Budapest Open Access Initiative
The Budapest Open Access Initiative arises from a meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Foundation on December 1-2, 2001. The purpose of the meeting was to accelerate progress in the international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the internet. The result is the Budapest Open Access Initiative.
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration arises from a meeting convened in Cape Town in September 2007. The aim of this meeting was to accelerate efforts to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education. Convened by the Open Society Institute and the Shuttleworth Foundation, the meeting gathered participants with many points of view from many nations. This group discussed ways to broaden and deepen their open education efforts by working together. The first concrete outcome of this meeting is the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. It is at once a statement of principle, a statement of strategy and a statement of commitment. It meant to spark dialogue, to inspire action and to help the open education movement grow.
The Swansea Declaration on Open Edutainment
David Berry gives a typically British/Welsh view of the open source movement. The Swansea Declaration aims ‘to encourage open education resources, the expansion of the commons in educational materials and the freeing of easy to swap content on licenses that allow major American software corporations to build huge repositories of the World’s freely available material. Corporations can then easily wrapper it with services, advertising and so on making huge profits.’ Read on…!
Open Educational Resources that can be accessed on OER Commons are created, developed, housed, and maintained through institutions, collections, and authors that are partnering with OER Commons. In addition, OER Commons is actively engaged in encouraging institutions, archives, and creators to open their educational resources for all to use, with appropriate and well-defined conditions of use and re-use. OER Commons is created and produced by ISKME, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education.
The Public Knowledge Project operates through a partnership among the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, the Simon Fraser University Library, and the School of Education at Stanford University. It is an active player in the open access movement, as it provides the leading open source software for journal and conference management and publishing.
Connexions is a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute:
* authors create and collaborate
* instructors rapidly build and share custom collections
* learners find and explore content
Their Content Commons contains educational materials for everyone — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons “attribution” license.
Video on Connexions: Rice University professor Richard Baraniuk explains the vision behind Connexions, his open-source, online education system. It cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share and modify course materials freely, anywhere in the world.
onewisdom FreeOnlineEducationalSites has a large number of sources for open content focused mainly on sites in the USA. It is run by Christopher D. Sessums, a doctoral student at the University of Florida.
The essential site for anyone wanting to create, share, make available or use free educational materials. As its site says ‘Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright.’
Dr. Tony Bates is the author of eleven books in the field of online learning and distance education. He has provided consulting services specializing in training in the planning and management of online learning and distance education, working with over 40 organizations in 25 countries. Tony is a Research Associate with Contact North | Contact Nord, Ontario’s Distance Education & Training Network.