OERNZ/Sharing Open Education Resources - Information Sheet

= Sharing Open Education Resources - Information Sheet =

Open Educational Resources (OER) are about being part of a sharing, exchanging and learning education community.

What are Open Educational Resources?
OER’s are digital materials used in teaching, learning and research that allow educators to reuse, redistribute, revise and remix resources.

What are New Zealand Creative Commons Licences?
The New Zealand government advocates the use of Creative Commons (CC) licences for the purpose of open sharing. The CC licences are free to use, and are based on New Zealand legislation. There are six types of licences but the two that allow for the most open use are CC Attribution 3.0 New Zealand and CC Attribution- Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand.

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand (CC BY) means that someone reusing a resource attributes the original creator and allows for further alterations.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand (CC BY-SA) means that you attribute the work in a manner specified by the licenser and when you make alteration to this resource, you redistribute under the same or compatible licence.

Read more about Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/nz.

How can my school share Open Educational Resources?

 * You can share OERs by applying an open licence, such as a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand, or CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand licence, to your resources which grants others the freedom to use, modify, translate and even improve the material and then in turn share the new versions.
 * You can encourage your school to adopt Our School Uses New Zealand Creative Commons Policy.
 * By applying (i.e. signing ‘Our School Uses New Zealand Creative Commons Policy’) your school will promote reuse of OER.

Four easy steps to share your Open Educational Resources

 * 1) First: Talk to your Board of Trustees and have your Principal sign the ‘Our School Uses Creative Commons Policy’ for your schools resources to be licensed openly and freely.
 * 2) Consider: The format you release your resource in, to the greatest extent practicable, using open standards and open file formats.
 * 3) Agree: The particular type of licence you would like to apply for reuse to the resource, using Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand as default, unless otherwise needed.
 * 4) Lastly: Share Your Resources.

For more information and support around OER
Open educational resources, free to use, share, change and share again are an exciting opportunity for your school in the future.

For further information or to get more involved in the open educational resource community, please visit http://wikieducator.org/OERNZ or join the discussion group on http://groups.google.co.nz/group/oernz

Acknowledgements
OERNZ acknowledges the following contributors in the development of this draft:


 * Otago Polytechnic's open intellectual property policy
 * Wayne Mackintosh
 * Hana Ruth
 * Paul Seiler
 * Trevor Storr
 * Carin Sundstedt