The ACMI has spent over 20 years delivering dynamic screen literacy programs that create deep and engaging learning spaces for young people to be active producers of screen content. ACMI’s Generator project was initiated as a concerted effort by the Centre to address changes in teaching screen media. It is the outcome of funding from the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to develop premium content for the FUSE Portal, a State-funded repository of content and resources to help teachers Find, Use and Share quality Education resources. To further that aim, ACMI looked to CC.

“One of the significant impediments for both students and teachers is the myriad of rights encountered with digital content and confusion around if and how it can be used,” Brett McLennan, Screen Education Manager at ACMI explained, ”Creative Commons provided ACMI with a solution for the Free Media Library that not only reflected emergent practice in online rights management but significantly provided students with a real world context rather than a protected sandpit to create use and share digital assets.”

Credits—Photo: ‘Chunky‘ by Yun Huang Yong, CC BY 2.0 Generic.

From the COFA Online portal:

Copyright and creative commons is particularly important in the educational context where content is often copied, shared, reused and remixed by both teachers and students in the learning and teaching process. This episode explains the basics of creative commons. We examine some of the different license terms and combinations, and offer some insights into which might be better suited for educational purposes. We also discuss how to generate your own creative commons license and what to do when your work is not attributed by others.

On top of the video, COFA has also published a handy fact sheet about CC:

Credits—Photo: create environments for learning doodle‘ by Inha Leex Hale, CC BY 2.0 Generic.

While we love the new 2.0 functionality, probably the most exciting addition (as far as ccAustralia is concerned anyway :p) is the ability to search for Pool content published under a Creative Commons licence. A much-awaited addition, users can now use the advanced search to find CC-licensed content by keyword using a drop-down menu that will return results under a specific type of CC licence. Better still is the ability to limit your results further by designating the type of media you’re looking for too!

To celebrate the relaunch, ccAustralia and a number of other organisations have partnered with Pool on possibly the most ambitious project Pool has every orchestrated: My Tribe. Here’s the project description from the Pool site:

My pack, my posse, my people, my network, my mob, my family – my tribe…

As we become global citizens linked through networked knowledge communities it’s time to re-examine ideas of community, identity, kinship, connection and self.

In the flesh or via technology the groups we belong to form across intersecting fault-lines in our lives – blood, place, interest, time, happenstance and more. Enmeshed with our sense of self, those we belong to and who belong to us construct, deconstruct, teach, reflect, know or perhaps don’t know us at all.

Explored subjectively or objectively the theme of ‘my tribe’ taps into mythmaking and deep traditions of storytelling along with the rationality of survival and darker implications of drawing a line in the sand between ‘us’ and ‘them’ …

With it’s multiple projects, galleries and exhibition opportunities, My Tribe is as multi-faceted as identity itself. My Tribe includes a number of projects including:

• My Tribe: Sub-cultures;
• My Tribe: Talking difference;
• My Tribe: The Night Air;
• My Tribe: misfits, outsiders and loners; and
• My Tripe: MeidagorA (a La Trobe University group).

There is also a free-form space for users to create their own My Tribe groups. Stay tuned for more information about a future My Tribe project involving us, ABC Pool and the International Urban Screens Association.

As I am sure many of you are aware, ccAustraila has had a long history with ABC Pool. We’re just as excited as the Pool team is to see the newest iteration of the project go live. A new domain, a new logo, a new look – but at it’s heart, ABC Pool is still one of the most innovative, engaging and collaborative projects the ABC has to offer.

Credits—Photo: Screenshot of ABC Pool website. Incorporates ‘Kiss me where?‘ by Kate Gauld, CC BY-NC 3.0 Unported.

Jess and I received a number of really interesting submission exploring the question we posed in the abstract: why open? We open the issue with an interview with Esther Wojcicki, Vice-Chair of Creative Commons,  to discuss the importance of teaching ‘open’ in schools. Rachel Cobcroft follows with an reflection on the development of the international Creative Commons Case Studies initiative. Cobcroft’s piece examines the progress of open content licensing; identifies models of implementation and licensing trends across industry sectors as diverse as music, government, wikis and fashion; and, perhaps most importantly, explores individual motivations for the adoption of open philosophies.

Cheryl Foong drills down into some of those motivations. Her article asks the question can open philosophies go hand in hand with commercial gain? Drawing on examples of adoption of Creative Commons licensing by content creators and intermediaries, Foong concludes that, if used wisely, the open licensing scheme can be a useful tool for those creators who wish to circumvent traditional distribution channels.

Following, Alexandra Crosby and Ferdiansyah Thajib explore notions of openness through the lens of video activism in Indonesia. They argue that in a world where attribution is the new currency open licensing is an improvement on the models, but there is not yet a solution for the problems of copyright management that fits the Indonesian context.

The final paper by Peter Jakobsson examines the relationship between the growing trend, and rhetoric, of cooperation on the ‘social web’ and the often undervalued importance of competition in the same field. In doing so, he argues that both competition and collaboration are not only valuable but central to the new forms and platforms of cultural production.

Please take a look at the issue here.

Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Untitled‘ by pheezy, CC BY 2.0 Generic.

Although currently accredited is not available across the full suite of courses, P2PU is working on gaining full accreditation for all its courseware. P2PU offers fantastic programs which are run by passionate and dedicated volunteers who just want to ensure that you are receiving top quality educational service.  One such course that is currently being offered is Copyright 4 Educators which is being faciliated by Delia Browne, friend of ccAustralia and well-known Australian CC and open eduation advocate.  Sign up for courses has already opened. Register before 8 September 2010.

From the P2PU course description:

Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘create environments for learning doodle‘ by Inha Leex Hale, CC BY 2.0 Generic.

The issue, guest edited by the ccAustralia and ccClinic teams, will focus on the mainstreaming of “open”. With Mozilla Firefox pushing towards a 25% share of the web browser market and the number of Creative Commons licensed works reaching more than 250 million in 2009, perhaps it is time to ask, ‘Is “open” the new black?’

PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication is an open-access journal published by the Media and Communications Program at the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. We encourage submissions by postgraduate students working in media studies or related fields which critically examine the legal, social and technical parameters of open source, open content and open access.

For more information on the issue themes and deadlines, see here

Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Untitled‘ by pheezy, CC BY 2.0 Generic.

17 May 2010: Abstracts/Proposals (500-800 words)
5 July 2010: Full Papers (6,000-8,000 words, including 200 word abstracts and six keywords)

Through the special issue, ccAustralia and PLATFORM ask the question, ‘Is “open” the new black?’The Special Issue will be guest edited by Jessica Coates and Elliott Bledsoe from the Creative Commons Clinic at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.

Remember to read the call for papers and to send your submissions to info@creativecommons.org.au. Please include ‘Platform Special Issue Submission’ in the subject line.

Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Untitled‘ by pheezy, CC BY 2.0 Generic.

Through the special issue, ccAustralia and PLATFORM ask the question, ‘Is “open” the new black?’ The last few years has seen a huge increase in the uptake of CC licences. Hollywood, President Obama, Yoko Ono and even Coca-Cola have used the licences to help them manage content. But should we be open 24/7? When should we flip the sign around?

We’re calling for papers right now on anything to do with being open; motivations for adopting open strategies, open business models, open access and government transparency, open educational resources, open formats and open standards. Abstracts are due 26 April 2010. To be eligible to submit, you must be a current graduate student (no more than 6 months after graduation) undertaking Masters, a PhD or international equivalent. Full papers are due 2 August 2010. Full submission information available here.

Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Untitled‘ by pheezy, CC BY 2.0 Generic.

We’ve posted before about the growing movement for cultural institutions across the globe to provide open online access to public domain images in their collections. And Australian institutions have been up there in the thick of the charge – the Powerhouse Museum, for example, was the second institution worldwide to join the Flickr Commons initiative, and has now been joined by four other Australian institutions. As a result the public can access archives they may otherwise never have seen by using only the click of a mouse.

Now the Queensland Museum has joined the party, uploading a test batch of 20 high resolution images from their collection for free online access. But what makes this initiative particularly interesting that it’s being conducted in collaboration with Wikimedia Australia and they’ve chosen to upload the photos to Wiki Commons, rather than Flickr Commons.

One of the benefits of using Wiki Commons is that, as the official media archive for the Wikimedia community, it makes it easier (and hence hopefully more likely) that related articles will be written on Wikipedia – the fourth most visited site on the internet – and linked back to the photos and the museum. The Flickr Commons images can be used in this way too, but this requires someone taking the extra step of uploading them to Wiki Commons – potentially slowing the process, and giving the museum less control over how the objects are described on the Wikimedia site.

To quote David Milne, Manager of Strategic Learning at the Queensland Museum, in his post about the initiative:

An advantage that using Wikimedia has over other photo hosting sites, such as FLICKR, is that Wikipedia articles can be written or linked to the photo subject matter. New information unearthed by Wikimedia researchers since posting the photographs has been invaluable. However, monitoring usage and repurposing of free media files on Wiki Commons can be a challenge.

As for the images themselves – they feature a sample of the museum’s collection of photos by Bert Roberts, a local amateur photographer from the late 19th century. As such, the original images are in the public domain – although, in another interesting move, the Queensland Museum have asserted copyright over the digitised images, releasing them under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence. This could be controversially, as the Wikimedia community are currently arguing with the UK’s National Portrait Gallery about rights over digitised versions of public domain images. I posted about the legal questions surrounding this debate on the Collections Australia blog a few weeks ago.

But, legal questions aside, as the comments on David’s post show the reaction from the Australian museums and Wikimedia communities has been great. We even understand there will be a story about it on ABC Local Gold Coast this Friday.

Congratulations to the Queensland Museum for taking this first (but important) step. The photographs have been released as a trial in an effort to better share Australia’s cultural heritage by enabling others to appreciate what life was like in early 20th century Queensland. It is hopefully only the beginning of Australia’s national institutions sharing our history and we look forward to seeing many positive benefits spring from this release.