OpenEd Wk 7 *** Licensing Open Education Resources

Perhaps more than any other issue of this course, I am still wrestling with this one. I still feel like a novice and I am interested to discuss this issue with others in the course and with folks in the field where I work (e.g. developing countries in Asia and Africa).

I believe that the Creative Commons ShareAlike clause is mostly sufficient for the protections that authors want to secure when sharing educational content. However, I think that there are challenges with the CC License because of issues of compatibility. If only 33% of the content can be remixed, there are serious limitations hampering the Open Education Movement. It doesn't make sense that we cannot currently incorporate Wikipedia content into OCW and Open Content modules.

We need to wrap our heads around the ways that we can move more content into a more fully OPEN movement and not just a "Somewhat-Open" Education Movement. I believe this is most easily solved by expanding the designation of "public domain" - which is not currently a license, but rather a declaration. In abstract, I agree with Wiley's interest to privilege people over content because people are the end, not the content as the end.

However, I can also see the dangers of "privileging people" when those people are selfish and money-mongering, seeking to privilege themselves over the society. I can see that it may be better to privilege the content instead of the people in order that more people have access to the content.

I think everyone agrees that the end goal is to privilege open learning (in whatever form that happens) and to eliminate barriers of cost and inaccessibility. Would that we could inspire those who seek personal gain by copyrighting and fencing off content to join the freedom camp and share resources freely in order that the greatest number of people could benefit.

Perhaps we need more full-time proselyters for and testimony meetings on open education?

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