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Winners Announced! – Why Open Education Matters Video Competition

Timothy Vollmer, July 18th, 2012

Creative Commons, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Open Society Foundations are pleased to announce the winners of the Why Open Education Matters video competition. The competition was launched in March 2012 to solicit creative videos that clearly communicate the use and potential of free, high-quality Open Educational Resources — or “OER” — and describe the benefits and opportunities these materials create for teachers, students, and schools everywhere. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the competition with a video on the Why Open Education Matters website. The competition received over 60 qualified entries. The winning videos are displayed below.

First Prize

Congratulations to Blinktower, an extremely talented creative agency based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Second Prize

Congratulations to Laura Rachfalski and her great team. Laura is an artist, videographer and photographer from Philadelphia.

Third Prize

Congratulations to Nadia Paola Mireles Torres and her collaborators from the design firm Funktionell. It’s also amazing to see that Nadia has made all the video assets available for download and reuse under CC BY!

The prize winners were decided by a panel of distinguished experts including Davis Guggenheim, Nina Paley, Liz Dwyer, Anya Kamenetz, James Franco, Angela Lin, and Mark Surman. Due to technical problems with the public voting on the Why Open Education Matters website which prevented some persons from submitting a vote, the third prize video has been awarded by the judging panel.

In addition to the winning videos, all of the qualifying videos are available for viewing on the competition website, http://whyopenedmatters.org. All of the videos are licensed CC BY, which means others may distribute, remix, and build upon them, even commercially, as long as they give credit to the creators.

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who submitted a video for sharing their creativity, talents, and passion in helping explain and promote Open Educational Resources.

14 Responses to “Winners Announced! – Why Open Education Matters Video Competition”

  1. Thanks so much! :) We’re over the moon!

  2. Intraday tips says:

    This blogs truly unleashes the power of open edu system..very informative.

  3. Michael Paskevicius says:

    How can I download the winning video? Downloading seems to be disabled on Vimeo :(

  4. Yeah i would like to download video me too. Is it possible ?

  5. Tíscar says:

    Congratulations! These videos are really inspiring and powerful to spread the idea of open education. Is there any chance to help to translate them? It could be a good idea to upload them to subtitle collaborative platforms like DotSub.com. I offer myself to help with the translation into Spanish. Best regards!

  6. Importatne que una red se ocupe de la educacion y de nuevas formas de llegar a los niños.
    Excelente propuesta. Felicitaciones.

  7. Tiscar,

    Im the winner of the 3rd price :)

    Our video had initially spanish subtitles. if you want to make the voice for it, we would love to. Also, subtitiles for other languages are welcome.

    thanks

    nadia

  8. José Gaibor says:

    Exelente espacio para informacion educativa y cultural..felicitaciones

  9. José Gaibor says:

    Exelente espacio para acceso educativo y cultural

  10. Finch says:

    Some really nice videos promoting OER, good work

  11. I’ve arrived to Creative Commons website by chance. I didn’t know of CC before (just knew about the CC license) and being a teacher and an artist painter, too and also a Linux and open softwares addict , I’m truly amazed of this project of open education.
    I wish you a great success developing open education all over the world!
    Thanks,
    Daniel C. Chiriac

  12. Randy Brummett says:

    Two problems… Problem 1: Teachers having “free license to adapt them and improve them” is a bad idea. They will set it up as a way to promote their own agendas.
    Problem 2: Free? I heard the word free and then I heard Obama and two billion dollars… That does not sound free at all… It sounds like two billion dollars! Oh, but thatʻs okay I guess. The Government in the US has set up a public education system that has spent more than two Billion of tax payers money and itʻs failing miserably. What the hell, letʻs give them a second chance to blow some more of our money.

  13. @ Randy Brummett
    Your 1th problem …Let’s admit that teachers will set it up as a way to promote their own agendas …….So? What’s bad on that?
    Your second problem: I know that the human culture , especially western culture with US culture as a peak, is set up to this truism: ” No good thing comes for free”
    This is far far away of the Open Education
    If a thing is open, a huge number of people have access to improve that thing.

  14. Its good o see blinktower getting some recognition, they sure deserve it.

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