I want to take a break from the iPad discussion this post to explain about Creative Commons and copyright licensing. (please don’t roll your eyes) I also haven’t played with Popplet in a collaborative way yet and want to try that before I post about it.
Did you know that anything you create has an automatic copyright attached to it? I didn’t. That if anyone wants to use something you’ve made they need your expressed permission to do so? That if you want to use something someone else has created you are supposed to ask their permission?
There is an easy way around this (legal too! - not just ignoring it). You can use creative commons licensing. Notice anything new on my page? I have creative commons licensed it! Yeah me! It was easy and fast - took me less than 3 minutes to do and that included finding the website. (http://creativecommons.org/) So now, if you want to use my writing for something else you may, as long as you give me credit, aren’t making money from it and also license your work in the same way I licensed mine. These are choices I made - if you want to license something you can make different choices.
This video does a much better job explaining it than I can. Watch it.
Did you know that anything you create has an automatic copyright attached to it? I didn’t. That if anyone wants to use something you’ve made they need your expressed permission to do so? That if you want to use something someone else has created you are supposed to ask their permission?
There is an easy way around this (legal too! - not just ignoring it). You can use creative commons licensing. Notice anything new on my page? I have creative commons licensed it! Yeah me! It was easy and fast - took me less than 3 minutes to do and that included finding the website. (http://creativecommons.org/) So now, if you want to use my writing for something else you may, as long as you give me credit, aren’t making money from it and also license your work in the same way I licensed mine. These are choices I made - if you want to license something you can make different choices.
This video does a much better job explaining it than I can. Watch it.
I believe it is our responsibility as educators to both model this and encourage (make it necessary?) for our students to respect copyright and only use images that are not-copyright protected. This is good digital citizenship. This can be done by searching in the creative commons itself, or using the advanced search in google images to select re-usable images. Most images in flickr and like depositories are CC licensed.
The hardest part for me has been remembering that I want to do this (and I think it’s important), and being willing to be flexible about the image I get - it may not be exactly what I want, but can I find a different way of expressing my point? At the very least I have been trying to be more diligent when it comes to citing my sources for images I use that aren’t labelled for reuse (art images).
As a positive heads up - the Canadian copyright laws are changing. See this article. This should make it easier (more legal) to use things for educational purposes. The laws haven’t been changed since 1997 - which is a very long time in the digital age.
Is this on your radar? Do you think about the intellectual rights of your work? Of a colleagues work? Of a stranger’s work? Do you expect your students to cite images in posters/powerpoints/prezis? Do you cite them?
Honest thoughts?
I think it is important to cite others work (writing and visual) or use creative commons. That said, I don't all of the time, but I am beginning to try. It is a laziness or expediency factor. It's so much easier/quicker just to use the image from a Google Image search and not actually look for the ownership.
ReplyDeleteI know in history, we do a lot with historic photographs and images. Perhaps we could set up a Google Doc (or some other collaborative platform) where when we could paste photos with the citation to make it easier for everybody. For example, if I've created a lesson and used a photo of Henderson's winning goal, I would place it in the Goggle Doc with the citation, so people can just access the Google Doc for their images. Is this idea too utopian?
I love that idea - creating our own database of resources with citations. It might be too utopian. It also would likely be a huge undertaking! But if we are serious about giving due credit and being responsible digital citizens it might be something we need to pursue.
DeleteAnyone have ideas about what format we'd use? We would want it searchable - something that uses tags for searching?