User:Nicholas/Nicholas Kimolo My Scratch Pad

=Open Educational Resources and Copyleft=

There are many resources available online. However teachers need to be aware of the usage rights associated with such resources. Usage rights determine how a teacher will use the resource(s) considering whether the teacher can be able to customise and share the resource with his/her students.

In this unit you will learn:


 * 1) About the philosophy of Open Educational Resources (Creative Commons Licensing, searching for and reusing OERs)
 * 2) Using the internet to search for various audio and video resources that they can use from popular OER sites
 * 3) Some of the key issues that educational institutions will continue to face is the challenge of globalization and connected word. Educational practitioners are being forced to operate in an environment where there is increase in student numbers but little or no increase in resources in supporting infrastructure



Though with these challenges there are major opportunities. Some of these opportunities include great improvement in communication infrastructure, lower bandwidth costs in many developing countries and greater collaboration and demand for access to TVET institutions and other educational institutions.

=What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)=

Definition 1 - UNESCO
Open educational resources as defined by UNESCO as Web-based materials offered freely and openly for use and reuse in teaching, learning and research. These materials are only ''open if they are released under an open license. They include any tool, material or technique used to'' support access to knowledge. OERs comprises of:
 * 1) Open Course Content
 * 2) Open Source development tools
 * 3) Open standards and licensing tools

Definition 2 - William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
'''OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property licence that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge '''

Definition 3 – Neil Butcher, 2010
Educational resources that are freely available for use by educators and learners, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees

OER essentially mean (WikiEducator):

Just as Open Source Software, they maintain the essential freedoms
 * that access to open content (including metadata) is provided in a free manner for educational institutions, content services, and the end-users such as teachers, students and lifelong learners;
 * that the content is liberally licensed for re-use in educational activities, favourable free from restrictions to modify, combine and repurpose the content; consequently, that the content should ideally be designed for easy re-use in that open content standards and formats are being employed;
 * that for educational systems/tools software is used for which the source code is available (i.e. Open Source software) and that there are open Application Programming Interfaces (open APIs) and authorisations to re-use Web-based services as well as resources."

OERs offers the following benefits to TVET teachers and learners:


 * Offer a broader range of subjects and topics to choose from and allow for more flexibility in choosing material for teaching and learning (i.e. content that can be easily modified and integrated in course material);
 * Save time and effort through reusing resources for which Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)/copyright issues have already been resolved;
 * Allow for engaging teachers in leveraging the educational value of resources through providing their own personal assessments, lessons learned and suggestions for improvements;
 * Provide learning communities such as groups of teachers and learners with easy-to-use tools to set up collaborative learning environments (e.g. group Wikis or Weblogs, social networking, content feeds, etc.);
 * Promote user-centred approaches in education and lifelong learning; users not only consume educational content but develop their own ePortfolios, and share study results and experiences with peers."

=Type of IP= Trademarks: This is a word or symbol used by manufacturers to identify goods.
 * 1) Copyrights and Licenses are part of intellectual property measures that are generally applied by law to protect creative works that have economic value. They are generally of three types:
 * 2) Patents: A legal protection granted by the government offering an exclusive right to make, use and sell an invention for a specific period—20 years in many African countries.
 * 3) Copyrights: A legal protection granted by the government offering an exclusive privilege to authors to reproduce, distribute, perform, or display their creative works.

Relevance of IP
Intellectual property becomes popular with technology as technology can enhance and or diminish the value of an intellectual property which means ….

In considering whether to use a resource or not, teachers need to be aware of the principle of fair use. This principle states that one should not deprive revenue to the creator of a particular intellectual property item and should advance the cause of learning. There are four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use of a copyrighted work is fair:


 * Purpose and character of the use - (non profit educational use vs. commercial purposes)‏
 * Nature of the copyrighted work
 * Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the work as a whole
 * Effect of the use upon potential market for value of the work.

Generally, the use of materials for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research are considered fair use. It is important also to consider the purpose, nature, amount and substantiality, and the effect of the use on potential value of work.

Teachers can copy materials that have been copyrighted if they are using the materials for their own scholarly research, in teaching, or preparing to teach a class. Multiple copies (one copy per student in a course) can be made if it meets the criteria of brevity, spontaneity, and cumulative effect and if each copy contains a notice of copyright. Isn’t there a limit to the % of a publication?

=Alternatives to Copyrights= There are also alternatives to copyrights. They may be in the form of:

Licenses
Licenses – Creators can retain copyright but allow people to use content under certain terms. For example, the copyright can give TVET institutions or schools to use content for free and without permission. Example: (http://www.creativecommons.org/)‏ Open License – Others can use but must credit original source. Further, any version that others create must also have the open license and be useable by others as well. Example: (http://www.wikipedia.org/).

Open Licenses
There are a range of Open Licences for content. The most commonly used are the Creative Commons (CC) licences. This section of the module will briefly introduce you to Open Licences. To get an idea how many people/issues are involved in Open Licences, watch this video is a visual representation of the diverse culture that subscribe to open licences. You may click on this link (http://creativecommons.org/videos/a-shared-culture ). Many institutions are using OER. Please visit this link to read more on institutions that are using OER.

Internal Links

 * 1) Florian Kahema Paper on OER
 * 2) Nicholas Kimolo OER Research