This is another post in my series of posts showing gratitude and appreciation for members of the open education community. Today I’m going to focus onBCcampus OpenEd. It’s difficult to fully wrap one’s mind around all the things they do. Their cornerstone project is amazing BC Open Textbooks Collection. They do unique and valuable work in the Trades and OER. They publish an Open Education Accessibility Toolkit as well as other student and faculty advocacy toolkits. They publish numerous Guides, including guides to OER adaption, using Pressbooks, self-publishing, print-on-demand, and OER authoring. They run mailing lists, award mini-grants, and coordinate a Faculty Fellows Program. They regularly recognize the great work happening in their community with the Excellence in Open Education Award. They provide support for Zed Cred initiatives. They organize the annual Festival of Learning. ...

This is another post in my series of posts showing gratitude and appreciation for members of the open education community. Today I’m going to focus on ISKME and OER Commons. From their website: ISKME’s OER initiatives aim to grow a sustainable culture of sharing and continuous improvement among educators at all levels. In 2007, ISKME launched OER Commons, its digital public library and collaboration platform, informed by the organization’s pioneering efforts in knowledge management and educational innovation. OER Commons offers a comprehensive infrastructure for curriculum experts and instructors at all levels to identify high-quality OER and collaborate around their adaptation, evaluation, and use to address the needs of teachers and learners. ...

This is another post in my series of posts showing gratitude and appreciation for members of the open education community. Today I’m going to focus on Creative Commons. From their website: Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation. Our vision is nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Internet — universal access to research and education, full participation in culture — to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity. ...

This is another post in my series of posts showing gratitude and appreciation for members of the open education community. Today I’m going to focus on OpenStax. From their website: OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University, and it’s our mission to improve student access to education. Our first openly licensed college textbook was published in 2012, and our library since scaled to more than 20 books for college and AP courses used by hundreds of thousands of students. Our adaptive learning technology, designed to improve learning outcomes through personalized educational paths, is being piloted in college courses across the country. Through our partnerships with philanthropic foundations and our alliance with other educational resource companies, OpenStax is breaking down the most common barriers to learning and empowering students and instructors to succeed. ...

This is the first in my series of posts showing gratitude and appreciation for members of the open education community. Today I’m going to focus on SPARC. From their website: SPARC is a global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education. SPARC empowers people to solve big problems and make new discoveries through the adoption of policies and practices that advance Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education. ...

My daughter is on a mission to bring some positivity to her little corner of the internet. I recognize that I’m biased, but I’m constantly impressed by how she proactively looks for positive and uplifting things to post. Like this weekend: [caption id=“attachment_5549” align=“aligncenter” width=“660”] spring has just arrived bringing new life and new opportunities. now’s the time to reevaluate, change and become something better[/caption] She’s right. It is a wonderful time to contemplate new beginnings, making changes, and becoming something better. As I’ve pondered her challenge, I’ve recognized that something I can definitely do better at is showing gratitude to members of the open education community. ...

I recently wrote about the CARE Framework. At the very beginning of that post I warned that while it began as a response to the framework, it wandered into quite a bit of other territory. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not my clearest piece of writing. I’m a firm believer in the release early, release often approach, and this release may have been too early. Based on readers’ feedback I see that I probably should have broken that post into three pieces - one dealing explicitly with the framework, a second dealing with the issue of free-riding in open education, and a third dealing with broader concerns about the open education community. I’ll correct that mistake here by keeping this post focused on the framework and hopefully being clearer than I was able to be the first time around. I’ll take up the other issues from my earlier post in separate follow ups. ...

Stephen shared some thoughts this morning on a recent post of mine. I want to clarify the underlying source of our primary disagreement. Stephen writes: Wiley’s second point is like saying ‘we can’t destroy it, no matter how we use it, because it’s non rivilrous [sic]’. But openness can be destroyed; I have discussed the phenomenon of ‘conversion’ in the past, and it is this (and not some unthinking prejeduce) that causes me to distrust commercial publishers and other bad actors. ...

After reader feedback made it clear that this post was unclear, I am updating it. Please see https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/5528. The original text is below for archival purposes. NOTE: I began this post with the intention of writing about the framework. Some of it has managed to be, in fact, focused on the framework. However, it also includes several other thoughts that were prompted by my study of the framework, but that aren’t direct responses to the framework per se_. Apologies in advance for a post that meanders even more than usual._ The CARE Framework was released earlier this week by Lisa Petrides, Doug Levin, and Eddie Watson. It’s an important contribution to important conversations and is worth taking time to read carefully and respond to thoughtfully. As I hope will become evident as you scroll down, I’ve spent a lot of time reading and responding because I think the framework has a lot of potential. We all owe Lisa, Doug, and Eddie for a great piece of work. I will state right up front that it is entirely possible that in my reading of the framework I have misinterpreted the authors’ intentions or meanings. If I have done so, I apologize in advance and sincerely hope they will correct me. ...

tl;dr - If a resource is licensed in a way that grants you permission to engage in the 5R activities, and grants you those permissions for free, it’s an open educational resource (OER) - no matter where you find it or how it’s being used. I have an obsession with definitions. It’s been true for decades. It manifest first with learning objects in the late 1990s, and then with open content and open educational resources (aka, learning objects with an open license) in the early 2000s. Apparently I’ve been unable to move on. ...