The Open Minds Momentum

Has Open Source in Education reached a Tipping Point-- “the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable?” Anyone attending the K12 Open Minds Conference would be hard pressed to argue otherwise. “Let’s Declare Victory!” and move on to the next steps was certainly the tone starting with the PreConference Summit (lead by Bryant Patten and Donna Benjamin) and Large Scale Deployment (lead by Steve Hargadon) in Indianapolis, Indiana.

In his book, “The Tipping Point”, Malcom Gladwell, outlines what it takes for an idea, movement, or product to achieve a moment of critical mass: The salesman; The maven; The connector. The K12 Open Minds Conference was an opportunity to witness the incredible energy and synergy when those 3 forces come together in one place. Having students, teachers, tech directors, school leaders, who use open source software for teaching and learning converse and collaborate with the developers of those tools truly created an Open Minds energy throughout the conference. If you missed it, perhaps you can still pick up a few tips, tools, or resources with my takeaways from this conference.

• I got a chance to meet teachers like Michelle Librach who lead sessions like Audacious Audacity targeted at teachers. While fellow teachers walked away with practical tips on how to use open source in their classrooms, open source developers got a chance to witness first hand the fruits of their labor.
  
• I overheard NCOSE award winner, Eric Harrison, humbly admit that he sometimes thinks it's surreal that hundreds of classrooms are benefiting from increased access to computers using K12LTSP -- a project he helped develop.
  
• I listened to open conversations about open standards between Walter Bender, developer of open source software, Sugar, and students from Illinois Math and Science Academy who started the first high school chapter for OLPC.
  
• I got a sneak preview of the G-Phone which reminded me of of the authentic opportunity that projects like Google’s Summer of Code provide students to contribute to an open community as they develop authentic 21st century skills. “Let’s not stop with getting kids to work WITH open source… let’s get them to work ON open source development.” advocated Bryant Patten’s (director of National Center for Open Source in Education). “Can you think of any better assessment of the new ISTE NETS for Students than having a student contribute to an Open Source Project? “
[Photo credit: ISTE NETS for Students]


• I applauded when keynote speakers reminded us of the the fact that we need to develop the spirit in inquiry in today's students.
  
  - Alex Inman, advised teachers to “Be quiet. Stop talking and give your students the opportunity to to experience the power of inquiry. Let them DO something. Let them create”.
  
  - Chris Lehman, also stressed the importance of inquiry at his school, The Science Leadership Academy – “a project-based environment where the core values of inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation and reflection are emphasized in all classes”.
  
- Dr. David Thornburg, encouraged the use of Open Source (and Duct Tape) to promote creativity in K12 schools and challenged us to prepare the type of student who could repair a moon buggy with duct tape while wearing oven mitts.


• I was inspired by those in the trenches like Randy Orwin (band teacher turned network administrator) who’s passion for student learning drives every decision he makes, whether it be “hardware purchases, open source adoption, or filtering”. While some open source evangelists get bogged down trying to decide whether to spend their energy on convincing commercial product developers (like Inspiration) to release a Linux version of their product or convincing educators to adopt a “pure” open source alternative like Free Mind, Randy asks “what’s the best decision I can make for 5th graders right now.” This approach gives Randy more time to develop truly pragmatic educational implementation of the open source products he believes are truly best for student learning. I can’t wait to try the “Nanogong” module that adds audio accessibility to Moodle or the other tips Randy shared such as how to turn a Moodle branded page into a bright, exciting, colorful, entry point for first and second grade students.
  
• I learned a myriad of tips and tricks for supporting Open Office and other Open Source tools in real classrooms.
  
  Thank you , Randy, for the Open Office tip about adding clipart libraries such as (WP Clipart) and (Open Clip Art) to Galleries by categories instead of using the Insert Picture method. The ability to see clipart thumbnails and drag them into Open Office documents will remove one of my biggest barrier to Open Office adoption by teachers! And a big thanks for sharing Solveig Haugland's open office blog -- what a teacher friendly resource for anyone using Open Office.
  
  Also, thank you to Andy Mann and Laura Taylor for being willing to expand your session to include both free and open source software, but to also include lots of invaluable experience about which tools make the most difference in Real Classrooms with ReaL teachers. The enthusiasm and experience you shared from Indiana's InAccess is invaluable to us.

I think the diversity of the audience was one of the strengths of this conference. Yes, it offered plenty of ‘genuine geek time for those genius brains” to network and collaborate. I can’t wait to see what emerges from conversations between folks like those between Robert Arkiletian (developer of a K12LTSP app called FL-Teacher Tool) and Benoit St. Andres (from Revolution Linux). Watching developers collaborate to improve the tools we're excited to use in education has me looking forward to new products and updates.

But mostly this conference brought students, teachers, school leaders, network admins, and developers together to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education. And when visionaries like Australia's Donna Benjamin bring the spirit of The Cape Town Open Education Declaration and her incredible facilitation skills to such a group, then the mavens, connectors, and salesmen of Open Source in Education are tipping the scales. And perhaps the next step in this collaboration efforts the TRUST as described by our last keynote speaker, Dr. Brad Wheeler, "build the trust to get the leverage we need to enable greater things to happen on the edge." I am leaving this conference revitalized and hopeful that that our school and industry leaders and network administrators will continue to build the infrastructure and systems we need to leverage the great things that open source developers and teachers are making happen to continue the Open Minds Momentum.

Creative Commons in Education

Note: This post deals explicitly with US Law, but many of the same principles apply in other countries and international jurisdictions. The Creative Commons website allows users to select their jurisdiction from a drop-down menu in the upper right hand corner.

Copyright and Fair Use

Copyright has always been a sticky subject for educators. The demands of the classroom and the scarcity of resources available in schools have often been barriers to legally obtaining the right to use copyrighted media for teaching and learning. Today, the relative ease of access to greater and greater volumes of media available online makes it even more tempting for teachers to ignore copyright law and fair use guidelines. However, it is important for educators (and their students) to understand and respect the fair use guidelines. Luckily, there are new alternatives to traditional copyright that can help simplify the situation.

First, though, it is important to understand copyright law and the traditional fair use guidelines. Copyright is a deliberately grey area of the law, enforced through the subjective judgments of juries and judges in the court system. There are, however, four guidelines that the courts will consider when judging wether a particular case represents fair use or an infringement on the owner's copyright. Stanford University Libraries provide a detailed overview of fair use and of additional guidelines for educational fair use. A very clear discussion can also be found in the Wikipedia article on Fair Use.

Beyond the scope of these guidelines it is best for educators to contact the copyright holder and ask permission to use the desired material in the classroom. Conversely, if a teacher is posting original material (either self-produced or created by students) online, the teacher may want to give permission for others to use the material for educational purposes. (Otherwise, by default, any new creative work is automatically copyrighted.) Thankfully, it's no longer necessary to either ask for or give permission on a case-by-case basis... if you are using the Creative Commons license.

Creative Commons

Using the Creative Commons (CC) license, educators and students can "Share, reuse, and remix — legally." In essence:

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

Creative Commons allows authors and artists to allow certain uses of their work. It also allows others to easily identify work that they have permission to use. The Creative Commons website provides tools to accomplish both of these functions...

First, if you are creating instructional materials for your students, or you want them to access media to include in their own assignments and projects, click on "Find CC Licensed Work" in the upper right hand corner of the Creative Commons home page. This CC Search allows you to search Google, Yahoo, flickr (a photo sharing service), blip.tv (a video sharing service), and OWL Music for media that has been released under a Creative Commons license by its owner. You can even limit your search to works you are free to modify, adapt, or build upon so that you and your students can create new works (such as a class podcast) and release them online - legally. Note, though, that these search results will be no more or less filtered for appropriateness than they are at those services' home pages. You may want to supervise student use of this search tool.

Second, if you and your students are creating media (such as podcasts) that you are posting online, you might consider releasing it under a CC license yourself. (You may actually have to if you use CC licensed material that requires you to share-alike.) To get started, click on "License Your Work" in the upper right hand corner of the Creative Commons home page. Answer the few questions about how you want to share your work, what jurisdiction you're in, and the format of your work. The system will automatically choose the appropriate license (using combinations of four different conditions: Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works, and Share Alike).

Linktribution

All CC licenses require that users give attribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor. In the absence of specific directions, Alan Levine's concept of linktribution is a good rule of thumb to follow. When you give credit to an original author or artist, link back to the original work (if it is online) or to the original author's homepage (or blog) and be sure to include their name in the link. This not only provides attribution (and an easy way for others to find the original source), it is also motivating to the original author or artist because it increases their web traffic and improves their ranking in search engines.

Open Content

The CC license is not the only license that provides and protects "open" content. The General Public License has protected open source software and documents since 1989.

An increasing amount of software, media, and information are available online under these two licenses. For instance, the MIT Open CourseWare project is released under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, as is the ITM (see the bottom of this page). I now share all my workshop materials using an Attribution-ShareAlike license. And now you and your students can begin contributing your work to the greater good as well.

Note: Lucie deLaBruere wrote about the Creative Commons license in her post, Why Do People Share? on November 13, 2006. Also, I'm indebted to Hall Davidson of Discovery Education and Janet English of KOCE for my understanding of copyright law and fair use. Their presentations on the subject have been excellent - and entertaining.
Finally, I'd like to think Alan Levine and a reader called Rom for leaving comments on my previous post and thus inspiring this one.

Image credit: Creative Commons Spectrum of Rights.