Let the content be free! (following CC terms)

Conveners for the 2008 K-12 Online Conference met this evening following our pre-conference fireside chat, and among other things discussed and reconsidered the previously announced request that K12Online conference presentations NOT be mirrored/file-shadowed on other servers.

Considering the points raised by several other K12Online participants as well as presenters, conference conveners have decided to change this request. Instead of restricting access to conference presentation files after they are published “live” during the conference, we say: Let the content be free! (Per the terms of the conference and presenters’ CC license, of course.)

We want to emphasize our continued to commitment to publish presentation files on the William and Mary server as well as our appreciation to William and Mary for providing this file hosting for the conference for FREE. Our metrics for measuring file downloads and gauging conference participation will be significantly weakened by this decision to encourage file mirroring/shadowing, but on balance we deem this is a good decision in line with the core values of the K-12 Online Conference. The archiving/curating of conference presentations on the William and Mary server remains important not only from an accessibility standpoint, but also from a content preservation standpoint. As conveners we want presentation materials to remain available and accessible online for a global audience forever, and our agreement with William and Mary meets this objective of continued archival and access.

We will continue to require our presenters to NOT “publish early” before their presentations are scheduled to go “live” on the conference blog during the conference, because we want to maintain the excitement of releasing/publishing presentations each day during the regular two weeks of the conference. After a presentation is published, however, anyone is free to mirror/file shadow the main presentation in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license under which they are shared by the presenters and the K-12 Online Conference.

Starting next week, we will (as in past years) be publishing all conference content to the William and Mary server to provide broad accessibility to these files from school networks which block many media file sharing sites. In addition, however, we will publish all files for the conference on our pro Blip.tv account as well as on dotSUB where presentation videos can be translated into a wide variety of languages by community volunteers. Given the dedication of the 2008 K-12 Online Conference to Lee Baber, who was a committed activist for digital accessibility, this seems particularly fitting.

There are multiple reasons for this decision, and you may be able to suggest others not included yet on this list. These include:

1. The K-12 Online Conference is all about the sharing of great ideas related to digital learning. As conveners and as a conference, we want to encourage educators around the world to share and talk about the great ideas of our presenters, and encouraging broader dissemination and sharing of presentation files and ideas (per our CC license) supports these goals.
2. Accessibility is a VERY important issue. By providing links to conference presentation content on many servers IN ADDITION to William and Mary, the cause of providing greater access and accessibility will be advanced.
3. Embedding media content (including video and audio files) on other websites is a VERY important and powerful characteristic of many web 2.0 sites and technologies. Cross-posting K-12 Online Conference content to different websites which support embedding (including Blip and dotSUB) will again support our goals of idea dissemination and accessibility, since presentation content will be made available to a greater number of people via a greater number of venues and modalities.
4. Permitting cross-posting supports creativity and innovation within and outside our present K-12 Online Conference community. We are a creative group, and members are constantly “playing with boundaries” (not coincidentally the theme of our 2007 conference.) Formally endorsing and supporting file shadowing should encourage further creative sharing and discussion around the ideas of the conference.
5. Supporting file shadowing of presentation files is in line with the spirit and language of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license under which they are shared. To discourage file shadowing which complies with the terms of this license would be contradictory. As a conference we want to model best-practices for blended learning, professional development, and respect for intellectual property rights. These ends are also served by supporting file shadowing.

Please keep in mind that as K-12 Online Conference presentation files are posted and shared elsewhere, those video and/or audio files should be posted in a way which complies with our Creative Commons license. As a specific example, Mike Temple’s posting of Dr. Heppell’s pre-conference keynote to VodPod included the conference title and session title, but did not include Dr. Heppell’s full name. That information was helpfully added as a comment on that Vodpod post by Bob Sprankle, but it should be added to the original post.

We are all learning a great deal through and around the events of the 2008 K-12 Online Conference, and as always we value the input, ideas and suggestions of members of our community. We seek to be a responsive and forward-looking community, and thanks to the input of multiple individuals we feel this decision to support presentation mirroring / file shadowing in line with our CC license is a good one.

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