YouTube videos have in the past often been used as if openly licensed. The standard YouTube license is however not equivalent to a creative commons or other open license. This common practice therefore contravened copyright law.
The good news is that YouTube has now updated its license to allow uploading of materials under a Creative Commons Attribution license, otherwise known as CC BY, the most open of the Creative Commons licenses. In addition to uploading new materials under this license, you may also review and change your previously uploaded materials to be licensed as CC BY. Users may now also choose to license their future videos under CC BY as a default.
To help you to reuse and remix materials, you can use the YouTube Video Editor and specify that it only search for materials carrying the CC BY license on YouTube. This is when the fun starts: there are handy tools to help you edit, remix and create your very own video using the more than 4 million CC BY licensed videos already uploaded to YouTube! Just make sure you acknowledge the original creators. For more information, visit YouTube’s Creative Commons page.
This move by YouTube provides tools to help remove barriers to use, re-use and remixing of open materials. Other platforms such as Vimeo and Flickr have also followed suit. What barriers do you find still hinder your ability to fully engage in the OER movement? Which new tools and technologies are facilitating your participation in the OER movement? We’d love to hear from you, so send us your thoughts.
Dr Liz Archer
archee@unisa.ac.za
On Monday afternoon I decided to create a playlist on You Tube for my student to help them with their assignment. However, the connection provided by Unisa is to slow to be able to do it.
So I need to do it tonight from my home in my own time and at my own expensive and given the other obligations I have it will probably not happen today.
I think OERs are wonderful things but to use it you really need proper access.
A fist barrier is therefore limited accessibility.
Dear Bernard
It is a very valid point you raise. No matter how progressive we may be in our thinking about OER, the practicalities often act as a barrier. Something as simple as dated and slow LAN cabling in the Theo van Wijk building can create very real frustrations and complexities in something as simple as uploading a video clip. This forces us to use our valuable time to find alternate solutions for things which should be straight forward and quick. I believe one of the real challenges for Unisa is finding a way that the institution can remain dynamic and keep up to date with changing technology, particularly as it is such a huge bureaucracy which tends to move and change very slowly.