Openness and metaliteracy

This involves different ways through which educational  resources can be made accessible to the public  and also free,  we will also talk about how to verify the authenticity of the materials made available . Key terms in this blog includes , OERs, Creative Commons , MLA commons,  Gifted Commons



OERs- Open Educational Resources

These includes any kind of teaching material like textbooks , full courses, course materials, syllabi, modules, lesson plan, videos, exams and techniques, that are made available to the public for free. Here the public can review the article or book that is about to be published and also work on it by adding to it or removing from it, they can also share with other people. The purpose of OERs is to make materials needed for education free because of the rising cost books. There have  been issues with regards to  the licensing of materials made open such as  the violation of copyright laws that protect most of the traditional books that we all use. Therefore not all books can be made available to the general public for free. This takes us to our next key term creative commons .




Creative commons
 Creative commons is an organization that deals with the issues of licensing by ensuring the provision of more licensing to avoid the issue of violating copyright laws. The allows creativity allowing people to worry less about issues of violation.   They give out licenses known as creative common licenses, Wikipedia uses one of such licenses. Creative commons give out six major licenses which is derived from four major conditions:  Attribution, Share alike, Non  Commercial and No Derivative. Creative commons ensures that ownership of materials stays with the author unlike  when the publishers take over ownership rights of books they publish from the authors. Creative commons is sponsored by a lot of different software companies this includes big names like  Google and Microsoft. Creative commons has also been plagued with issues of violation of some rights.

MLA Commons
MLA stands for modern language association.  Here people would present on this platform different articles .The article , material or book presented will then  be reviewed by peers. The community  will have the opportunity to contribute and decide if the material should be made available to everyone or if it should be taken down.

Gifted commons
Example of this is You Tube. Gifted commons is a place where expertise is given freely. On YouTube , you can watch videos on how to cook, how to fix you home , how to paint , how to download a document for free.

These are different steps that have been taking in order to take education to a different level and  ensure open learning which is the peak of higher education.  The success of this new way of learning will allow  everyone all over the world the opportunity  to obtain resources for learning at a very cheap rate , it will  allow people to be able to contribute  to the different books available to the general public, it will also allow us to control what is being published. Thus the high cost publishers place on different books will not be a barrier to learning anymore  and the loss of creativity due to restrictions place by different copyright laws will no longer occur and people will be able to create freely.