EDUCATION AND SCIENCE SELECT COMMITTEE
INQUIRY INTO 21ST CENTURY LEARING
ENVIRONMENTS AND DIGITAL LITERACY
QUESTION:
Information on access to online New Zealand content in schools, including issues
around copyright and licensing
1
The Ministry operates within the broad mandate of the Directions and Priorities for
Government ICT medium-term strategy.1 It provides schools with access to specific
curriculum content (for example through Digi-Store) and services (for example through
e-asTTle) administrative services (for example student management systems), and also
encourages the contribution or active sharing of resources (for example through the
Virtual Learning Network).
2
The creator of a resource (e.g. the author of a teaching resource) has exclusive rights
afforded to them under the enactment of the legal concept ‘Copyright’. Copyright in
resources created by teachers is usually owned by the board of trustees (through Crown
copyright) that employs the teacher. Therefore there is no legal impediment to NZ
schools sharing resources that they have created as long as boards of trustees enable
teachers to do so. It is normal practice for teachers to freely create and share resources
without hindrance from school boards. It is an exception when this is not acceptable
practice at a school, and in these cases teachers are likely to be aware of their
obligations (as employees of the board) not to share curriculum material freely with
others.
3
There is a culture of sharing in New Zealand schools. Technologies such as
GoogleDocs have been adopted by teachers collaborating across clusters of schools.
However, Ministry and sector-initiated (‘grass roots’) initiatives to promote online sharing
of resources (for example open content licensing for educators, OCL4Ed2) are currently
outside of mainstream initiatives and activities. The primary issue that will need to be
addressed is the culture and capability of teachers when reusing third party resources
(e.g. an image off a website).
4
The type of online tool or platform that is used to support any content initiative strongly
influences the way in which resources are used. For example, sharing of resources on
and across a social media platform will be more informal and ad hoc than when
accessed through a content management system (CMS) repository. Therefore, there is
a close relationship between teachers’ capability to make informed decisions and
appropriate use of resources.
Licensing frameworks
5
Licensing frameworks provide a simple structure for the creators of resources to divest
some or all of their copyright. The Creative Commons license3 is the most well known
example of a copyright license that facilitates a range of approaches for distributing
copyrighted works.
1
http://ict.govt.nz/
Open content licensing for educators http://wikieducator.org/OCL4Ed
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses
2
6
The New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework (NZGOAL)4
approved by Cabinet on 5 July 2010, is government guidance for agencies to follow
when releasing copyright works and non-copyright material for reuse by others. This
framework works on the same principles as the Creative Commons license, where a
resource’s creator can choose how restrictive others need to be when using their
copyrighted material.
7
The NZGOAL guidelines state that “… State Services agencies should make their
copyright works, which are or may be of interest or use to people, available for reuse on
the most open of licensing terms available within NZGOAL (the Open Licensing
Principle). To the greatest extent practicable, such works should be made available
online.”
8
The most open of licensing terms available within NZGOAL is the Creative Commons
(CC) Attribution (BY) licence. The Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY) allows
users to share and remix (create derivative works), even for commercial use, so long as
attribution is given.
9
The NZGOAL is not fully implemented at the Ministry of Education. Accountability
documents (for example, Statement of Intent and Annual report) and some educationrelated data published on www.educationcounts.govt.nz apply NZGOAL using the CCBY licence. The Ministry is still working through what NZGOAL means for its websites
and other publications.
Examples of content available to the sector
10 Te Kete Ipurangi (TKI) is a bilingual portal5 that provides educational material for
principals, teachers, school managers, and the wider education community. The
material on this website is copyrighted to the New Zealand Ministry of Education but can
be used free of charge and without the permission of the Ministry of Education,
provided:
 the material is used for non-commercial purposes
 the material is not altered
 the source and copyright owner of the material are acknowledged.
11
While this is not an implementation of NZGOAL, these terms and conditions of release
reflect many of the exclusive rights that the Ministry holds through Crown Copyright.
12
DigiStore: Te Pataka Matihiko: Our Digital Storehouse6 is a repository provided by the
Ministry for digital content that is free for all schools. Content includes thousands of
digital learning objects and digital resources, developed as part of The Learning
Federation initiative, which was a joint venture between the Australian and NZ
governments. It also includes digital content and learning objects made available by NZ
cultural institutions such as the National Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa. In 2010
material developed by the Learning Federation transitioned from a “free for education”
(FFE) basis (which generally permits free use but not reuse, remixing or redistribution)
to an Open Education Resources (OER) model using a Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike licence (CC BY-SA).
13
It is also possible for individuals and groups who wish to contribute digital resources to
Te Pātaka Matahiko Digistore to access the site. Contributors are required to follow
guidelines on the preferred standards, styles and formats when creating these
resources.
4
PDF of NZGOAL available at http://ict.govt.nz/library/NZGOAL.pdf http://tki.org.nz/
6
http://digistore.tki.org.nz/
5
2
14
The Virtual Learning Network provides a social media platform (VLN Groups) for
teachers to collaborate. This is predominantly a social network platform, but it has
content management capability that allows individuals and groups to freely share
resources.
15
To support school boards, the Ministry has supported a number of ‘WeCreate
Seminars’7 in conjunction with the OER Foundation and Creative Commons Aotearoa to:
 provide information to boards about current intellectual property management practice
in schools and emerging OER practices
 present an argument as to why OER practices are worthy of immediate consideration
 provide information to Boards about steps they can take to implement open access
principles and the tools which they can use
 address and challenge common fears about the new practices and policy elements of
OER.
16
The National Library of New Zealand’s Mix and Mash initiative has produced a resource
to assist teachers to understand copyright and licensing for remixing.8
7
See http://wikieducator.org/WeCreate/Events
http://mixandmash.org.nz/schools/ “The guide gives you information, activities and ideas to confidently create a
remix from material you know you have the rights to reuse. It shows students why copyright and licensing exist,
how they work, and how they can apply licences to their own work through simple information, suggestions for
activities, and links to more resources. By using it, you and your students will be able to participate in the global
remix community while demonstrating creativity and integrity.” 8
3