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Editorial Projects in Education reports
To promote wider use of open educational resources by states and schools, the U.S. Department of Education proposed [October 29] a new regulation that would require any new intellectual property developed with grant funds from the department to be openly licensed.
That would make such materials available for free use, revision, and sharing by anyone. It would also represent a big, federally supported step away from the textbook publishing industry, long a backbone of K-12 education in the U.S.
[...] The announcement is just one part of the department's new #GoOpen campaign. At an Open Education Symposium being hosted [October 29] in Washington by the department and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, school districts, and companies pledged to support the new drive for [Open Educational Resources] (OER).
A group of 10 districts in California, Delaware, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin, as well as Department of Defense schools, are pledging to replace at least one textbook with openly licensed educational resources within the next year. So-called "Ambassador Districts" that already use OER--including Virginia's Chesterfield County schools and Pennsylvania's Upper Perkiomen schools--also committed help other districts make similar moves.
[...] The American Association of Publishers, and the software industry association that represents education technology companies, responded to the announcement with reservations.
[...] The department's efforts are just the latest step in a growing trend toward open educational content. Efforts in the U.S. Senate to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act have included language that would encourage schools to use OER, and adaptive-learning company Knewton recently launched a new platform to bring its technology to the open-content marketplace. States such as New York have robust existing initiatives to develop and share open content, and last spring, California-based nonprofit the Learning Accelerator announced contracts with 10 companies to develop open materials for 12 states.
The Alexandria (Virginia) News has more names and more specifics.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2015, @12:47AM
Use only free software. Teaching students to use proprietary software only encourages them to be slaves for life, and that is not something schools should encourage. Schools should stand for education and independence, not subservience to corporate overlords who keep the inner workings of their software a secret.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday November 17 2015, @01:25AM
Yes! 3 thumbs up! (ermmm... 3 huh.... ermmmm....)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday November 17 2015, @07:52AM
Zaphod [wikipedia.org]? Is that you?
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2015, @05:14AM
And like knowledge, software can be copied, instantly, perfectly and at no cost.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday November 17 2015, @01:24PM
> Schools should stand for education and independence, not subservience to corporate overlords who keep the inner workings of their software a secret.
Are you sure you're using a copy of the US Approved Citizen Dictionary (c)? Mine's is the other way around.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2015, @07:11PM
"An Open Letter to All Grantmakers and Donors On Copyright And Patent Policy In a Post-Scarcity Society"
http://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html [pdfernhout.net]
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations."
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday November 17 2015, @01:18AM
Two for gewg_ today about open textbooks in education. Both of which are good finds.
You financing someone's an education gewg_ ? This topic seems to have struck a chord with you.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday November 17 2015, @01:27AM
You got the Daily Double!
(It struck a chord with more than just THAT 'g' named person).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2015, @02:24AM
I'll readily admit that I like that trend in education--but the temporal proximity of the 2 postings was just a happy coincidence.
I had them both in my personal queue when I was all caught up on my surfing/reading and I saw that the S/N queue was low.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2015, @02:27AM
The original dept line was
from the !proprietary dept.
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 17 2015, @03:52AM
The concept of "intellectual property" is all about not being able to know things until you've paid for them. The concept of "education" is all about knowing as much as possible. So in order for the "intellectual property" types to get what they want, which is a gatekeeper fee any time somebody accesses whatever information they "own", they have to promote ignorance.
For example, book publishers *hate* libraries, particularly public libraries. Why? Because instead of selling a separate copy of the book for everybody who wants to read it, the library buys a few copies and everybody who wants to read it can do so, which means the publisher gets 3 sales instead of 30. And they make things even worse by having concepts like inter-library loan, where you can get books from libraries all over the place.
It is, of course, a constant battle to add ever more oppression to avoid the simple truth that the price of information tends towards 0. And if you don't believe me on how worthless information is, consider how long it takes for a rumor to spread.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday November 17 2015, @08:48AM
I sympathize with the sentiment, but not with the stated facts, and I dislike the term "intellectual property" because it is not focused enough for an in-depths discussion due to mixing entirely different concepts like copyright and patents. Patents are freely readable, so not blocking knowledge. Just blocking progress because people are not allowed to apply the discovered ideas on a wider scale.
Copyrighted works are by nature of course not freely available, but the most notorious copyright-defenders are from the entertainment industry in Hollywood, and their products are only of very limited value for learning. School- and other educational books only make a tiny fraction of copyrighted works.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2015, @05:55AM
Public education curriculum has been controlled by the triopoly of Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton-Mifflin for far too long.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Tuesday November 17 2015, @03:51PM
By ensuring that their message doesn't start with any erroneously placed punctuation.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.