Unlocking IP conference - 18-19 November 2004New models for sharing and trading intellectual property
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Case Studies - Success in Sharing
Case studies: Successes in sharing?

Pia Smith,
President, Linux Australia

ICT in Australia - Time to SOS (Share Our Source)

Link to materials.

Brazil is an interesting case study. It is embracing Open Source from the most technical geek through to the Minister of ICT. Many initiatives are in place in Brazil, including a large one to turn around the current purchase of imported software (to the tune of US$1.2 billion) to the migration of around 500,000 government and school computers to Linux, and eventually to export around US$2 billion worth of software per year.

Other countries such as Spain, Malaysia, Germany, and South Africa are also reaping the benefits of Open Source. One of the biggest factors is the idea of sharing knowledge: the concept that IP is not a finite supply, but rather becomes more valuable with sharing and collaboration, and the notion that IP should be protected from monopolisation, not open sharing.

Through Open Source we see a sharing culture and meritocracy that can afford fair treatment and equal opportunity to all, regardless of their normal societal restrictions. http://pipka.org/blog/1089123931 includes some thoughts and observations from both FISL (Brazil) and WSIS (the UN ICT conference in Geneva).

Pia Smith is in her second year as President of Linux Australia, a national group focused on the Australian Linux and Open Source developer/user community. In this role she attended several global conferences and saw some novel implementations of Open Source code and culture: 'Developing' countries able to provide one computer to every two children at school, 'Free Knowledge' projects revolutionising community contributions and opportunities for everyone, the Digital Divide slowly but surely being reduced by one of the fastest growing and most successful international collaborative projects in history.

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Professor James Dalziel
Director Macquarie E-Learning Centre of Excellence

Open code and open content for education: The LAMS experience

Link to materials.

The Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) represents a groundbreaking new approach to online education in which the focus is on authoring sequences of collaborative learning activities (rather than simply transmission of single-learner content). A key innovation of LAMS is that activity sequences can be captured and stored, and hence searched for, reused and customised. In essence, LAMS sequences are a fundamental new category of media – a digital object that describes a flow of collaborative tasks - which capture the key pedagogical elements of lesson planning. Given the potential importance of this new media type, LAMS has decided to follow an "open" route to encourage widespread adoption (rather than develop proprietary software and a proprietary sequence description format).

This involved the decision to make the software available as open source under the GPL (to be released in February 2005), as well as encouraging the widespread sharing of LAMS sequences within the user community (most likely under the Creative Commons approach). This presentation will describe the background to LAMS, with particular attention to the decision process that led to the "open" approach to both content and software. It will also discuss examples of sharing and collaborative development from LAMS trials in Australia and the UK.

As one of Australia's leading e-learning experts, James Dalziel is well known nationally and internationally for his innovations in e-learning, and his contributions to technical standards. He has been involved in a number of significant Australia wide e-learning projects including Collaborative Online Learning and Information Services (COLIS) and the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS).

James is currently Director of the Macquarie E-Learning Centre of Excellence (MELCOE), which provides an international focal point for e-learning infrastructure and standards development. James is also currently a Director of the LAMS Foundation and a Director of LAMS International Pty Ltd.

James was previously co-founder and Executive Director of WebMCQ Pty Ltd an award-winning Australian e-learning company specializing in online assessment and human capital solutions. He was also a lecturer in psychology at the University of Sydney.

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Vivienne Blanksby,
Australian Flexible Learning Framework

Sharing E-Learning Resources in VET 

Link to materials

The Australian Flexible Learning Framework, the national e-learning strategy of the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector, has produced e-learning materials for a number of years through its Flexible Learning Toolbox initiative.  In 2004, the Framework has a focus on improving the potential for VET practitioners to access, use and re-use e-learning resources from a range of sources.  Through the Framework’s Resources for Teaching, Learning and Assessment program, a number of linked projects have researched and are now applying technical standards for content packaging, learning object repositories and metadata.  The overall aim is to create an integrated system providing ready access to learning materials from national, state/territory and other organisational sources.

Vivienne Blanksby is Program Leader for Resources for Teaching, Learning and Assessment, a program within the Australian Flexible Learning Framework. She coordinates a number of national projects which are linked by the theme of availability, quality, interoperability and use of e-learning resources for the Vocational Education and Training (VET) system.  

Vivienne was formerly the national project manager of the Flexible Learning Toolbox initiative which develops online resources for VET.  Prior to this, she has worked in various flexible learning development roles within the Victorian TAFE system.  She has specialised in online learning for the past ten years, both professionally and through post-graduate studies.

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Leslie Loble
Deputy Director-General, Strategic Planning & Regulation, DET NSW

The teaching and learning exchange: Should sharing be limited?

Link to materials. Link to speech.

Information technologies offer schooling the chance to shake free of Industrial Era production modes. Connected learning – which increasingly shows results in student outcomes – relies instead on distributed systems governed by users. This requires more open access to information, capacity for personalising learning, and moving from unilateral transfer to more dynamic, tailored modes.

The Teaching and Learning Exchange (TaLE) is a new online platform developed by the NSW Department of Education & Training to serve these aims. It provides professional support to teachers and information to parents. It not only gives access to thousands of learning materials but stimulates consumer-based exchanges focussed on raising student outcomes.

Access to TaLE is carefully controlled to protect the intellectual property rights of materials developers. But this limits the impact of a potentially invaluable educational resource built on principles of subsidiarity and sharing. In this presentation, Leslie explores these issues and possible alternative approaches.

Leslie Loble’s responsibilities include corporate planning, performance improvement and external reporting on performance and achievements. She is responsible for fostering innovation in teaching and learning across the Department, and for managing the Centre for Learning Innovation, which supports e-learning development and resource production. She manages the Department's external relations, including Commonwealth-State negotiations, and is responsible for key policy areas and processes including higher education, vocational education and training (VET), non-Government schooling and long-term planning for NSW schools. Leslie was previously the department's Director of Skills Development and Workforce Policy.

Prior to coming to Australia in 1998, Leslie served in President Bill Clinton's Administration for five years as part of the top management team at the U.S. Department of Labor. Her positions included Chief of Staff to former Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich, acting Assistant Secretary for Policy, and Counsellor to the Secretary.

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Professor Graham Greenleaf,
UNSW Law Faculty, Co-director, Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre

Legal Information Institutes: Creating law's global commons

Link to materials.

A global network of a dozen University-based 'legal information institutes' has emerged over the last decade to provide free access to essential legal information from more than 50 countries. With nearly 500 legal databases it is starting to provide a free-access alternative to the global commercial legal publishers. It is based on shared principles that reject government monopolies in this legal information (even with free access) and insist that it be free for republication: free speech, not just free beer. The technical and cooperative framework by which this major extension of the public domain has been created will be explained and demonstrated.

http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~graham/

Graham Greenleaf is a Professor of Law at UNSW where he teaches most aspects of cyberspace law, and the computerisation of law. His main research interests in cyberspace law are in privacy and intellectual property. He teaches LAWS1031 Information Technology Law (LLB) via Internet delivery, and co-teaches LAWS 3037 Data Surveillance & Information Privacy Law (LLM). He is a co-director of AustLII and WorldLII, and the General Editor of Privacy Law & Policy Reporter. He is foundation co-director of the Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace law and Policy Centre, which is co-hosting the conference.

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click here for early bird rates details

The University of New South Wales
  Co-hosted by
Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre AEShareNer Net Working 2004