Why ccLearn?
 

Educational paradigms are changing. The pace of information creation necessitates new ways of managing and imparting content. New technologies exacerbate the information overload, but they also provide many potential solutions. In particular, the advent of the internet has profoundly altered the ways in which information is accessed and shared, and one would expect the impact on education to be revolutionary. While technological tools are being used in many classrooms to enhance instruction, one of the most exciting areas of development is in the creation of open educational resources (OER), which in their fullest form should be free, accessible, authoritative, and derivable. The availability of open educational content is growing exponentially, yet the usage of such content does not appear to be widespread. Worse, much of the OER currently being created is incompatible - legally, technically, and socially - with other OER.

An immediate goal for ccLearn is to encourage and facilitate the adoption of practices that will enable the fullest realization of the potential for OER to transform education. ccLearn will leverage the unique capacity of Creative Commons to act upon this overarching view in a manner that popularizes the resources that already exist and brings new communities and groups into the world of open learning.

Longer term goals include substantial community building, providing educational access to underprivileged communities at home and abroad, and changing the culture of educational practice so that teachers have greater control over their classrooms and pedagogy, greater freedom to experiment, and a larger community for support. Fundamentally, the grand goal is to rise to the challenge and promise of technological and pedagogical innovation in such a way that access to and the experience of quality education is a reality for everyone, everywhere, at any time.

Ideas

Please note: this is a rough list of current and possible project ideas of interest to ccLearn. This is not an exhaustive list, nor is it a promise for action on any item in the list. If you have ideas for ccLearn, or if any of these ideas is of interest to you, please contact us. As ccLearn reaches full operating capacity, we will be prioritizing projects and contacting possible working partners.

• Working with open education leaders to refine and share standards for the creation and use of OER.
• Sponsor competitions demonstrating the power of open education to enhance teaching and learning.
• Building communities of users and expertise around open learning and OER.
• Easing the process of discovering OER and open learning communities.
• Leveraging the power of open education to bridge educational divides: grade levels, disciplines, cultures and countries, and formal and informal instruction.
• Pursuing outreach and translation of intellectual property issues (copyright, fair use, educational exceptions, etc.) for educators worldwide.
• Building tools for derivatives, re-use, and creative alternatives to static content.