OLDaily

AO3 Nominated for Hugo Award
Archive of Our Own, 2019/04/02

Nominated for a Hugo Award (for excellence in science fiction and fantasy) is a website called Archive of Our Own (AO3), "a fan-created, fan-run, non-profit, non-commercial archive for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic." AO3 is a project of the Organization for Transformative Works. This site challenges traditional publishing norms by supporting unauthorized versions of popular cultural works, and by maintaining a steadfast open access (or, at least (free) membership access) policy. "We are proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. We preserve our fannish economy, values, and creative expression by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans." I hope they win.

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The culture war at the heart of open source
Steve Klabnik, 2019/04/02

It's interesting to see that some of the issues we've had around open educational resources have also been at play in the world of free and open source software. Steve Klabnik authors two posts (first, second) on the subject. Here's the crux: people are concerned not just about the redistribution of software, but also (and mainly) about the production of software - that users of open source contribute to the community, fix bugs, include documentation, etc. Licenses, for the most part, don't speak about the mechanism of production, which allows companies to abuse them but complying with the letter, but not the spirit, of free and open software.

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Microsoft Education & Open Up Resources partner on English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum pilot
Mike Tholfsen, Microsoft Education, 2019/04/02

According to this article, Microsoft is announcing "the pilot availability of the Open Up Resources ELA curriculum and Microsoft Education free offering." They were created by Open Up Resources, "an education nonprofit that creates high-quality, standards-aligned curriculum, and provides it for free to improve education equity." Ah, but it comes with conditions. The first is that the content is designed for Microsoft's OneNote, so you can't simply use (say) a web browser. Also, it's not like you can simply go to the site an access it - there are forms to fill out and previews to preview and whatnot.

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EducationalOccupationalCredential
Schema.org, 2019/04/02

Phil Barker writes, "schema.org v 3.5 is now released, with EducationalOccupationalCredential 'proposed for full integration into Schema.org, pending implementation feedback and adoption from applications and websites'." The specification is pretty minimal, with 90% of it being imported from CreativeWork and from Thing. Note the uses described: "educational background needed for the position or occupation; a description of the qualification, award, certificate, diploma or other educational credential awarded as a consequence of successful completion of this course; or specific qualifications required for a role or occupation." See also this page.

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