The first ever Creative Commons Salon with a focus on “opening education” took place last night in a spacious penthouse suite atop an office building in Soho. Three presentations, each running about one-hour, demonstrated a few ways that teachers are leveraging the power of CC licenses to make education more accessible to both students and the public at large.

Eric Frank began the night with a detailed explanation about his mission to make online text books for university students free and affordable. Frank co-founded the company Flat World Knowledge which claims to offer “online books by leading experts, peer-reviewed and free.” He pointedly addressed the problem as one that reaches beyond the frugal student:

The textbook industry is supporting a disruptive business model in which the burden is not only put on students, but is just as equally felt by teachers. In order to turn a profit the publishers push out new editions of text books – almost annually. This forces teachers to restructure their lesson plans.

Flat World Knowledge offers their books under a freemium model: the online copy is free for everyone, a printed copy runs about $40 (and all the content is distributed under a CC license). The concept was loudly applauded by the audience, but during the Q&A there were many questions regarding the credibility of the authors and the quality of the peer-review.

One key element missing from the Flat World Knowledge library is that they will never be able to share books that are already under copyright (which is about 99% of all texts). And it’s here that Google Book Search – which brazenly vows “to organize all the [books in the worlds'] information and make it universally accessible and useful” – could potentially cut deep into the future of online textbooks. With only 20 text books available at the moment, Flat World Knowledge has an ambitious road ahead of them. But perhaps by focusing on one field (whether it’s economics, foreign languages or history) they would be able to focus and lead that particular segment.

Later in the evening Neeru Paharia presented her work in developing the free online university: Peer 2 Peer University. More info about P2PU is available at the site: http://p2pu.org/

Paharia was followed by a panel of K-12 technologists/educators: David Bill and Arvind Grover – who also happen to be organizers for this weekend’s TEDxNYED event – and Kerri Richardson Redding, Director of Academic Technology at the Brooklyn Friends School. One of the most fascinating parts of this conversation was the stories from the classroom. Grover explained,

Our kids were REALLY confused about citations. They don’t really know the difference between Google and the places that Google takes you. This girl had done a wonderful job on this poetry project, and at the end of this long paper she had one citation: ‘Google.com’.

Grover teaches lessons about Creative Commons and copyright in the classroom precisely because in a multi-modal, remix society, knowing how to propery attribute a creative work to it’s original author is essential with how we communicate and share ideas. Grover continued with a anecdote about when his students were asked to be the creators,

When my students began the project they’d say things like, “I want to be paid for my work”, and “We’re going to make a million dollars!” So in this situation, as the creator, they’re quick to opt for traditional copyright.

He introduced one example of a girl who took a picture of a lock (see photo) and continued, “but then we debated whether someone will really pay money… for THIS! (referring to the picture of the lock). In his classroom he didn’t force his students to adopt a Creative Commons license, but eventually he found that his students would rather share their work and be part of something. “The biggest thing for students is being part of something”, concluded Grover, “And they – more so than their parents – came to understand that there is value in sharing content under a Creative Commons license.”

Tags: Arvind Grover, Creative Commons, David Bill, education, Eric Frank, Flat World Knowledge, NYC, Salon