[Health] [Grassroots-l] Health Jam 2008
Chris Leonard
cjlhomeaddress at gmail.com
Tue Apr 29 23:29:16 EDT 2008
Bryan,
There is absolutely no reason for you to accept my assurances about
copyright, I certainly wouldn't take just anybody's word on it, no offense
taken or intended. I think this is a general challenge to the OLPC Library
content collection and re-publishing effort, because not everyone puts as
much thought into copyright and tagging content with licenses as open
source/content advocates. The need to think deeply and clearly about
copyright is a potentially substantial barrier-to entry for subject matter
experts (health, science, education, etc.) that needs to be addressed
thoughtfully.
As luck would have it, this page is pretty explicit that "All of these
materials are in the public domain and may be reproduced without
permission."
http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/PubsOrderForm/default.asp
For many materials produced by the US Government, I have reasonably high
level of confidence that copyright review will show that they are dedicated
to the public domain, but someone (OLPC?) should get a real lawyer to render
an opinion, I just play one on the Internet and in my firm's Intellectual
Property Committee meetings.
This happens to be under the grand-daddy of all US "open-source" licenses,
written right into the law itself. Most (but not all) content that is
categorized as a US Govt. work under the meaning of Title 17, Chapter 1,
Section 101.
"A "work of the United States Government" is a work prepared by an officer
or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's
official duties."
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#101
is therefore dedicated to the public domain under Title 17, Chapter 1,
Section 105.
"Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the
United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded
from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment,
bequest, or otherwise."
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#105
A U.S. based intellectual property lawyer will generally know all about "US
Govt works", they had to know it to pass the bar exam. It is actually a
really important issue for OLPC's purposes, because some of the most
distribution-ready and usable stuff that will be found in health content is
going to be on US Govt sites, but that is a discussion that should probably
branch onto the Library list at some point.
As an aside, I'm going to decline to cross-post it right now, but by hitting
the send button I think I'm licensing this message by OLPC's preferred
terms, which I think is CC-BY 2.5, but that is for the wiki and neither the
Lists page (http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/) nor the "welcome to the list"
message are explicit about that, may be something OLPC should look into,
copyright stuff is really a bear. . .
Back to the real issue at hand, I thought the link I had sent was maybe a
little advanced in vocabulary. For something targeted at a younger
audience, see the UNESCO homepage link (which fortunately is also explicit
about being free of copyright) on this wiki-page.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Children%27s_Health_Books
I found these materials on UNESCO's site and Mel Chua (and I think she said
her aunt) is apparently interested in taking on the paper-layout to
electronic-layout conversion, these print as fold-over booklets. The
language is for a much younger audience and UNESCO happily includes
materials to aid in their classroom use by teachers.
The whole question of getting content (as opposed to code) translated is
something I wish I understood better.
cjl
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 9:12 PM, Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is quite nice, w/ one concern - is it under an open-source license?
> The English reading level is far too high for even most of our teachers
>
> If we could translate it to Nepali it would be quite perfect for our
> needs here in Nepal.
>
> thanks Chris
>
>
>
> On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 17:55 -0400, Chris Leonard wrote:
> > I am very interested in participating in the discussion although I'm
> > still collecting my thoughts (I share many of Bryan's views).
> >
> > However, in the spirit of "working code first" and as a
> > possible answer to one of his specific requests.
> >
> > How does this look?
> >
> > Understanding Microbes in Sickness and Health
> >
> http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/healthscience/healthtopics/microbes/PDF/microbesbook.pdf
> >
> >
> > Pros:
> >
> > 1) On topic
> >
> > 2) Authoritative (product of NIH, National Institute of Allergy and
> > Infectious Diseases)
> >
> > 3) Public domain as US Govt. Work (specifically NIH Publication No.
> > 06-4914)
> >
> > Cons:
> >
> > 1) Maybe a little high end in the vocubulary, target for US govt. pubs
> > is often 10th-grade reading level.
> >
> > 2) Currently only in English (maybe Spanish with some luck, but
> > definitely not Nepali)
> >
> > Bryan, can you show this to someone in Nepal to see if it looks close
> > to what they would like to see? Feedback would assist the search
> > for something suitable.
> >
> > cjl
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 11:47 AM, Bryan Berry
> > <bryan.berry at gmail.com> wrote:
> > absolutely,
> >
> > Start w/ some simple goals for Health
> >
> > 1 activity for first aid
> > 1 activity on nutrition
> > 1 activity on the causes of disease
> >
> > 1 good pdf on the causes of disease
> >
> > Then do some work on them to get started. After you
> > have some prototypes
> > __then__ go look for help. The argument is "Here are
> > our goals, here is
> > what we have so far, please help us improve what we
> > have. However, if
> > you are think you could create better content yourself
> > by starting from
> > scratch, please do so."
> >
> > If you ask the larger community for help w/out having
> > any existing
> > prototypes or precise goals, everyone goes off in
> > different directions.
> >
> > Martin Langhoff's e-mail motto sums it up quite well
> >
> > "don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code
> > first"
> >
> > Since you have an all-volunteer team on OLPC Health,
> > you need projects
> > where folks can contribute a few hours a week. I
> > recommend avoiding
> > architecturally complex or esoteric technical
> > projects, it will be hard
> > for folks to put in the necessary time and for others
> > not so acquainted
> > w/ that obscure platform to contribute. We are running
> > into this problem
> > w/ EPaati since it is coded in Squeak.
> >
> > If you could get some of Greg Smith's time, he could
> > help you put
> > together a project plan. He has been very helpful to
> > me. He is also
> > resident in Boston
> >
> > hope this helps
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 00:01 +0530, Arjun Sarwal wrote:
> > > > Why didn't the Health Jam focus on getting folks
> > to help w/ the
> > > > development of these activities that you
> > described?
> > > >
> > > > Too many OLPC content projects are characterized
> > by
> > > > 1) Lots of great ideas
> > > > 2) Lack of focus
> > > > 3) Lots of excitement, wiki pages, and e-mails
> > > > 4) Not much output in terms of finished
> > activities or activity bundles.
> > > >
> > > > Sorry to be blunt but we need to change this.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Ideas on getting started with this change ?
> > >
> > > (just trying to push the conversation forward in
> > this direction as I
> > > agree with your point to some extent)
> > >
> > > best
> > > Arjun
> > >
> > >
> > > From: Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com>
> > > Subject: Re: [Grassroots-l] Health Jam 2008
> > > To: Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>
> > > Cc: olpc-open <olpc-open at laptop.org>, Games for
> > the OLPC
> > > <games at lists.laptop.org>,
> > grassroots at lists.laptop.org
> > > Message-ID:
> > <1209493566.7102.84.camel at dell.linuxdev.us.dell.com>
> > > Content-Type: text/plain
> > >
> > > >There's no contradiction between activities that
> > are fun, or with
> > > >complex ideas behind them, and those that teach the
> > most basic health
> > > >and survival skills to children.
> > >
> > > Teaching basic health and survival skills to kids is
> > actually quite
> > > complex.
> > >
> > > EKG's w/ the XO or the VistA healthcare suite are
> > neat apps but not what
> > > is needed by most deployments.
> > >
> > > When I refer to "complex" I more precisely mean
> > problems that are
> > > technically interesting but not directly not related
> > to education for
> > > kids ages 6-12, OLPC's primary focus.
> > >
> > > Why didn't the Health Jam focus on getting folks to
> > help w/ the
> > > development of these activities that you described?
> > >
> > > Too many OLPC content projects are characterized by
> > > 1) Lots of great ideas
> > > 2) Lack of focus
> > > 3) Lots of excitement, wiki pages, and e-mails
> > > 4) Not much output in terms of finished activities
> > or activity bundles.
> > >
> > > Sorry to be blunt but we need to change this.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 13:47 -0400, Samuel Klein
> > wrote:
> > > > There's no contradiction between activities that
> > are fun, or with
> > > > complex ideas behind them, and those that teach
> > the most basic health
> > > > and survival skills to children.
> > > >
> > > > There are three health-related games being
> > proposed and worked on at
> > > > the moment that are good examples; all of which
> > could use further
> > > > specific input. Food Force is closest to having
> > something playable...
> > > > pehaps Muriel and Deepank can say a bit more about
> > its recent status.
> > > >
> > > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Water_Wonders
> > > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Malnutrition
> > > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Food_Force
> > > >
> > > > SJ
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Health mailing list
> > Health at lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/health
> >
> >
>
>
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