Boston University Free Culture

Whoops. So the FreeList wasn’t making it past BU’s spam filter, so I’ve set a new internal list. To send messages to it, send an email to bufc-list@bu.edu

Thanks!

And while I’m here, I’m going to mention that All NIH funded research is now going to be made publicly available through PubMed within a year. I do a lot of research and wikipedia editing with pubmed, so this is pretty huge news for me and anybody else who likes science.

Richout.

Hey, the Freep wrote a thing about us! Neat. I know I trash them a lot for being made fun of by the Onion, but they’re quite a bit better this year.

New group aims to put BU lectures online for public

Andy Facini

A Boston University group is pushing for the school to follow in the footsteps of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to start putting class material online for public access.

In the first meeting of BU Free Culture at the George Sherman Union backcourt yesterday, the group focused on the creation of an OpenCourseWare program, similar to that of MIT, which recently opened the program to allow the public to browse through class notes, lectures and assignments of any of the school’s 1,800 courses.

“BU should be more open with its information,” said Free Culture President Rich Jones, a College of Arts and Sciences sophomore. “It is very easy to turn a school into an open-access school, and it would be very beneficial to the public.”

“We want to help teachers to use OpenCourseWare,” Jones said. “It’s harder for us as students to ask for [the program]. The goal is to get teachers to advocate, too.”

CAS computer science associate professor Leo Reyzin said the website would be a useful tool for students to prepare and organize for classes, and said “there is certain value to the transitory nature of the lectures.”

Free Culture hopes to have an OpenCourseWare program running within some departments on a trial basis.

In addition to OpenCourseWare, Free Culture plans on addressing other issues related to the dwindling of individual privacy, including issues with the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America.

“There are major privacy concerns [at BU],” Jones said. “[BU] can monitor your instant messages, emails and which websites you use.”

Free Culture is a chapter of FreeCulture.org, an international student organization that advocates public involvement in intellectual property issues.

“You don’t have to be an activist to add to the global understanding of culture,” said CAS sophomore Paul Sawaya.

http://media.www.dailyfreepress.com/media/storage/paper87/news/2007/12/07/News/New-Group.Aims.To.Put.Bu.Lectures.Online.For.Public-3139008.shtml

Well I thought that was pretty successful. Nice to meet all of you, thanks for showing up!

For those that didn’t, we talked about the obstacles and resources involved with getting an OpenCourseWare program set up. It seems that at this point the challenge isn’t really a technical one, but rather actually getting teachers to use it, especially those who are less tech-savvy or who don’t have many digitally-based course materials, such as those in the social sciences. We also decided to start an OCW test server in the Computer Science department at BU, as an example which could eventually be expanded to other departments and schools.

Outside of the OCW project, we also discussed other relevant digital issues on campus, such as the legal process involved with the **AA lawsuits and with the warrant-less surveillance of in dorm communication. As it stands, we just need more information about how exactly they are doing this, and then we should talk to a lawyer about the legality of it. Is Boston University following all of the laws required of Internet Service Providers?

Also, I have started a mailing list, which will probably be our primary method of communication among group members. To subscribe, send an email to bufc-subscribe@freelists.org or use the form below, to post to it, email bufc@freelists.org, and to view the archive, go to http://www.freelists.org/archives/bufc/

That’s all for now!

Rich

Well, after a painfully bureaucratic process, Boston University Free Culture is officially formed and now has a spiffy new blog and wiki, provided most generously by Asheesh Laroia from the FreeCulture.org mothership.

Our first meeting will be this Thursday, Dec 6th at 7:00pm at BU’s George Sherman Union. We will be meeting and discussing what Free Culture means at BU, what we can do about it and possibilities for the future. Here is the flier (clicky for bigger):

In the near future, this page will be updated with details about BUFC’s purpose and activities, as well as Copyleft Migration Guides for professors and Safe File Sharing guides for students. For now, check out the Free Culture Manifesto and then have a poke around on the site to get a feel about what all this is about.
See you soon!
Rich