Open education is a potential solution to these complex problems.

As a part of our commitment to open education, K12 Open Ed has recently launched the first completely open kids dictionary (http://dictionary.k12opened.com). We think this is an important building block for many open education projects and invite everyone to join us in collaborating on it.

This dictionary is intended for kids, though it can certainly be used for adult learners as well. As words are completed, they will be reviewed for quality and appropriateness and ultimately “frozen” for export into a variety of formats, including text, PDF, ebooks, wikis, web, etc., for use on a variety of devices.

This work is being licensed as a public domain resource that anyone can use for any purpose. We see this as a fundamental building block for many OER projects and hope that it will be used by teachers, students, publishers, hardware manufacturers, VARs, and others.

The site includes a build-your-own-glossary tool that allows users to construct glossaries for their own books, units, courses, or web sites and export them to text, html, rtf, pdf, or wikitext. Over time, we will be adding other new features, such as audio pronunciations, pictures, support for additional languages, and a wide variety of export functions.

This is a mass collaboration project, and we hope that many people around the world will jump in and add a definition or two.

We would love to see you at the” dictionary”:http://dictionary.k12opened.com and hope that you will also spread the word to others.

It is Saturday night at the Indian Lake Theater in the small town of Indian Lake, New York. The coming attractions have only been playing for five minutes when the sound slows down and the screen suddenly turns black. I am the projectionist so I rush upstairs and find a tangled pile of film unraveling out of the projector onto the floor.

Folks in Indian Lake, New York, saved their local movie theater as a community commons.

I run back downstairs to face the puzzled crowd. “Hi everyone. As you know, I’m new at this,” I say. “I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I’m going to do my best to fix the problem and get the movie running again in no time.” To my nervous surprise, the crowd cheers.

The Indian Lake Theater, in this small town of 2,000 in the Adirondack mountains, closed for two years. So moviegoers are grateful to have this important cultural common space back, and they’re willing to give it a chance.

When the town lost its beloved theater in 2006, it not only lost the option for residents to see the latest Hollywood hit on a Saturday night, but also lost one of the most important community gathering spots. The theater is literally located in the center of Indian Lake, just across from the post office and a short walk from the majority of the town’s businesses and restaurants. Over the years it has been the principal venue for Hollywood as well as classic and independent films. In addition, community theater shows and concerts by professional and school musicians—in fact, group gatherings of all kinds— have regularly packed the house.

About 30 minutes go by and I am still struggling to fix the film. Despite the long wait, the crowd is having a great time. They visit the concessions stand and catch up with neighbors and friends. I offer to give the audience their money back. A few people leave but refuse the return of their money. They figure the Indian Lake Theater needs it more than they do.

Finally, after 15 more minutes I fix the film. The audience erupts with roaring cheers.

When the Indian Lake Theater was closed, the town’s culture suffered along with the local economy. The theater provided a hub that allowed both local citizens and outside visitors to connect easily with other activities and services in town. Many local merchants businesspeople reported that the closing of the theater had adversely affected their businesses – from the ice cream shops, to hotel and cabin rental businesses, local restaurants and antique stores.
Once a small town loses its theater, when the seats are pulled out and the projector sold, a sense of community spirit is lost along with the movies.

But a group of local citizens in the Indian Lake area came together in fall of 2007 to devise a plan for purchasing and reopening the theater as a non-profit community stage and screen. A community board of directors, whose mission is strengthening the sense of community as well as watching the bottom line, now manages the theater. Ben Strader, managing director of the Blue Mountain Center, is the president. The Theater now has a paid director and local young people make good wages selling tickets and popcorn. A corps of volunteers handle other tasks that makes it possible for the Indian Lake Theater to host other events such as school music and theater productions, public meetings and even a Magic Lantern performance to celebrate the town’s sesquicentennial. All this, and Indiana Jones, too, along with independent movies. The theater is now more of a town commons than ever.

Harriet Barlow, Senior Fellow of On The Commons and founding director of the nearby Blue Mountain Center, who helped organize efforts to save the theater, notes “The Theater provides a sort of living room for the community, a rare opportunity for cooperation and collaboration. Most of all, it makes people happy!”

When the theater reopened last spring word spread across the Adirondacks and many folks sent donations to support it. Now, with this vision of a community center in place, the theater hopes to provide economic stimulus to the town, while breathing new life into the cultural scene of Indian Lake and the surrounding region.

The Indian Lake Theater, Blue Mountain Center and On The Commons are exploring the possibilities of creating a national network of community theaters. For more information, contact Harriet Barlow at hbarlow@onthecommons.org.

Before my very eyes citizens are rushing in to fill a vacuum left by news media consolidation and the debilitating loss of expert, professional reporting staff. Some laid off or pushed out journalists of note, still committed to their calling and their communities, are shaping digital, online public political discussion that incorporates new voices.

The democratic process, which depends on information gathering, analysis and dissemination, is a commons in peril. Hopeful, optimistic citizen advocates for local causes are turned cynical by the stronghold of money on political races, policy makers and the press. Even jaded operatives are waking up to the taint of money in national campaigns and efforts to pass legislation.

What is a commons? I think about it differently at different times—there is no ironclad definition. However I always say that the commons is one of these things: a natural resource that is freely inherited (such as water, biodiversity, or DNA) or a cultural resource (such as scientific knowledge or language) or social conventions and structures created by people, (such the stock market or a transit system). A commons may exist within or outside of a marketplace but it is best cared for by a collective rather than left to free market forces or government neglect and ineffective management. A commons may not be noticed until it is take away—as has happened with our precious clean air. A commons is something that really ought to belong to everybody, not just the rich, the privileged or whomever got there first.

But it looks like rescue is on the way for the commons of democratic discourse and practice—from small efforts to the global network of the iCommons My colleague David Bollier just presented this speech at the iCommons conference on the emergence of the commons sector.

The emerging political information commons here in the States is perhaps partly a re-birthing. Lessons can be learned from some of the old timers of media access. Decades ago I worked for a media organization—one of many student and community video access facilities proliferated throughout the country in the early 70’s. The advent of portable, consumer grade recording equipment (if you could call a hundred pounds of reel-to-reel videotape deck and gear portable) unleashed a wave of citizen news reporting, documentation, community broadcasting, screenings and video distribution that seems to be forgotten today.

The organization was University Community Video, now called Intermedia Arts. I catalogued a closet full of tapes from the early days for our state historical society that included: coverage of Vietnam War protests; eyewitness accounts of Native American legal battles; testimony by Black Americans displaced from housing by urban renewal; shows about women on welfare, rural poverty, and teenage pregnancy; early reporting on the AIDS epidemic; political satire; experimental dance and music; and profiles of unusual local personalities and businesses. A generation marched and alternative media makers were there to cover it—because nobody else did.

Our sister effort was low power community radio. Our cousins were neighborhood and under represented constituency newspapers and journals.

The current citizen journalism powered by the proliferation of inexpensive, easy ways to produce blogs, vlogs, text messages and news aggregators seems like déjà vu. The technologies and constituencies of this new brand of citizen journalism are crossing over and melding just as the old ones did. Yes, the old standard was analog and limited to broadcast over the airwaves and the new technology is digital and travels the globe almost at the speed of light, but the spirit is the same.

Today I see what is happening with commons sensitive eyes. I see implicit commons sector principles and organizing tactics in many of the new brand of public, participatory arts and media groups. Flat, non-hierarchical, decentralized management, born of necessity AND intention, make for porous organizations that let cross disciplinary magic happen. The next evolution of collaborative cross-fertilization, a messy process artists and cultural workers are uniquely comfortable with, is commons consciousness across isolated issue divides. And new communication technologies give these fertile parings new wings—for cheap.

I am compelled to deliver a word of caution for the online commons to remember to connect with well grounded groups that originate in diverse communities. I implore you to teach and adhere to important tenets of the commons: hold out for equity of access and benefit for all from a commons resource, protect it’s integrity, replenish it, and pass it on whole.

I worry about the possibility that practitioners of citizen reporting and arts activists are giving lip service only to nonpartisanship. Moderate the enthusiasm just a bit to insist on principles of accuracy and even-handedness. A commons approach eschews partisanship and ideology. The idea is not to build a new party or a new government. A commons viewpoint is neither left or right, progressive or conservative, Democratic, Republican, Libertarian or Green. It is not anti-Capitalist, although at first glance it may seem so. Commons thinking transcends these divisions. Commons is an old worldview of mutual responsibility and collective care that we all need to learn again.

With that said, hooray for The Unconvention. Hooray for interesting, engaging political actions powered by citizens like the imaginative “Your Yard, Our Message” lawn sign contest, eclectic personal messages on YouTube as part of “I Approve This Message,” (here is mine ) and courageous acts like “Kulture Klub Art Shanties” that claim space and give a political voice to youth experiencing homelessness.

Long live the commons. Long live democracy. Citizen journalist Kathleen Maloney signing off for now.

A new collaboration has formed in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota, calling themselves The Water Reclaimers. This collaboration is made up of people from environmental nonprofits, water quality entities, art organizations, city government, restaurants, and more.

Photo by perpetualstroll, Creative Commons NC, SA from Flickr

Together, the Water Reclaimers represent a wide range of perspectives and expertise on the issues impacting our drinking water. Their goal is to creatively engage people in trusting Twin Cities drinking water that sustains all life. This includes sharing information with about water quality, bottled water, tap water, and water as a commons.

The Water Reclaimers say that You, too, can be a Water Reclaimer simply by learning how to trust our water!

We are proud to use The Commons Mark to indicate our part in a movement to embrace water as a commons. The commons is everything we inherit or create together and must pass on, undiminished, to future generations. Whether it’s from your tap, a bottle, a spring, the sky or a public fountain, we honor water as a commons.

Currently the Twin Cities Water Reclaimer collaboration includes people from:
•A Single Drop
•Birchwood Café
•Corporate Accountability International
•Eureka Recycling
•Friends of Coldwater Springs
•In the Heart of the Beast Theater
•Minneapolis Councilmember Cam Gordon’s office
•Minnesota Department of Public Health
•Northland Bioneers
•On the Commons
•Saint Paul Public Works
•Saint Paul Regional Water Services
•Twin Cities Public Television
•V Creative

For more information about this collaborative: Contact Rachel Breen at On the Commons or Dianna Kennedy at Eureka Recycling

The victory was organized by Defending Water in Maine and other local organizations, with help from Food and Water Watch of Washington, D.C. “They’re pounding on the door of one community after another,” said Emily Posner with the Defending Water in Maine campaign. “We’re designating water as a part of the Commons, where everyone has the right to use water and no one has the right to sell it for profit. Maine’s economic development should be controlled by the residents of this great state, not by Nestle.”

Photo by Lance and Erin, via Flickr, licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license.

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch, was pleased by the water district’s decision: “Water should be safe, clean and affordable for all, not a commodity to line corporate pockets or to be taken and peddled as a luxury item. The people of southern Maine have spoken and what they want is control of their own water, not indentured servitude to the corporate water barons.”

She added, “Economically vulnerable towns that may be seduced by the lure of new jobs from new extraction sites need to know that these so-called promises are nothing but lies concocted by Nestle to dupe them into handing over their water.”

A recent analysis by Food & Water Watch, The Unbottled Truth About Bottled Water Jobs, finds that:

• In 2006, the nation’s 628 water-bottling plants employed fewer than 15,000 people
• A typical bottled water plant employs 24 workers, between two and ten of which are local residents
• The average salary for a bottled water worker in 2006 was $41,236, almost $10,000 a year less than the average manufacturing job
• In 2006, bottled water manufacturing had one of the highest rates of workplace injury and illness, with one out of every 11 workers maimed or infirm—a rate 50 percent higher than the broader manufacturing and construction industry.

It used to be that advertisers would slip a Coke can or bag of Doritos onto the set of a sitcom or American Idol in return for large fees. This is itself objectionable because the public, in return for the free use of its airwaves, deserves independent programming, not incessant paid commercials disguised as entertainment. But even this principle is being superseded by the next generation of product placement: Advertisers are working closely with producers and writers to integrate their products into storylines and use products to show the values and aspirations of characters.

Photo by Ben-Millett, via Flicker, licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND license.

A young professional might have an iPod, say, or an attractive woman might conspicuously wear something bearing a Banana Republic label (camera zooms in for a closeup and the character talks about it). The producers of “The Office” recently built two episodes around a character, Dwight, using a Staples paper-shredder in a way that showcased its small size and power.

The idea is to make brand-name products seem so seamless a part of the entertainment that viewers don’t even know they are being advertised to. Now that brand-name products are being integrated into programming, advertisers suddenly want to protect the integrity of programming. Any on-screen disclosures of product placements would be objectionable because they would “interrupt the entertainment experience,” one advertising executive complained to the New York Times. Funny, I’ve never heard advertisers complain in the past about their incessant commercial breaks, which are a rather serious “interruption of the entertainment experience.”

The new commercial invasions of programming have provoked citizen groups like Commercial Alert to call for explicit marketing disclosures. “TV stations pretend that these are just ordinary programs rather than paid ads,” according to Commercial Alert. “This is an affront to basic honesty. Product placements are inherently deceptive, because many people do not realize that they are, in fact, advertisements.”

Commercial Alert is trying to get the government to require disclosure of product placement in all media, including TV, movies, videos, video games, books and “adversongs.” You can find more about the deceptive nature of product placement here. The FCC is considering whether to require explicit marketing disclosures for product placement. You can comment to the FCC by clicking here.

Creative Commons license by Debcil, NC, from Flickr

But Food & Water Watch, a national consumer advocacy group, is concerned that minute scientific detail and unfamiliar chemical names used in these reports could mislead many people into thinking their water is tainted when it’s perfectly safe.

That’s why they’ve issued a handy report to help all of us without degrees in chemical engineering understand whether or not our water is safe. You will find it free at Food and Water Watch.

The report explains how to decipher and understand what small amounts of scary substances in our water really mean.

The Washington, D.C. water supply, for instance, contains arsenic in amounts that range from none to 0.5 parts-per-billion. That sounds bad, but even the highest readings for arsenic in the Nation’s Capital measure just one-twentieth of the EPA safety guidelines. Some of the arsenic occurs naturally as deposits in the soil break down, while the rest is runoff from pesticides applied to fruit orchards.

Ideally, such a report should spur citizens to lobby for more stringent environmental regulations on orchards, not swear off tap water in favor of Aquafina.

Tap water is extensively tested under EPA regulations that are far more stringent than those used in the bottled water industry, which generally does not issue water quality reports despite growing public concern about chemicals from plastic bottles leaching into our bodies and the environment.

“Drinking water is a basic human right and every consumer should know what’s in theirs,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “With faith in the quality of their tap water, consumers can feel confident in choosing it over expensive, wasteful bottled water.”

In 1988 the physicist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies first sounded the warning that global climate change was coming—soon. Speaking before Congress, he testified that global climate change was not a potential problem for the distant future. It was happening all around us.

He spoke to Congress again this week, 20 years to the day of his famous testimony, and took the opportunity to discuss what can be done to curtail climate change.

Conservatives, who have long vilified Hansen, were outraged that a scientist would dare offer policy proposals to lessen the environmental, social and economic devastation of an international disaster. Presumably they also believe that doctors should be limited to making a diagnosis, leaving the prescribing of medicine to politicians, oil industry lobbyists and the Heritage Foundation.

Hansen endorsed a phase-out of all coal use, except where carbon emissions are sequestered below ground. He forcefully rejected efforts to find more oil through off-shore drilling and tar shale projects.

And he advocated a commons approach in moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy, modeled closely on the Cap-and-Dividend proposal promoted by On the Commons Senior Fellow Peter Barnes.

“Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is needed to wean us off fossil fuel addiction,” he said, citing Barnes’s book Who Owns the Sky? in his footnotes… “The entire tax must be returned to the public, an equal amount to each adult, a half-share for children.”

“Carbon tax with 100 percent divident is non-regressive,” he continued. “On the contrary, you can bet that low and middle income people will find ways to limit their carbon tax and come out ahead. Profligate energy users will have to pay for their excesses.

“Demand for low-carbon high-efficiency products will spur innovation, making our products more competitive on international markets. Carbon emissions will plummet as energy efficiency and renewable energies grow rapidly. Black soot, mercury and other fossil fuel emissions will decline. A brighter, cleaner future, with energy independence, is possible.”

Like the previous three iCommons Summits, the Sapporo one will bring together a highly eclectic array of digital pioneers from dozens of nations: free-culture filmmakers from Britain, copyfighters from Croatia, open-access publishing advocates from the U.S., open-business entrepreneurs from Luxembourg, free software hackers from India, Creative Commons leaders from around the world, and many others. For more about the Summit, click here and for more about the conference schedule of speakers and labs, click here.

Earlier this week, Senator Barack Obama joined with arch-conservative Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to introduce “The Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.” The legislation will provide public access to federal grant and contract information through a website, USASpending.gov. The bill would also require all federal contracts and details of the bidding process to be published online. Read more about the bill here.

Photo by turtlemoon via Flickr, licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND license.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/trainorphans/169239396

The legislation builds on the excellent online tools developed by the National Priorities Project, which is well-worth a visit. The NPP website enables Internet users determine how their individual tax bills are allocated among the military, human services and other budget items. Based on your individual payments, the interactive tool spits out specific numbers.

A similar calculator lets you figure out budget tradeoffs. For example, how many one-year university scholarships could be financed if we were to do away with nuclear weapons? In my town, taxpayers paid $1.9 million for nuclear weapons, a sum that would pay for 194 scholarships. There are many other fascinating features of the site, such as how much the Iraq War is costing taxpayers.

This work has some nice parallels at the Sunlight Foundation, which developed a Google Earth application that plotted the locations for almost 1,500 earmarks in the House Defense Appropriations bill. The feature allowed people to get a graphic illustration of exactly where Congress is directing federal spending – and the ability to investigate whether the earmarks address pressing needs, favor political contributors or are simply pure pork. The site also has a list of “insanely useful websites” for tracking government spending and decisionmaking. Highly recommended.