The world of the internet has made it easier for everyone to share everything. If it is out there anyone can use it, right? Isn’t that what our students think?
I hate to admit that sometimes I ignore copyright laws to get done what I need to for my classroom. So I completely understand why it’s a struggle for our students. It is so much easier to copy and paste. In language arts classes we teach them how to cite work they use someone else’s work in papers, but what about other mediums? More and more teachers are having students create multimedia and online projects.
When do we teach students to use the internet correctly? Where is that GPS? In today’s classroom students need to know how to use internet content correctly. I believe that Creative Commons is exactly what this generation of students needs to help guide them. Everyone always sees ©(the copyright symbol) and know that means “all rights reserved,” so we know not to use it, but what if we are creating it together? The Creative Commons licenses on sites, makes it easier to share, create, and build knowledge together.
I have never seen the Creative Commons logo on any sites yet, but I wasn’t looking either. I plan to add it to my teacher website just as soon as I have checked to make sure I am following all the copyright laws. J CC is hopefully going to make a very positive mark on education!
Earlier this year I was looking in to getting a copyright. It was going to cost a good deal of money, but now I think a CC is a much better route. I wanted to share the content we were creating with other teachers but still wanted to get credit. This has been a great eye opening learning task.
That makes sense, to get a "CC" on teacher-created materials... most stuff we don't mind sharing, we just want someone to say "look at this awesome stuff I found and am using and hey! this person over here is who created it". It's a "pay it forward" kind of moment when we give props to those who's ideas we've borrowed.
ReplyDeleteIt almost seems like, eventually, and sooner rather than too much later, students are going to have a whole class on internet use and correctly siting sources of media, etc. Or at least a whole section of one course devoted to this information, since everyday it's multiplying, as well as the other tasks teachers have to fit into a regular day! Maybe cloning will just be perfected! :)