Icommons.org

The iCommons staff are back in their green-walled office in Jozi after a whirlwind SA Free Culture tour in Cape Town last week. In honour of Larry and Jimmy’s visit, the iCommons worker bees took a break from the Skype meetings, the e-mail back-and-forths and the iSummit registration system, and swapped our monitor tan for the real deal. Yes, for a short while we stepped away from our laptops and our ‘virtual’ community with whom we interact everyday, and took to the streets of Cape Town, to find a very different kind of community, but none the less ‘ a community, that we could talk to, laugh with, and party with, in real life, without having to press an ‘enter’ button.

Now this is not to say our online interactions are not appreciated ‘ without our community and the technology that glues us together, we would not be able to do even half of what we do - but let’s face the fact that at the end of the day, meeting in person is a type of ‘Prodigal Son’ experience. I suppose this is why the iCommons Summit is the highlight of our commons efforts every year. In fact ‘community’ is what we here at iCommons, are all about. That’s why the presentations at the Digital Freedom Expo were of such interest to us ‘ we could find out more about the workings of other communities around the world. (more…)

Beautiful Cape Town isn’t known as one of the best party spots in the world for nothing, you know. Fine beaches, a gorgeous mountain and great street art and indie music subcultures mean that it’s about the best place in the world to throw down. And on April 20th, the Independent Armchair Theatre in Observatory is going to host one of the best parties the Mother City will have seen all year.

See, Larry Lessig and Jimmy Wales, internet visionaries and all round party animals will be the guests of honour at a party that is kind of a salon, kind of a creative swap-meet, kind of a showcase. In South Africa we like to call these kinds of events ‘braais’. Which is like a barbecue, but with a lot more attitude and bigger flames. (more…)

The hand that you see in the picture with this article is mine. I want you to imagine it is your hand and that you are looking at your own mobile phone. Then ask ourself: What are we waiting for? When will we use the devices that are now in the hands of 3 billion people to deliver learning: literacy, knowledge, education?

The 3 billion people who already have a mobile phone make up nearly one half of the world’s population. When lessons are made available on mobile phones, it will be half of the people on earth who could look into their own hand and see the little window where learning could reach them. We know that little window is opening with particularly great speed and global coverage for the young generations for whom learning is crucial.

Places where nearly everyone has at least one mobile phone includes Japan, South Korea, Finland, Hong Kong, Norway and the UK. China and India’s enormous markets are absorbing the (more…)

One of the most exciting developments in the Commons is that of open education. In a world where access to knowledge is unequally distributed, the potential for free repositories of knowledge and open education resources to redress the imbalance is enormous.

The phrase ‘open education resources’ was first coined in 2002 at UNESCO’s Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries. It encompasses (more…)

iCommons, an organisation created to help coordinate and support global efforts to share educational content on the Internet, is launching an online project to try to learn what makes such efforts succeed.The new project, called iCommons iCurriculum, is intended to support a growing movement to share educational content on the Internet. Open education goes beyond posting textbooks online to offer tools that lets educators and learners share, reorganize and republish educational materials to suit their specific needs. (more…)

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay launched Creative Commons India (ccIndia) this weekend, with the aim of providing easier access to educational and other content.

‘At IIT Bombay there is a lot of educational content, including web-based courses that the institute would like to make available under a flexible Creative Commons licence,’ said Professor Shishir K. Jha, project lead of Creative Commons India.

The ccIndia was formally launched on Friday 26 January at (more…)

One of the themes that is often raised in discussions within the iCommons community is this: open licensing is great for stimulating creativity for those who want to use it for their own works, but what effect can it have on civil society? How can using resources that are freely licensed make it simpler, better and faster for organisations, schools, NGOs and civil society groups to do their jobs?

In this month’s ‘10 of the best’ (this time, halved), we highlight the following five sites that are devoted to doing just that ‘ helping people get things done, better. And we think they’re doing a great job of it. (more…)

At the heart of the Commons movement is a simple yet powerful concept of sharing information and art for the enjoyment and the betterment of everyone’s lives. Much of this sharing is the result of widespread internet access and broadband availability, resources which many people do not have. Bridging the digital divide is by no means easy, though numerous organizations exist with that goal in mind. With organizations and groups like One Laptop Per Child and the Digital Divide Network, quite a few projects are getting widespread attention.

At the grassroots is a unique youth-led organization called Five Minutes to Midnight (FMM). FMM was originally started in 2003 as a blog about the war in Iraq when it was felt that the youth’s response to the war was uncoordinated and for the most part ignored. The blog eventually turned into an online magazine, published monthly and on topics ranging from malicious business practices to the psychology of torture. International development and politics were the focus and two years later, the website had readers, writers, and volunteers from over 30 countries ‘ it even self-published a book.

Last August, the organization underwent a major change moving from publishing to actively promoting media creation in developing countries. Partnering with Rafigui, a Chad-based organization (more…)

A friend of mine sent me a link to a message about copyright infringement involving Creative Commons (CC) licences at Buzznet, a community website that allows photo, video and text sharing.

“Buzznet.com - serious theft, beware,” writes kmye-chan, a French graphic artist who found her works copied without permission by Buzznet’s users. Kmye-chan is angered, not just by people copying her works without permission, but also by the Buzznet system, which by default licences all works under a CC Attribution licence.

The gist of her argument is as follows: copying of works without attribution or permission is common on the internet. “No big deal, I immediately think. Most of them didn’t give credit, so I was going to ask them to credit me,” she said. Proper attribution is all she usually cares about, because she feels that the rules of copyright serve (more…)

How should we define ‘media literacy’ in this digital era? Traditional notions of media literacy are based on the evaluation of the messages we are overwhelmed with every day, making use of media technology, and expressing ourselves through various media activities. But we are also required to pay attention to the new phenomena of ’sharing’ in the digital media environment. The spectrum of creating and communicating has become closely and critically related to sharing activities within a shared media environment. Perhaps we should incorporate the concept of sharing into media literacy in this increasingly networked society.

Youthvoice is a media literacy project for youngsters, steered by a non-profit organization in South Korea called the Daum Foundation, in which the concepts of sharing is encouraged and highlighted. Every year, Youthvoice invites children between 14 and 18 years of age, who are interested in media art to participate in their project, and encourages them to produce more creative and critical artwork from their own point of view. For young aspiring creators full of inspiration and imagination, Youthvoice provides (more…)