Test your understanding of Copyright and Creative Commons
Exploring your work
I began working with DH OER Champions recently (17 June 2023). I’ve had a wonderful time. Reaching out to people across South Africa . Some who I know directly. Others who were on my Twitter time line (I was very pleased to meet). Others who are longtime ed techie / instructional design colleagues. I’ve met meet both groups and individual project leaders. Found out where these champions are, with their open efforts. Been looking at the outputs. On the whole, I must say I am hugely inspired, by the work I see.
“Imagine a world where every single human being on Earth has free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”
— Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia
In conversations with champions, I’ve seen many possibilities. How they are entering a world with thousands of (other) creative and generous educators, designers, experts, academics etc. This is a world where, with appropriate permissions, we can share and repurpose millions of digital works. That you can use completely, as it suits your class or course.
Many have expressed high expectations for Open Education. I’m hoping, that as we count down to the showcase event in Mid November (please pencil in the 16 November). That this last leg of the journey will be a positive learning experience for all of us us.
A simple recipe for sharing
OER (as you know) are “Educational materials of any kind (e.g., textbooks, worksheets, lesson plans, instructional videos, entire online courses, educational games) which can be freely used, adapted, and shared.” (UNESCO, 2022) What makes an OER an OPEN education resource is the license. Which explicitly gives the users a specific set of permissions. To use the resource. And the most commonly licensing framework is Creative Commons (CC).
Some projects have not explicitly selected a Creative Commons license. And placed it on their materials.
To create a license for your work, simply follow these steps:
- Bookmark the Creative Commons homepage. I’d suggest that you find a way to remember important website addresses. You can create a book mark on your browser to help you to remember this address
- Locate the ‘Share your Work page. Creative Commons have a simple, standardized way to give your permission to share and use your creative work. They have a “chooser” which will help you find out about Creative Commons licenses . And which is right for you
- Applying the chosen license to your OER. When you apply a CC license, you give permission to anyone to use your material for the full duration of applicable copyright and similar rights. This is a serious decision. If you have never licensed your work before. This may be a bit overwhelming. These FAQ can help
Try it and tell us what license you’ve chosen
Much like these blog posts have a CC licensed image (see above). and the whole blog is licensed as CC BY. I’m hoping that you will use the steps above to license your work openly. If you are not familiar with copyright, permissions or Creative Commons. And found the above quiz a bit confusing. Please reach out. Very happy to explain how things work. Or you might try this lesson below about this acronym
T-A-S-L
● Title: The title of your work
● Author: Your name
● Source: A link to or notice regarding where your work can be found
● License: The specific Creative Commons license you’ve chosen for your work
Using TASL
A quick TedEd lesson on creating an licensing statement https://ed.ted.com/on/rUNKOjrY