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Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society is celebrating its 10th Anniversary May 15th - May 16th with an event called Berkman@10.  The two day event features a selection of distinguished speakers, several scheduled as well as participant determined breakout sessions, book releases, and other presentations that explore cyberspace, the future of the internet, open education, open media, cooperation, transparency in government, and a host of other relevant themes.

One of the coolest aspects of the event, by far, is the number of ways for those of us who aren’t there to plug-in to what’s taking place. David Weinberger and others have put together a list of social tools event attendees are utilizing to capture and communicate in real time, including Twitter, an IRC channel, Second Life, and Webcasts.

Check it out.

Anyone familiar in some small part with what has been happening with the University of Michigan’s Open Educational Resources initiative will already know we have had a number of great developments over the last few months. We’ve had student dScribes from the School of Information participate in a pilot program to help gather, vet, and clear content for publication and we’ve made significant progress on the development of the software tools we’ll use to manage the process of clearing course content.

But what we’re most excited about now is the emergence of what we’re calling…Open.Michigan

Open.Michigan is more than an Open educational Resources site. It represents the diverse collection of Open initiatives on campus - from open access publishing and open archives to open source software and open standards. The site provides greater visibility to the various projects and attempts to expand the dialogue between campus participants and external collaborators.

We also hope to build upon the Open Community’s strong participatory culture, inviting people to explore the Open.Michigan website, subscribing, authoring, and commenting on our blog, taking a look at our wiki, and following updates on our Twitter (open_michgan) and joining our new facebook group, Open.Michigan.

We’re excited about this transition and look forward to your feedback and participation as Open.Michigan continues to evolve and expand.

Today’s New York Times ran an article about a fascinating lawsuit being filed against Georgia State University by three large academic publishers: Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Publications. The publishers contend that Georgia State University professors have engaged in “systematic, widespread and unauthorized copying and distribution of a vast amount of copyrighted works” and that these faculty members ought to obtain permission and pay licensing fees to utilize the copyrighted works.

What’s interesting about this lawsuit is that members of educational institutions - including faculty and students - have been granted the right to copy and distribute substantial portions of copyrighted works for the purpose of teaching, discussion, scholarship, and research; this is what is known as educational fair use. Unlike the general fair use principle outlined by the 1976 Copyright Act, the principles guiding educational fair use are something of a “treaty” between publishers and educators - an agreement to provide “greater certainty and protection” to members of the academic community. According to the aforementioned publishers, Georgia State University faculty have violated that treaty, copying and distributing much more copyrighted work than acceptable under the agreed upon guidelines.

This will certainly be a worthwhile story to watch. Here at the University of Michigan, we have been discussing the notion of fair use in the context of Open Educational Resources initiatives. And, while the New York Times article rightly points out how most lawsuits of this sort are resolved during litigation, I can only hope that whatever does come of this will help bring new light to the need for a rigorous discussion about fair use and digital media, fair use and the digital age.

Here’s the latest presentation created by the University of Michigan OER team. Last week, I presented this slideshow in two sections of a UM undergraduate Sociology class. The goal was to explain the not only the history of open educational resources initiatives, but also to discuss the student-centric publication model we’re proposing for the University of Michigan called the dScribe model.

Much to my surprise, the students were quite excited to actually become dScribes - actually eager to help faculty prepare materials for publication on our forthcoming OER site.  Many said it would be a worthwhile experience to work alongside (even if it were asynchronous) their instructor and with the OER team to assemble course materials for publication.  Responding to a question about whether they would utilize resources generated by a school-wide OER initiative, many said it would allow them to “shop” for classes and also better plan out a curriculum.  When asked about the benefit of creating an open educational environment for people around the world to access, many agreed that it was a really meaningful endeavor.

The largest concern, however, revolved around two familiar arguments. First, that an OER initiative like this would simply give away a UM education: “Why would I or my parents pay 40,000 a year when I could just get it for free?” Second, posting resources online for anyone to access would simply provide classmates with one more reason not to attend class: “If everything is available online, no one would show up.”

I guess it’s refreshing to know that these were the two central concerns.  MIT OCW has been pretty successful at deflating these arguments, saying that MIT OCW is not an MIT education and that it is not meant to replace the classroom experience.  I did my best to present versions of these arguments and after finishing, most seemed somewhat convinced that they had the upper hand by being the students who would actually receive a diploma. And, the fact that class materials would not be ready for public view until the end of the semester - or after - meant that not showing up to class (or relying on previous semester’s OER material) would not be a substitute for the in class experience. Overall, these presentations and positive reactions provide our team with an eagerness to finish up the back end work of software development, learn from our pilot initiatives, and get this student-centric model scaled-up across the University.

For now, download or view the presentation here

A beautiful collection of photographs from this year’s Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year Competition.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2007