January 2009

OPEN SOURCE DOES NOT MEAN FREE

Posted by karen on January 29, 2009 in Uncategorized

I just went to the web site of a large ed tech conference and was very happy to see a special promotion for all the Open Source activities they are featuring at their conference.

I was less excited to see that many of the sessions they were highlighting as a part of this were not Open Source at all, but instead were focused on Web 2.0. These included UStream, Voice Thread, Google Docs, Delicious, and a variety of other Web 2.0 apps.

OPEN SOURCE DOES NOT MEAN FREE. Open Source means FREE and OPEN.  The difference is immense.

Tags: open | free | web 2.0 | open source
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What You Can Do – #4

Posted by karen on January 7, 2009 in Uncategorized

#4 – Be knowledgeable about copyright, what is legal and what is not, and what your open options are.

Many people in education play pretty loose with copyright rules, figuring that “educational use” gives them the right to do whatever they want with copyrighted property. While everyone has to make their own choices about this, certainly we should make sure our students know what is legal and practice this. This is an important 21st century skill that all students need.

Here are some good resources for brushing up on copyright and various open licensed content options:

Copyright basics

The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

Learn More About Creative Commons

About Open Ed

(This is part of an on-going series on what you can do to help grow the OER movement.)

Tags: what_you_can_do | copyright | creative commons
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