Education

Many teachers are amazed by the potential of the internet to transform education, but are unsure of how to proceed through the murky waters of copyright law. At the same time, many of the most exciting uses of Creative Commons licences are made by educators.  Across the world, teachers and professors are bypassing conventional copyright and using materials licensed under Creative Commons.

Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand works with the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement to license textbooks, courses and lesson plans, and to allow kiwi teachers to share and customise a growing range of digital and print resources.

By joining the OER movement, teachers can reuse, remix and share their own lesson plans and courses under Creative Commons licences. In this way, they can add to the common store of educational resources and collaborate with teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world.

WikiEducator

WikiEducator is a growing community of educators interested in developing and sharing open content. Based at Dunedin’s Otago Polytechnic, WikiEducator can help you plan, develop and license open education resources. Wikieducator runs a range of free online workshops, in which teachers from around the world learn how to use OER materials in their classrooms and share their own OER materials with the global OER community.

 

 Open Educational Resoures Foundation

The Open Educational Resources (OER) Foundation helps educators and educational institutions to teach and learn using the practices of open education. The OER Foundation mentors teachers, consults with institutions and provides free online workshops for teachers across the world. Members of OER include Otago Polytechnic, Queensland University of Technology, Ako Aotearoa and UNESCO.

 

Warrington School

Warrington School is a small primary school in Otago’s Blueskin Bay. With five teachers and around fifty students, Warrington has embraced both open source software and Creative Commons licences. As Warrington Principal Nathan Parker puts it, “When I look outside at other schools, I think, why aren’t you doing this?” Find the full case study for Warrington School here.

 

Albany Senior High School

Albany Senior High School is one of the first school’s in New Zealand to adopt a Creative Commons policy, which applies a New Zealand Attribution 3.0 Creative Commons licence to all teaching materials. The school is also an open source champion, winning the education section of the 2010 New Zealand Open Source Awards.  As Deputy Principal Mark Osbourne puts it, quoting David Wiley, “Without sharing, there is no education.” Find the full case study for Albany Senior High School here.

 

Sarah Stewart

Sarah Stewart is a nurse, midwife, educator and researcher who works with networked learning, eLearning and social media. Her website is a valuable resource for anyone interested in health education and development, social networking and open access. All of the resources Sarah creates are licensed as Creative Commons-Attribution. As she puts it, “I believe CC will really enhance and encourage international communication, collaboration, research and cooperation.”

 

More OER and Creative Commons Projects

Many of the case studies in Open Educational Resources cross territorial borders. See the case studies at Creative Commons International for more examples of OER.

Get Involved

To learn more about OER and Creative Commons, and to start making and using OER resources:

Creative Commons Policies in Schools

Is your school working towards adopting a Creative Commons policy? Check out the list of schools joining the movements for Creative Commons and OER and read our Guide to Creative Commons Policies in Schools. Add your school to the list, and keep Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand updated on your progress!

Email us at admin@creativecommons.org.nz

Resources