Creative Commons Africa will launch School of Open, a global community of volunteers providing free online courses, and innovative training programs on the application of “openness” in the digital age, in September.
In a statement, Creative Commons Africa said the countries targeted include Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, and South Africa.
School of Open Kenya, started by organizing a two-week after-school programme, which saw high school students learn about open culture through the use of online school of Open course. The students integrated the School of Open training into their school work and were able to produce projects such as this Titration Demo video by the Lenana School under CC BY.
School of Open South Africa hosts three projects under the School of Open initiative, they include; the #OpenAfrica project where in conjunction with WikiAfrica, open advocates from Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda and Ghana were put through an “open” bootcamp.
According to Creative Commons Africa, this has resulted in the creation of new CC affiliate teams in Ethiopia and Cote d’Ivoire and the launch of open mandated tech hubs in these communities; Project Luwi an open source project, aiming to increase the application of open source ICT. Luwi intends to create a local community of interested volunteers that is able to foster motivation and creativity around Open Educational Resources (OERs) and supports a culture of sharing information freely in Ethiopia. The third project is the Creative Commons for Kids program (CC4Kids). CC4Kids was built with Obami, a South Africa-based social learning platform.
The School of Open Tanzania will be hosting three trainings; ICT empowerment training for unemployed youth, teaching persons with disabilities how to use computers, training educators on using ICT to improve how they teach their students.
The School of Open Nigeria will train participants on Nigerian copyright law, intellectual property protection, and the Linux operating system. The training will have two tracks: the copyright law and the Linux operating System. Participants will have the opportunity to choose either or both tracks.
The Creative Commons will partner with Mozilla Foundation, Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, WikiAfrica, University of Lagos, University of Tanzania, and the Institute of Educational Management Technology of the Open University of Tanzania.