Creative Commons and access to education in the Commonwealth

Heather Ford
iCommons

Wayne Mackintosh
Commonwealth of Learning

Abstract
This workshop will outline the experience of Creative Commons
South Africa (ccSA) and a project entitled: ‘Commons-sense: Towards
an African Digital Information Commons’ carried out during 2006 which
resulted in almost every major South African educational technology
service provider opening their content under ccSA licences.

Before 2005, ownership and republishing rights over most online
educational materials was vague and ill-defined, and service
providers did not share information between themselves which led to a
great deal of replication. Starting with two receptive projects, the
South African National Education Department’s Thutong portal and the
Shuttleworth Foundation’s educational materials development project,
Creative Commons South Africa assisted in the implementation of
licencing policies and proceeded to tell this story to other
stakeholders in the sector with the result that others wanted to join
the movement to make educational materials accessible to all.

Driven by iCommons, an organisation incubated by Creative Commons, a
project is being launched to extend the success of this project to
other countries in the Commonwealth and to get organisations and
individuals to pledge to make their content open access for
the benefit of learners, educators, governments and the public.

Full text of paper not available.