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Conversations on Open Education for Language Learning

Open Resources for Indigenous Languages

Photo credit: “Nahuala huipil” by Sergio Romero for “Chqe’tamaj le qach’ab’al K’iche’!”, licensed under Creative Commons License

2019 is the International Year of Indigenous Languages, as established by UNESCO. The goal of this year is to increase support for, promotion of, and access to indigenous languages. UNESCO suggests that one approach to this goal is to “develop new and open educational resources to facilitate teaching and learning in indigenous languages”. (You can read the other suggestions on the program website.)

Since we at COERLL focus on open educational resources (OER) for language learning, we are happy to see when OER are suggested as a way to support a movement. Open Creative Commons licenses, an essential aspect of all OER, make it easier for people to access and share important information in their community and with the world, while ensuring authors are always credited for their work. This will not be a solution that suits everyone, but there are many indigenous language teachers and organizations who have chosen to make their resources available under a Creative Commons license. The list below is just a sample. Thank you to the authors of these resources for sharing their valuable knowledge.

Please share other openly-licensed indigenous language materials in the comments!

Fijian

Na vosa vakaviti – A Fijian language children’s activity book of word searches, colouring pages, and stories published by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Licensed under a CC BY-NC license.

Indigenous languages of Canada

Indigenous Storybooks makes the text, images, and audio of stories available in Indigenous languages as well as English, French, and the most widely spoken immigrant and refugee languages of Canada. It’s for children, families, community members, and educators. Inspired by Little Cree Books. Licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

Iñupiat

Iñupiat Language Community site – Lessons, activities, and additional resources for the Iñupiat language developed by Chelsey Zibell at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Licensed under a CC BY license.

Komnzo, Mauwake, Moloko, Palula, Papuan Malay, Pite Saami, Rapa Nui, Yakkha, Yauyos Quechua

Studies in Diversity Linguistics – A book series published by Language Science Press on individual less-widely studied languages (primarily reference grammars). The chief editor is Martin Haspelmath. Licensed under a CC BY license.

K’iche’

Chqe’tamaj le qach’ab’al K’iche’! – A multimedia K’iche’ curriculum in English and Spanish, comprised of 40 lessons developed by Sergio Romero, Ignacio Carvajal, Juan Manuel Tahay Tzaj, Mareike Sattler, et. al. with the support of LLILAS and COERLL at the University of Texas at Austin. Licensed under a CC BY license.

Māori

Te reo Māori pukapuka mahi – A free downloadable Māori language activity book for kids published by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Licensed under a CC BY-NC license.

Nahuatl

Language faculty and graduate students supported by LLILAS and COERLL at the University of Texas at Austin are in the process of planning materials for beginning language learners of Nahuatl. Stay tuned to the blog for updates!

Sāmoan

Gagana Sāmoa Tusi o gāluega fa‘atino – A Sāmoan language activity book of word searches, coloring pages, and stories for kids, published by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Licensed under a CC BY-NC license.

SENĆOŦEN

SENĆOŦEN Classified Word List – A list of over 3300 SENĆOŦEN words and sound files by Dr. Timothy Montler et. al. Licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

General Indigenous Language Studies

Language Learning Assessment Tool – A guide for adult learners of Indigenous languages to self-assess their learning and progress written by Dr. Onowa McIvor and Dr. Peter Jacobs of NEȾOLṈEW̱, the Indigenous Language Research Network. Licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

 

What other openly licensed indigenous language materials do you recommend?

Sharing responsibly with your colleagues

Photo credit: flickr user Hoffnungsschimmer Creative Commons License

You can help other teachers by sharing your creations, whether you give your materials away or sell them.

However you share, we suggest you do it with a Creative Commons (CC) license. This allows users of your work to make changes to fit their students and their teaching context, and to use the materials in their classroom. And you still get credit! Copyright, which is the default license on any unmarked online content, doesn’t allow these rights.

Here’s how to add a CC license:

1. Click here to download the CC BY license image to your computer.

2. Add the license image to your resource (in the footer, at the end of content, or anywhere else you prefer).

3. Copy and paste the following text underneath your license image:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

There are other licenses which give more or fewer rights to the users of your materials. You can learn about them on the Creative Commons website.

Read the license!

2 Comments

Photo credit: flickr user Eden, Janine and Jim Creative Commons License

From the editor: COERLL advocates for the use of Creative Commons (CC) licenses over copyright wherever possible. But in either case, it is essential that users always look for the CC or the © on the work they use and distribute, and understand what those symbols mean about their rights. Martina Bex gives a teacher’s personal perspective why usage and distribution rights are important. 

A few weeks ago, I used Google to find the link to one of my products. I typed in “bex monstruo armario”, and there it was! Yes! The first link that popped up was a direct link to the product on TeachersPayTeachers.com. That should have been the end of the story, but unfortunately it was only just beginning.

My heart sank as I realized that the next two…four…seven links were all direct-download links to my powerpoint presentation that were stored on slide sharing websites and personal classroom pages. “Are you kidding me!?” I exclaimed out loud. I felt my stomach begin to tie itself in knots. As I clicked through link after link, I my heart start to pound harder and harder in my chest. I clenched my teeth and my ears started getting hot. WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?

Copyright infringement is something that publishers deal with constantly. For many, it has become such a frequent occurrence that they have hired personnel to identify and pursue violations. I am not a publisher; I’m a stay at home mom with a 5 year old, a 3.5 year old, a 2.5 year old, a 1 year old, and another baby on the way that oh-by-the-way-happens-to-write-lesson-plans. I don’t have the money to hire someone to make sure that no one is posting my materials online; nor do I have the time to regularly search for each of the hundreds of products that I sell to make sure that they haven’t been posted anywhere. I don’t have time to track down the contact information of violators; draft emails, letters, and submit takedown requests; and follow up to make sure that the files are removed. I especially don’t have the time or money to hire a lawyer that will pursue financial reparation. And yet, I don’t have a choice. When you’re wounded, you’ve got to stop the bleeding.

I realize that most of the time, teachers violate digital copyright law innocently. In an effort to connect classroom and home or to find easy solutions for the “I-teach-in-six-different-classrooms” problem, teachers upload PDFs of the materials that they use in class to their classroom websites or to slide sharing websites. It never occurs to them that the little link posted on their page would pop up in the first page of a Google search—even with general terms—for anyone in the world to be able to access and download.

I’m here today to tell you that the files on your public, non-password protected website do show up in a simple Google search, and that your careless mistake is hurting me. I’ll never know how much income I have lost due to copyright violations. Perhaps because I can’t possibly know the amount, loss of income doesn’t bother me much. What really infuriates me is watching my to-do list become completely derailed, week after week, as infringements are brought to my attention. Three hours spent dealing with copyright concerns means that I don’t have time to respond to the 10 emails that I received yesterday from teachers asking for advice. It means that even though I promised a group of teachers that a unit would be finished by the time they needed it this Friday, it won’t be. It means that the article that I wanted to write and share—FREE—for teachers to use to talk about the situation in Venezuela will never get written.

Somehow, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize!” doesn’t seem like enough.

Please, dear teachers, take the time to learn about how files can be used and shared, whether copyrighted or carrying a Creative Commons license. Take the time to educate your colleagues. And if you ever stumble upon a file that is being shared illegally online, please send the link to the copyright holder.

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Martina Bex is a former Spanish teacher in Anchorage, Alaska with a passion for using comprehensible input to explore culture in the target language beginning in Novice classes.