tianjara.net | Andrew Harvey's Blog

Here is a letter I wrote to the Board of Studies (service@bos.nsw.edu.au).

Hello, I'm not exactly sure who I should address this to, so I hope you can pass it along to the relevant person. I am writing to ask that the Office of the Board of Studies considers licensing their syllabi and examination materials under an open content license (such as Creative Commons, GNU Free Documentation License or another open content license). Currently the Board's course syllabi, HSC and SC examinations and Notes from the Marking Centre are licensed in a way that prevents redistribution and derivative works. The current status of the copyright licenses hiders students and teachers ability to use the syllabi and examination materials for study through sharing and collaboration of content. For example it is to my understanding that students, teachers and anyone else cannot take all the syllabus "dot points" and annotate them with their own content, and republish this for the benefit of others. Similarly the current licence prevents use of syllabus extracts such as "dot points" for collaborative works using modern web tools (such as wiki's). Please note that I have published this letter on the internet (http://andrewharvey4.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/a-letter-to-the-board-of-studies-nsw). If you agree to any reply to this letter to be posted online (with credit of course), please let me know otherwise I will not publish any reply. Thank you for you time, Andrew Harvey (Past HSC student, Currently University Student)

(EDIT: A related post, http://andrewharvey4.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/board-of-studies-nsw-and-their-syllabi-copyright-license/)