Week 10 - Intellectual Property Rights (IP) and Plagiarism

What a hectic week!! So much to read and do but very little time! This week we were introduced to open education resources and the wonderful copyright license called creative commons. At the start of the week the natural opposite of copyright - plagiarism came up and we all shared our experiences about plagiarism - some more personal than others. The second part of the week was spent looking up some relevant open education resources which were to be remixed and reshaped into something that can be useful for us as teachers.

Key Points:

OER - stands for open education resources which are resources for teaching and learning available for anyone to use free of charge. Individuals and institutions can decide to put their work  on OER which then can be used by anyone who can then reuse, remix or re-purpose the educational materials

Creative commons license can be used where the author can retain some aspects of copyright while allowing others to copy and distribute (non commercial) but acknowledge the author.

The picture on the right  depicts the different types of licenses within the creative commons license.

Plagiarism is not an acceptable practice in higher education and all efforts must be made so students donot resort to copying other peoples work without proper citation.

Resources

A one stop shop database for open education resources: 
https://oerknowledgecloud.org/

Over 1000+ thought provoking video lectures from top universities around the world
http://academicearth.org/

Animations and various collection for open use 
http://web20guru.wikispaces.com/Web+2.0+Resources

Over 40000 open resources on curriculum from elementary school to higher education.
http://www.oercommons.org/

 Reflection

Education for all is a noble concept. Gone are the days when education was only reserved for the nobleman and royalty or people with money. With the advent of technology and the recognition that education is not just a privilege but an undeniable human right the movement for open education has started to gain popularity.

This week I have come to a greater understanding of open education resources and creative commons. I have been using a piece of work under the creative commons license but had limited knowledge of what it entailed. Now I am empowered to use OER and also share my work with the rest of the world. If someone out there can use part of work to create something better than I could not be any happier. I sort of knew that there was some material on the internet for open sharing but my eyes were truly opened when I came across thousands of creative pieces of work people and institutions have put as open education resources. These resources are not only small documents but there are textbooks, videos, pictures and music and much more.
    

Now for a light moment