Collaborate Baby (Creative commons, Copyright, and More)

Wow, there is a lot I didn’t know about copyright. I honestly didn’t know that as soon as you begin work on a project, piece of art, song, or you take a picture, video, etc. copyright is immediately enabled. I thought one had to put effort into copywriting their work, when ironically it is others who have to put effort into using that work because from the moment of creation only the author of the original work has the right to use it. That makes things quite tricky, especially for wanting to use others’ work in lessons, or for blog posts ;), or if your students are compiling information for a project or presentation. Even with ‘fair dealing’ a Canadian law that allows the use of others’ works for private study, research, criticism, review, or news reporting, isn’t applicable to teaching. Thankfully there has been a surge in ‘creative commons’ or ‘CC’ as we see on images quite often. Many authors/artists have chosen to forgo copyright via creative commons licenses allowing others to use their media with proper citation. If it is a choice between citing a source properly, which one should do to respect the integrity of the creator anyways, and not having access to sources and media, I would choose citations any day. After learning about all these copyright facts, I will avidly educate my students on what it means to plagiarize, which is often hammered into lessons during school. But most of my focus will be on the benefits of CC, and how owning your own work is relevant, but being able to share that work with others is beautiful. I will show them how to CC their own work, so they can understand the feeling of ownership and the feeling of sharing. Furthermore, I will educate them how to properly cite others work, as they would hope others would cite theirs. Collaboration is key. Let’s share, reuse, and remix. Let’s work together through the power of creative commons. collaborate baby!

Here is some examples of CC friendly images found through FLICKR and google advanced search. Ps. check out my citations y’all.

Ribeiro, Lucelia. (June 30, 2008). Children at School. [Online Image]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/lupuca/8720604364/

Geralt. (July 6, 2016). (Children, silhouette, world). Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/p-1499263/?no_redirect