More About Creative Commons

What is Creative Commons?

Sources

Creative Commons. (2024). Creative Commons Certificate Course for Educators, Academic Librarians, and Open Culture. Unit 1: What is Creative Commons?. https://certificates.creativecommons.org/cccertedu/

Science and Media Museum. (2020, December 3). A Short History of The Internet. Retrieved Feb. 2, 2024 from https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/short-history-internet

Creative Commons is More Than a Set of Licenses

The Creative Commons Certificate Course is an ideal way to gain expertise in open licenses while experiencing open pedagogy.

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Educational Resources (OER) "describe any copyrightable work that is either 

(Excerpt from Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources, 

written by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license 

at http://opencontent.org/definition/.)

Why Share Resources Under an Open License?

David Wiley and Cable Green are prominent scholars in Open Education. The points below are excerpted directly from their 2012 chapter on Openness. They present Open Education as an innovative, responsive, and transformative practice:

© 2012 David Wiley and Cable Green.

Ch. 6 Why Openness in Education, by David Wiley and Cable Green Gamechangers. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Open Education

The OpenSource.com project (Red Hat, 2022), which raises awareness and builds community around open practices across many areas of life, offers this introduction to Open Education:

Open education is a philosophy about the way people should produce, share, and build on knowledge. Proponents of open education believe everyone in the world should have access to high-quality educational experiences and resources, and they work to eliminate barriers to this goal. Such barriers might include high monetary costs, outdated or obsolete materials, and legal mechanisms that prevent collaboration among scholars and educators.

Promoting collaboration is central to open education. As the Open Education Consortium says: "sharing is probably the most basic characteristic of education: education is sharing knowledge, insights and information with others, upon which new knowledge, skills, ideas and understanding can be built."

What is Open Education? by Red Hat, Inc. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Copyright ©2022 Red Hat, Inc.

How Open Practice Supports Teacher Professional Growth

Open Education practices benefit students through increased availability of quality learning materials, but they also significantly benefit and demonstrate teacher professional growth:

How Open Practice Connects to the Alberta Teaching Quality Standard:

#2 Engaging in Career-Long Learning 

a-collaborating with other teachers to build personal and collective professional capacities and expertise; 

f- maintaining an awareness of emerging technologies to enhance knowledge and inform practice.

#3 Demonstrating a Professional Body of Knowledge

A teacher applies a current and comprehensive repertoire of effective planning, instruction, and assessment practices to meet the learning needs of every student. 


# 6 Adhering to Legal Frameworks and Policies 

a. maintaining an awareness of, and responding in accordance with, requirements authorized under the Education Act and other relevant legislation.

b. engaging in practices consistent with policies and procedures established by the school authority

What Opportunities Does K-12 OER Offer in Alberta?

Leverage Communities of Practice

Innovation through collaboration is evident throughout the province. Open licensing may be the first step in connecting high quality, teacher-created lesson material to more AB teachers for the benefit of all students.


Claim a Greater Role in Curriculum Development and Implementation

Thousands of Alberta teachers enact the same provincially mandated standards daily, and their collective expertise is formidable. A shared effort to evaluate, develop and distribute accessible, flexible, teaching/learning resources is in the interest of a strong public education system where teacher voice and expertise is valued.


Build Professional Capacity 

The OER emphasis on collaborative, continuous improvement aligns with the Alberta Teaching Quality Standard Competency #2: Engaging in Career-Long Learning. Supporting Teachers in accessing and developing OERs also aligns with the Alberta Leadership Quality Standards (LQS) #4 Leading a Learning Community and #6 Providing Instructional Leadership.

OER are situated within the broader construct of Open Pedagogy. Attributes of open pedagogy (as described by Bronwyn Hegarty, 2015) align with the way many communities of educators already work. 

Eight Attributes of Open Pedagogy-PDF is from Ontario Colleges OER Toolkit and is their adaptation of Eight attributes of Open Pedagogy, by Bronwyn Hegarty, based on Conole (2013), and licensed under CC-BY-3.0.

References

Alberta Education. (2020). Teaching quality standard. Alberta Education. Edmonton, AB. https://open.alberta.ca/publications/teaching-quality-standard-2020#summary

Hegarty, B. (2015). Attributes of Open Pedagogy: A Model for Using Open Educational Resources. Educational Technology. July– August. 3 - 13.

Ret Hat Inc. (2022). What is open source? OpenSource.com. https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-source

Wiley, D. & Green, C. (2012). Why openess in education? In  Oblinger, D.G., (Ed). Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies (pp. 81-90) . Educause.