Why "open"?  Universal access to and participation in research, education, and culture is made possible by openness, but not enough people know what it means or how to take advantage of it. We hear about Open Source Software, Open Educational Resources, and Open Access… But what are these movements, who are their communities, and how do they work? Most importantly—how can they help me? 

A collaboration with the public.   The School of Open is coordinated by P2PU and Creative Commons, a globally focused nonprofit dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. Volunteers, individual creators and organizational representatives, can design courses for peer learning in study groups or for facilitation by a subject expert. 

Learning about "open".  The School of Open will offer courses on the meaning and application of “open” on the web and in offline environments. Artists, educators, learners, scientists, archivists, and other creators already improve their fields via the use of open tools and materials. So can you. Get started by taking a course below!

Get involved. 

• Sign up for announcements. We are just getting started—receive major updates leading up to our official launch in early 2013.
• Join the discussion. Help us build the School! Conceive, create, and test courses with your peers.
• Learn more. Give feedback on core documents, attend an upcoming workshop, participate in our monthly working calls, and more.

Getting your course featured

Is your course ready for review and publication? Here are the steps towards getting it featured above:

1. Ask for feedback from your School of Open peers on the discussion list. (You can also ask the P2PU community list.)
2. Based on initial feedback, iterate and improve.
3. Ask for the reviews of two School of Open organizers -- one from Creative Commons and one from P2PU. Obtain the reviews openly on the discussion list.     
4. Incorporate organizers' feedback. Follow up on the discussion list.

An organizer will add your course once it has undergone the review process. You can read more about the course review process here.

Draft courses ready to test (looking for feedback)

• Wikipedia: Aim for Featured Article - This is a course for all skill levels that strives to write the very top of Wikipedia content--the featured article.
• Finding the perfect photo - Learn how to find and use the perfect photo to illustrate your point.
• Open Webville - Help Madame Lille to teach the Citizens of Open Webville how to use CC licensed images, videos and songs.
• Adding open audio to video with open source software - Make cool videos free and easy.
• Viva La Open Video - Make your first video for open music.

Courses gearing for launch (March 2013)

• A Look at Open Video - Overview of open video for students interested in developing software, video journalists, editors and all users of video who want to take their knowledge further.
• Open up your institution's data - This challenge is for GLAM-professionals who are interested in opening up their data as free culture data.
• Contributing to Wikimedia Commons - This challenge gets you acquainted with uploading your works to the commons - a repository of openly licensed images from all over the world.
• Public Domain Detective - How to participate in open culture - find, remix and publish.
• dScribe: Peer-produced Open Educational Resources - Learn the ins and outs of building OER together with your peers.
• What can you do with the data you find - Understand the difference between closed and open data, and know how to identify each one in the wild.
• Copyright 4 Educators (Aus) - A course for educators in Australia who want to learn about copyright, open content material and licensing.
• Copyright 4 Educators (US) - A course for educators in the US who want to learn about copyright law.
• Creative Commons for Kids - A course for elementary school teachers who want to learn about CC licenses and how to incorporate open ed activities into the classroom.
• Open Detective - This course will explore the scale of open to non-open content and how to tell the difference.
• Communicate OER - A course on how to edit Wikipedia articles, focusing on articles covering the open educational resources (OER) movement.
• Teaching Copyright (in Spanish) - A Spanish language course based on EFF's http://teachingcopyright.org.
• Open Governance - A look at how open communities make good decisions and get stuff done.
• How to run an "open" workshop - A course to prepare people for the delivery of workshops on Free Culture, Openness and related topics in informal spaces.
• FLOSS Manuals - A course on free software for newbies based on http://en.flossmanuals.net.
• How to apply a CC license to your website - A short challenge on applying the CC license of your choice to your website so that it aligns with marking and metadata best pracdtices.

Courses that need development (looking for collaborators)

• Making music and sharing it openly - A background course on open source music production, licensing, and distribution.
• Why Open? - The community has brought up the importance of a course or courses on not only how to implement open practices, but on why open practices are important.
• How to Effectively Use a Wiki - Integrating a wiki (sharing platform) in everyday collaboration.
• Concept of "The Commons" - Conceptual background on open in order to enable students to participate in current discourse.
• Context of Open - Less Open to More Open.

If you are interested in getting involved in any of the above, please join our discussion list.

School of Open logo incorporates "Unlock" icon from The Noun Project collection / CC BY