Archive: School of Open

The School of Open is a collaboration between Creative Commons and P2PU (Peer 2 Peer University). Its aim is to provide easily digestible educational exercises, resources, and professional development courses that help individuals and institutions learn about and employ open tools, such as the CC licenses.

Announcements

• Help us build a School of Open
• School of Open Virtual Sprint

Get Involved

• Sign up for Announcements
• Join the Discussion
• Follow everything and anything to do with the School of Open at the P2PU blog
• Follow the #schoolofopen hashtag on social media

Create courses

• Test and give feedback on a School of Open course
• Have an idea for a course? Add it to the pad and shoot a note to the discussion list to find others to build it with you. Start creating!

Core documents

Our core documents are evolving and open for improvement/feedback:

• Review our draft philosophy, aka description for a future School of Open /about page. Suggest improvements at the pad.
• Review our draft guidelines, helpful for determining what is and is not a School of Open course, but also ideally useful to walk through for new “open” course creators. Give us feedback at the pad.

Why is CC doing this?

• Universal access to and participation in research, education, and culture is made possible by openness, but not enough people know what it means or how to take advantage of it. One solution: peer learning on what “open” means and how it applies to you, powered by mentors and learners like you, self-organized into study groups which themselves leverage existing “open” learning materials. We imagine artists, educators, learners, scientists, archivists, and other creators improving their fields via the use of open tools and materials. Eventually, we’d like to offer certification around “open” skills that result in the spread of openness.
• The CC community has often expressed a need for more community/communications support regarding best practices, explanatory materials, help generally in convincing entities (whether GLAMs, IGOs, governments) to use CC and other open tools. The School of Open is a great place for this.
• Community members have also expressed priorities regarding open advocacy and policy activities. The School of Open could be one venue for open advocates to work together to develop and provide these resources.
• In regards to content that Creative Commons itself will develop: We want to provide better education around CC tools, and we would love community appropriation and adaptation/translation of these resources.

Working with P2PU

School of Open leverages P2PU’s active peer learning platform for developing courses, challenges, and study groups. The P2PU community has been a part of the open education movement since 2009 and promoted openness to the education sector. P2PU ran a number of successful courses on licensing for educators, which will become part of the School of Open. All peer-produced resources on p2pu.org are defaulted under CC BY-SA, the same license as Wikipedia.

School of Open is hosted on the P2PU platform, but courses will also link out to other websites and use a variety of social media tools. We want people to use (open) tools they are already comfortable with. The School of Open is the umbrella under which all of these activities are to take place, a landing spot for those who want get involved but follow different tracks.

Multiple Languages

You should feel free to develop materials in your native language, especially since we want education around openness to reach all cultures and sectors of society. Depending on interest/demand, the P2PU platform may incorporate additional languages (current user interface already translated into Spanish, Swedish, and Mandarin), or as mentioned above link out to the tools/resources that are being run in your language.

Roadmap

• School of Open working meeting (July 2012): Part P2PU's month-long pop-up office in Berlin. Project Manager and P2PU community members start mapping and developing some key components of the School over two weeks. Events: Virtual sprint (24 July), School of Open challenges workshop (26 July), Open Web Challenges Hackjam w/Mozilla (28 July).
• CC Affiliate Regional Meetings (various/ongoing): Discussion and/or workshop on School of Open at these meetings (led by CC’s Global Network Manager) to catalyze affiliate involvement.
• Open Knowledge Festival (September 2012): OKFestival’s Open Research and Education track includes an “Open Peer Learning: School of Open and School of Data” workshop to engage the OKFN, CC, and European open communities. It will take place right before the CC Europe regional meeting to allow CC affiliates to participate.
• Convening on the Open Policy Institute and School of Open (October 2012): School of Open and Open Policy Institute convening to get key funders and representatives from the various “open” sectors on board and involved. CC is organizing and hosting all logistics and content of this meeting.
• 2012 Mozilla Festival: Making, Freedom, and the Web (November 2012): Thanks to the success of the School of Open workshops in Berlin, Mozilla has invited us to lead a similar workshop at their annual festival in London. This will be an optimal time to debut progress from Berlin through the October meeting.