nature estimates that today, several thousand people have been fully sequenced.

But that information is useless if it is not compared to sequences of other people and organisms. What matters is genetic variation and how that maps to phenotype–whether a person is likely to get a disease or is prone to certain risks. If there was ever a field that depended on network dynamics, this is it. I can't predict who will make the most valuable contributions to understanding my genome, but I sure want them to do a good job. And they can only do a good job if they have access to lots of other peoples' genomes. This is hard because many people have the same concerns for privacy, fears of abuse, and distrust of institutions that I do.

How in the world are we going to solve this problem?我不知道。 But I do know that most research institutions and private firms are more concerned with mining what's under their control already, rather than sharing and creating value collectively. The real value of genomic data is going to require information vastly beyond the control of any single institution.

We need Creative Commons because it is a trusted intermediary non-profit institution that will enable the dangerous dark innovation jungle to thrive despite the entrenched ideologies and conflicting interests of all the critters that live in it. We're depending on you. May the force be with you.

Join Robert and GELP in supporting Creative Commons and help ensure a bright future for sharing in the field of genomics by donating to CC today !

CC Talks With: Flat World Knowledge's Eric Frank: Open Education and Policy

Timothy Vollmer, November 4th, 2010

At the beginning of this year we announced a revised approach to our education plans, focusing our activities to support of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. In order to do so we have worked hard to increase the amount of information available on our own site – in addition to an Education landing page and the OER portal explaining Creative Commons' role as legal and technical infrastructure supporting OER, we have been conducting a series of interviews to help clarify some of the challenges and opportunities of OER in today's education landscape.

One major venue for the advancement of OER is through the development and support of businesses that levage openly licensed content in support of education. Eric Frank is Founder and President of Flat World Knowledge , a commercial publisher of openly-licensed college textbooks. We spoke with Eric about faculty perceptions of open textbooks, customization enabled by open licensing, and the future of “free online and affordable offline” business models.

Eric Frank by Flat World Knowledge / CC BY

Why did you start Flat World Knowledge and how did you decide to approach this business using open content?

My co-founder Jeff Shelstad and I come out of a long history in textbook publishing. We left a major textbook publisher because of what we perceived as exceedingly-high dissatisfaction levels among the primary constituents in that market—students, faculty and authors. These groups were scratching their heads wondering if the print-based business model was going to be able to serve them going forward. When we began thinking about how to build a new business model, we didn't actually know that much about open educational resources and open licensing. We started to bake a business model based on bringing prices down and increasing access for students; giving faculty more control over the teaching and learning experience; and providing a healthier and more sustainable income stream for authors. And then we started to meet people in the open community. We spoke to Open Education scholar and advocate David Wiley (and Flat World's Chief Openness Officer) who said, “It's funny, you sound a lot like me, except we use different words.” This pushed us a little bit further. Ultimately, through a very pragmatic approach to solving real problems that customers were facing, we arrived at this open textbook model.

The cost of textbooks is something that's very tangible to students. Flat World Knowledge recently released information that 800 colleges will utilize Flat World open textbooks this fall semester, saving 150,000 students $12 million in textbook expenses. And, the Student PIRGs' recent report A Cover to Cover Solution: How Open Textbooks Are The Path To Textbook Affordability found that adopting open textbooks could reduce textbook costs by 80%–to $184 per year, compared to the average of $900. Beyond the important outreach on cost savings, what are the primary questions you hear from faculty and students around “open”?

For the most part, when the average faculty member hears “open textbook,” it means nothing to them. In some cases, it has a positive connotation, and in other cases, it's negative. When it's negative, the primarily concern is one of basic quality and sustainability. Faculty question the entities making these open textbooks, and wonder whether the textbooks could be worth their salt if they're available for free under an open license. And of course, they confuse 'free' and 'open' all the time. “If it's free,” educators say, “It can't be good. What author would ever do that?” Sometimes we see the opposite problem, such as when people know a little something about the publishing ecosystem and say, “It's too good to be true.”

Through our marketing programs, we spend a lot of time educating faculty that we are a professional publisher, and that we focus on well-known scholars and successful textbook authors. We start by talking about what's not different from the traditional approach: we sign experienced authors to write textbooks for us, and we develop the books by providing editorial resources, peer reviewing, and investment. The end product is a high-quality textbook and teaching package. There's a real focus and emphasis on quality. What we change is how we distribute, how we price, and how we earn our revenue. We walk faculty through this process and let them know that 'open' is just about loosening copyright restrictions so that they can do more with the textbooks. We explain that free access is about getting their students onto a level playing field. We explain that affordable choices is about making sure students get the format and price that works for them. Once faculty understand these things and are reassured that we have a quality process in place, and that we are a real and sustainable enterprise that will be around to support them in the future, then it all starts to come together. We have to overcome either a total void of knowledge, which we prefer, or some other baggage that they carry into the conversation.

Customizability of digital textbooks is a key feature of Flat World Knowledge, enabled by the open license. How do teachers and students use this feature? And, how is Flat World's approach to remix different than other platforms and services that allow some adaptability of content without actually using open content as the base?

Of course, the license itself carries its own rights and permissions. People are able to do a lot more with open content than they can with all rights reserved materials. We keep building out our technology platform so that it ultimately enables faculty to take full advantage of that open license—to do all the things that educators might want to do to improve the quality of the material for their own purposes. Today, the most popular customization is relatively simple. For example, educators reorganize the table of contents by dragging and dropping textbook chapters into the right order for their class, and delete a few things they don't cover. This is easy and helps them match the book to their syllabus.

Then you move into exploring other areas. For example, instructors may want to make the textbook more pedagogically aligned with their teaching style. In that case, a teacher might integrate a short case study and a series of questions alongside the textbook content. Teachers may want to make the references and examples more relevant to their students by using the names of local companies. Timeliness is certainly important—something happens in the world and educators want to be able to integrate it into their teaching materials.

Educators have different teaching styles and approaches too. An adopter of one of our economics textbooks swapped out some models for other economic models that he prefers to use. An adopter at the University of New Hampshire added several chapters on sustainability and corporate social responsibility into an introduction to business book. Now, he's teaching the course through his prism and from his perspective. These are the kinds of things that people want to be able to do. The critical thing for us is to make the platform easy to use so that customizing a book is as effortless as opening up a Word document, making some changes, saving it, and delivering it to students.

Regarding how our approach differs from other platforms and services because we begin with openly-licensed content, at one level, the ability to take something and modify it is largely a technology question. We go further, and allow people to edit text at the word level. You don't see this sort of framework in other services because most of the time you're dealing with the all rights reserved mentality. Most authors sign up to write traditional textbooks with the understanding that, “This is my work and you can't do stuff with it.” I think the first big difference is when the author says, “I want people to be able to do stuff with this.” Having authors enter into a different publishing relationship by using open licenses allows us to go much further with the platform. That said, there's nothing really stopping another company from doing this with some kind of unique user license.

We see other benefits of open access when we think about outputs. You might be able to go onto a publisher's site and make modifications to a text, and maybe even integrate something that's openly-licensed on the Web. But ultimately, it's going to get subsumed into the all rights reserved framework, and won't propagate forward, so no one else can change it. And generally, these digital services are expensive and access expires after a few months, so the user no longer can get to the content. Things like digital rights management and charging high prices for print materials are fundamentally business model decisions around dissemination, but they're important.

I think the other big difference is what can happen away from the Flat World Knowledge site. Somebody could arguably come in and take our content and do something with it somewhere else. We're not locking it down and saying, “The only thing you can do is work with the content on our site, and only use our technology.” We happen to make it easy to do this sort of thing on the Flat World site, but the open license allows others to use the content away from the original website. This leads to many more options that aren't possible with content that is all rights reserved or served under a very unique license.

Flat World Knowledge licenses its textbooks under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license. What were the considerations in choosing this license? How do you see the role of Creative Commons in open textbook and open education?

One of my pet peeves about this community that we're a part of is the frequent and sometimes contentious debates over licensing. The principle of enabling a range of licenses recognizes that copyright holders have different objectives for their creations. I have my objectives and you have yours, so we may choose different licenses to reach those objectives. That's perfectly fine. This is the way the world should be. For us, the choice of a license was very much predicated on building a sustainable commercial model around open. We invest fairly heavily with financial resources, time, and intellectual capital to make these textbooks and related products something that we think can dominate in the marketplace. If we didn't use the non-commercial condition, in our view, we'd be making all the investment and then someone else could sell the content at a dramatically lower price because they didn't make the initial and ongoing investment. The non-commercial condition is the piece of the model that enables us to give users far more rights, to provide free points of access, and protect our ability to commercialize the investment we made. The ShareAlike clause ensures that this protection continues forward.

Our decision to use this license also relates to authors. The sustainability and financial success argument starts with the people who have the most value in the market: the authors who create the books. Our discussions with authors always include a financial component. They want to know how we are going to capitalize on this venture. Authors want to do good, but they also want to earn income and be fairly compensated. When we explain our model and how the licensing works, they feel very comfortable.

Last month Hal Plotkin released the paper Free to Learn: An Open Educational Resources Policy Development Guidebook for Community College Governance Officials . That document suggests that community colleges are uniquely positioned to both take advantage of OER opportunities and to become pioneers in teaching through the creative and cost-effective use of OER, including through the adoption of open textbooks. How are Flat World's approaches different in working with universities as opposed to community colleges? What are the differences in terms of the benefits and challenges to faculty, students, and administration within each institution?

This is a great question, but it's a little hard to answer, because we must consider another variable—the book itself. Sometimes a book is aimed at a community college course and demographic, and sometimes it's aimed at a four-year research university. For example, our Exploring Business book has a big community college market, while our Introduction to Economic Analysis title out of Caltech has very much a top-50, Ph.D.-granting institution market. So, this confuses things a little bit. That said, I think it's fair to say that there is generally a correlation between where the financial pain is greatest (which tends to be at community colleges and state institutions) and where the faculty are closest to that pain (where teaching is their primary emphasis, and they spend more time with students). This is where we see the greatest pull for this solution. There's less of a pull from wealthier demographics and/or with faculty who spend more time doing research than teaching. While there's more ideological and intellectual understanding of the value of sharing on the research side, pragmatically, the financial pain tends to be on the community college side.

In the recent First Monday article, A sustainable future for open textbooks: The Flat World Knowledge story , Hilton and Wiley suggest that in testing Flat World's textbook model (“free online and affordable offline”), nearly 40% of students still purchased a print copy of the textbook. And Nicole Allen mentioned in our interview with her that the research of the Student PIRGs shows that “students are willing to purchase formats they value even in the presence of a free alternative.” So, print materials are not going away overnight, as long as the resources can be tailored in ways that teachers and students want to use them. But, as powerful digital technologies offer so many new ways to interact with educational content, how do you foresee the distant (or near) future in which print-on-demand may no longer be a core part of your business model?

We agree with the findings in those reports that print is going away more slowly than pundits proclaimed it would. We're totally committed to what I think of as platform agnosticism. We never want to be in a position of having to guess which technologies or trends will win or lose. Part of our solution was to build a very dynamic publishing engine which could take a book—which is really a series of database objects and computer code that gets pulled together—and transform it through computer software programs to a certain file format. Today, one format goes to a print-on-demand vendor to make a physical book; another is an ePub file to be downloaded to an iPad or other mobile device; another is a .mobi file for a Kindle. We can afford to be on the leading edge and make formats available that may have low penetration today. And if they grow faster, we'll be there with a salable format for those devices that will proliferate.

The most important improvement we can make to learning outcomes across our society right now is access. People sometimes ask me, “Isn't the textbook itself a dead paradigm?” I tell them no, because billions of dollars per year are spent on textbooks. Right now you could create a really killer learning product, and I could take the one that's already being used by millions of people and make it much more accessible. Enabling greater access is going to have much bigger short-term impact. Going forward, improvements in learning outcomes beyond access will come from things that aren't content. They will come from experiences—whether it's an assessment I take and get immediate feedback to inform a specific learning path, or whether it's a social learning experience in which I'm dropped into a community of learners with a challenge and we draw upon each other to come up with solutions. Content supports those things, but isn't as important in some ways as the experience .

Our view of the world is to get into the market where there's pain today, establish a large base of users, and then keep evolving the product to be an increasingly better learning tool. That will inevitably take the form of integrating more unique services that can't be copied. That's the long-term goal for us, and probably critical for any business operating in the digital medium, to be financially successful. Kevin Kelly, the technology writer and founding executive editor of Wired , said it best: “When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.” I believe that.

What does a successful teaching and learning environment implementing the power of open textbooks and OER “look like”? Do you have any lingering thoughts — worries, hopes, and predictions?

I don't worry too much because if we keep our finger on the pulse of what people want to do, we'll figure it out. One potential danger is the expense of providing this abundance of integrated tools, formats and options for users. It's easy to imagine the expense of systems that incorporate things like an assessment engine built on adaptive learning and artificial intelligence to guide users to the best resource, all the while connecting them to other users to foster a richer learning experience. This has the potential to be very expensive, and ratchets up the imperative for players in the open community to help figure it out.

CC Talks With: Elspeth Revere of the MacArthur Foundation

Allison Domicone, October 29th, 2010

Elspeth Revere,
MacArthur Foundation / CC BY

Elspeth Revere is the Vice President in charge of Media, Culture and Special Initiatives at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation . The MacArthur Foundation has generously supported CC since our founding in 2002. Join MacArthur and help keep CC going strong by making a donation today .

Can you give us some background on the MacArthur Foundation?

MacArthur is one of the nation's largest independent foundations. The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society.

With assets over $5 billion, MacArthur will award approximately $230 million in grants this year. Through the support it provides, the Foundation fosters the development of knowledge, nurtures individual creativity, strengthens institutions, helps improve public policy, and provides information to the public, primarily through support for public interest media.

The Foundation was established in 1978. Last year, it made 600 grants for a total of $230 million.

What is your role there?

I am Vice President in charge of Media, Culture and Special Initiatives. We have three ongoing areas of work. The first is in public interest media, where we support public radio, documentary films, deep and analytical news programs, and investigative reporting. The second is support to over 200 arts and culture organizations in our home city, Chicago. The third is institutional support to help strengthen nonprofit organizations that are key to the Foundation's grantmaking fields so that they will exist and be effective over the long term. In addition, we conduct a changing set of special grantmaking initiatives that are intended to be short-term and responsive to a particular problem or opportunity.

The MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation (not a corporate sponsor) that supports Creative Commons – what was the motivation behind this generous giving? What is it about CC that you find important?

In about 1999, MacArthur began exploring the question of how the digital revolution would impact society and the issues that the Foundation cared about and what a Foundation like MacArthur could do to help people understand and shape this phenomenon for the overall good. We held a series of consultations and some of the people who later became founders of Creative Commons, including Larry Lessig and Jamie Boyle, talked to us about both the promise of technology to unlock information and make it widely and easily available, and the concern that digital tools could also be used to limit the public availability of information. They, and others, helped us to understand that copyright laws, originally intended to regulate industry, were increasingly regulating consumers and their behavior — and this was even before blogging, podcasts, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and all the other sharing tools that we now rely on.

In 2002, MacArthur began a six year funding initiative on Intellectual Property and the Long-Term Protection of the Public Domain. Our first grant to Creative Commons was made that year. It was an exemplary organization for us to support because we were looking for new models of thinking about intellectual property in a digital age. All told, we have made 4 grants totaling $3.15 million to support its work. And Creative Commons has become a successful tool for sharing information in the arts, sciences, governance, and education throughout the world.

What is the link between the MacArthur Foundation and CC? Do you use our tools in your work? Or are our tools more applicable to your grantees?

MacArthur policy calls for openness in research and freedom of access to data. We encourage our grantees to explore opportunities to use existing and emerging Internet distribution models and when appropriate open access journals, Creative Commons licenses or other mechanisms that result in broad access for the interested field and public. While we do not insist that grantees use Creative Commons licenses, we do suggest their use when appropriate and practical.

What do you see as CC's role in the broader digital ecosystem? How does CC enable the MacArthur Foundation and its grantees to better innovate in that space?

Creative Commons has made all of us more aware of information sharing — how and why we use the information of others and when and how we will let others use what we create. It has provided the tools to allow us to share what we make both easily and widely if we want to do so. It has enabled communities to form around the world to work on common interests ranging from music and governance. And it has demonstrated that these communities can solve legal, technical and practical problems together.

Help make sure Creative Commons can continue to develop and steward tools that are crucial to sharing information in the arts, sciences, governance, and education throughout the world. Make a donation today .

CC Talks With: Ton Roosendaal, Sintel Producer and head of Blender Institute

Chris Webber, October 27th, 2010

Sintel poster by Blender Institute / CC BY

Ton Roosendaal is head of the Blender Institute, leader of Blender development, and producer of the recently released 3d short film Sintel , which is released as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 .

Sintel is the Blender Institute's third “open movie”. Could you describe what “open movie” means to the Blender Institute?

Oh… many things. First, I love to work with artists, which goes much easier than working with developers! And making short animation films with teams is an amazing and very rewarding activity. With this large creative community of Blender artists, the financial model enables it even; not many short film makers have this opportunity.

But the practical incentive to do this is because it's a great development model for Blender. Putting artists together on a major challenge is the ultimate way to drive software like Blender forward. That way we can also ensure it fits ambitious targets weeding out the 'would be cool features' for the 'must need' ones. And it's quite easier to design usability with small diverse teams, than have it done online via feedback mechanisms, which easily becomes confusing with the noise of hundreds of different opinions.

It's also a fact that the Blender Institute was established for open movie projects, so for me (and the Blender Institute) it means our core business.

Blender Institute projects have a rare but heavily developed intersection between free and open source software (Blender the software and its developer community) and free culture (the films the Blender Institute produces). How related and similar are these worlds?

I don't consider myself much related to “free culture” really, and certainly not in the political sense. For Blender projects it's just a natural way to deliver it in open license like with [the licenses provided by] CC. We want our users to learn from them, to dissect our tricks and technology, or use them for other works. And not least: to allow everyone who works on a project to freely take it with them; as a portfolio, or companies who sponsor us who need demos or research material. So in that sense we are free culture!

But each time I meet people who work in this field, it's mostly theorists, not practicists. so I'ma bit biased [...] people who talk about free culture don't seem to make it (at least here in the Netherlands, at conferences or meetings). I get regular invitations to talk on this topic. I do it sometimes, but the blah-blah level disturbs me a bit. Free culture is about doing it.

So at the Blender Institute, you have artists working on these works, and you have programmers working on this code. How similar are those worlds?

For Blender, I think we have a great mix, with a lot of cross-overs. Several of our coders started as users, and we involve artists closely in design for tools or features.

This doesn't always go perfectly, especially when it's highly technical, like simulation code. But if you visit our IRC channel, or mailing list, or conferences… it's always a great mix. Maybe this is because 3d art creation is quite technical too? I dunno… not many users will understand how to construct bsp trees, yet they use it all the time.

In general compared to other open source projects, I think we're quite un-technical and accessible. A big reason for that is because I'm not even a trained programmer. I did art and industrial design. When coders go too deep in abstract constructions I can't follow it either and can simply counter it with an “Okay, but what's the benefit for using this?” And when the answer is “It makes coders' lives easier” I usually ignore it. In my simple world, coders suffer and artists benefit! But one coder can also do some stuff — taking a few hours — that saves hundreds of thousands of people a few seconds in a day. And that's always good.

What's the development of a film like Sintel like as in terms of internal development vs community involvement in production? Has that dynamic changed at all from work to work? I partly ask this because some people think “Oh, open movie, they must have their SVN repository open the whole time and just get random contributions from everywhere,” but Blender Institute films don't tend to work that way.

Right, we keep most of our content closed until release. I'ma firm believer in establishing protective creative processes. In contrast to developers — who can function well individually online — an artist really needs daily and in-person feedback and stimulation.

We've done this now four times (three films and one game) and it's amazing how teams grow in due time. But during this process they're very vulnerable too. If you followed the blog you may have seen that we had quite harsh criticism on posting our progress work . If you're in the middle of a process, you see the improvements. Online you only see the failures.

The cool thing is that a lot of tests and progress can be followed now perfectly and it suddenly makes more sense I think. Another complex factor for opening up a creative process is that people are also quite inexperienced when they join a project. You want to give them a learning curve and not hear all the time from our audience that it sucks. Not that it was that bad! But one bad criticism can ruin a day.

One last thing on the “open svn” point: in theory it could work, if we would open up everything 100% from scratch. That then will give an audience a better picture of progress and growth. We did that for our game project and it was suited quite well for it. For film… most of our audience wants to get surprised more, not know the script, the dialogs, the twists. Film is more 'art' than games, in that respect.

Ton Roosendaal by Kennisland / CC BY-SA

You also did the sprints this time, which pulled in some more community involvement than in previous projects. Do you think that model went well? Would you do it again?

The modeling sprint was great! We needed a lot of props, and for that an online project works perfectly. The animation sprint (for animated characters) was less of a success. Character animation doesn't lend itself well for it, I think. There's no history for it… ehh. Like, for design and modeling, we have a vocabulary. Most people understand when you explain visual design, style, proportions. But for animation… only a few (trained) animators know how to discuss this. It's more specialist too.

How has the choice of the Creative Commons Attribution license affected your works?

How would it affect our works? Do you mean, why not choose ND (no-derivatives) or NC (noncommercial)? Both restrictions won't suit well for our work. And without attribution it's not a CC license.

I did get some complaints why not choose a FSF compatible license, but the Free Software Foundation has no license for content like ours either.

What kinds of things have you seen / do you expect to see post-release of a project such as Sintel?

A lot of things happened with previous films, Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny, ranging from codec research in companies, showcases on tradeshows, to student composers using it to graduate. Even wallpaper!

We are working now on a 4k resolution of the film (4096 x 2160). The 4k market is small, but very active and visible in many places. They're dying for good content. I'm also very interested in doing a stereoscopic '3d' version. As for people making alternative endings or shots; that hasn't happened a lot, to my knowledge. Our quality standard is too high as well, so it's not a simple job.

But further, the very cool thing of open content is that you're done when you're done! A commercial product's work stress only starts when the product is done. That's what I learned with our first film. Just let it go, and move on to next.

And at least one “free culture” aspect then: it's quite amazing how our films have become some kind of cultural heritage already. People have grown fond of them, or at least to the memory of them. It's part of our culture in a way, and without a free license that would have been a really tough job.

Might there be a Sintel game (Project Jackfruit?) using the Blender Game Engine like there was a game following Big Buck Bunny (Yo Frankie)?

Not here in the Blender Institute. But there's already a quite promising online project for it .

You can watch Sintel online and support the project (and get all the data files used to produce the film, tutorials, and many other goodies) by purchasing a DVD set . You may also wish to consider supporting Creative Commons in our current superhero campaign .

CC Talks With: Lulu

Cameron Parkins, October 18th, 2010

Our fall campaign is in full swing and superheroes are giving at all levels – as such, it's a great time to shine the spotlight on some of our most significant donors.

Lulu , the fantastic open publishing platform, is one such organization. Beyond offering creators of all types the means to publish their own work, Lulu offers a CC-licensing option for authors when they are creating their books. Over a million creators have used the service to date with approximately 20,000 titles to Lulu's catalog each month.

We caught up with founder and CEO Bob Young to talk about Lulu generally, why they've chosen to support CC, and how our licenses have helped Lulu grow in the past decade.

Bob Young by Lulu / CC BY

Can you give our readers some background on Lulu? What is your role there?

Lulu's mission is nothing less than to accelerate the transfer of knowledge from one generation of humans to the next. We are doing this by empowering authors of all stripes to bring their knowledge and expertise to their markets without having to ask permission of anyone.

Harnessing the power of the Internet and the free market, our goal is to ensure authors and other creators, as well as the publishers who serve them, are rewarded for creating and documenting the knowledge and expertise that they have accumulated from their research, experience and expertise.

We enable authors to publish their books for free, to create books as printed paper books and as ebooks in all formats and for all devices, and sell those books across the globe.

As Founder and CEO I get much more credit for the success of Lulu to date than I deserve. I prefer my Lulu title of Coffee Mug Washer. At least when I wash dishes in our break room I know I'm creating value.

What is the link between Lulu and CC? Do you all use our tools in your various projects

As Sir Isaac Newton pointed out, all knowledge is the result of “standing on the shoulders of giants”. Creative Commons is doing critically important work helping our society understand that without an active public domain of knowledge and content future generations will not be able to stand on the shoulders. Even more importantly CC is building the tools that enable the protection and expansion of that public domain of knowledge and content.

Lulu is all about giving our authors control over their content. We offer both standard copyright licenses as well as CC licenses and other options in the “select your license” step of the publishing process on Lulu.com. This allows Lulu authors to contribute back to the same public domain of knowledge they benefited from when they learned the knowledge that allowed them to write their book.

Lulu is a corporate sponsor of Creative Commons – what was the motivation behind this generous giving? What is it about CC that you find important?

It was mostly a selfish instinct to protect my own ability to succeed. I doubt I've ever had an original thought. All of my success has come from borrowing ideas from people smarter and more knowledgeable than me. But if every idea or thought is someday going to be subject to a copyright or patent owned by some individual or some corporation then where am I going to get my next good idea?

I use the term “borrowing ideas” in the sense Thomas Jefferson meant when he said passing along knowledge was like letting someone light their candle from his. The person who now had the light from the newly lit candle benefited, while Jefferson still had all the light from his own lit candle.

Besides the specific licenses and tools it offers, CC has built a powerful brand that communicates everything Lulu wants to say about how authors should be in control of the content they create, and about how a robust public domain of knowledge contributes directly to improving our lives, liberty, and our pursuit of happiness.

Join Bob Young and Lulu in supporting the future of good ideas by donating to CC today !