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Finding Open Stuff Workshops
For Open Education Week I was asked to do workshops on where and how to find open educational resources. Because my presentations are over 20MB I am unable to upload them to Slideshare because I don’t have a PRO account. Therefore I’ve uploaded PDF versions below but recommend you download the full presentations. These presentations ...
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Why SA should care about the Research Works Act
What is the Research Works Act? In just 3 pages the Research Works bill seeks to prohibit open access mandates for federally funded research in the USA thus reverting the open access policy of the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the USA. It was introduced by Darrell Issa on 23 December 2011 and has ...
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SOPA and its effects in SA and on open education
The seeds for this post came almost 3 weeks ago when a friend of mine commented that SOPA is not a big deal in South Africa because its outside of US jurisdiction so we had nothing to be bothered about – I disagreed (and started making notes for a future blogpost). And about a week ...
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Academics and Copyright Issues: An Opinion
Academics at higher education institution are faced with various copyright issues on a daily basis. Three of these are: Depending on the arrangement between your institution and DALRO with regards to reprographic licensing the academic will either follow the reporting procedures for blanket licenses or the permission procedures for transactional licenses. Also as an academic ...
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Copyright Law Developments vs Technology Advancement
For a long time there has been commentary on the lack of development in South African copyright law and the extent to which it has fallen behind the pace of the technological advancements taking place across the world. This sentiment was echoed in the Open Copyright Review completed in 2008 where the authors called for various ...
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Spotlight on Life Sciences Open Textbooks
Open textbooks are invaluable resources for both students and educators. These resources are available online for free download, unlimited copying and distribution. In this post I will concentrate on what I think are wonderful resources for life sciences. CK-12 Biology CK-12 Biology is a high school FlexBook covering cell biology, genetics, evolution, ecology, microorganisms, fungi, ...
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Internet Videos & Copyright Implications for Educators
In many instances academics use particular videos that have been downloaded from the internet in their teaching and learning materials without considering the copyright implications. While one may argue a fair dealing defense when these videos are used in the classroom for illustration purposes, criticism or review – however under certain circumstances, the defense will ...
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Automatic Copyright Protection & Copyright Notices
During my RSCON3 (Reform Symposium 2011 – http://reformsymposium.com/) presentation over the weekend a question came up about my statement: that it has to be assumed that everything on the internet is under copyright protection unless specified otherwise. The question was about where that was stated or in which ruling/law this statement can be verified. This post ...
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Copyright Issues & Lecture Recording Infographic
Recently, I was asked to investigate the legal issues involving lecture capturing in a South African context. A full post to complement the infographic will be posted in August. The infographic in this post is a brief overview of some of the most important legal considerations when thinking about lecture capturing and the way it ...
