The Educator's Guide to the Creative Commons

[Cross-posted at Drape's Takes]

As not every teacher understands how to implement the Creative Commons into their curriculum, I thought I'd take a minute to explain how I would use it if I was in their shoes.

Step 1: Understand the rules of the Creative Commons.

• These two videos give a pretty good description of what it is and why creative people like it.
  

• The presentation that follows, created by Jessica Coates, also gives an excellent description of how to use Creative Commons in the classroom. Because she has licensed the presentation with a CC-Attribution license, I am able to include her presentation in this blog post (or distribute it anywhere else on the Internet) - without worrying about Fair Use or other copyright restrictions - given that I attribute her as the author of the presentation. These were the terms that she decided upon when she created her license.
  
  

Creative Commons in the Classroom

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: resources source)

Step 2: Use Creative Commons-licensed materials in my curriculum. There is a growing number of resources available online for finding Creative Commons-licensed materials. The list of directories maintained on the Creative Commons wiki, for example, is continually growing. To narrow the list down slightly, I'll list a few of my favorites here:

• Images - Most pull from Flickr's extensive collection
  
  Flickr (check the Creative Commons box at the bottom)
  FlickrCC
  Compfight
  FlickrStorm
  everystockphoto
  Open Clipart Library
  Geograph British Isles
  Wikimedia Commons
  
  
• Audio
  
  CC Mixter Samples
  Jamendo
  Freesound
  Internet Archive
  Owl Music Search
  SpinXpress
  Wikimedia Commons
  
  
• Video
  
  MOD Films
  Internet Archive
  SpinXpress
  

Step 3: Reuse, remix, and share my Creative Commons-licensed curriculum materials.

• Remember: The Creative Commons makes it easy to understand when it's OK to reuse, remix, or share new content.
  
• My blog is an example of how I share my ideas and materials. I've licensed everything I share here under a CC-Attribution-Share Alike license.

Step 4: Teach my students about Creative Commons while I also teach them about global collaboration, desktop publishing, why creativity is such an essential skill, and my core subject.

• If I were teaching a core subject today, I would use Flickr to teach math, wikis to teach history, and Voicethreads to teach geography. In doing so, I not only teach the core content, but I teach my students a variety of other essential skills that might not be addressed by the core.
• If I were teaching a core subject today, I would also use project-based learning far more than the sit-n-git techniques I used to employ. With that in mind, it is any wonder why I love the Creative Commons?
  

To close, what are your thoughts regarding the Creative Commons? How and why do you use it with your students?

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