Creative Commons License

In the spring, I took EDIM 510: Web 2.0: Impact on the Learning environment. That course was what first introduced me to the Creative Commons Licensing. I’ve recently begun following several other educators in the blogging world and have considered joining it myself. Being forced to create a blog for this course is a step in the right direction for me. I must admit, however, that I was kind of surprised that we had to create a copyright license for our blogs. In my mind, it was just a drop box to share assignments, but as I was reading about the purpose and benefits behind creating a license, I realized that it was a good idea. The short video clip on the Creative Commons website really made me think. “When you share your creativity, you’re enabling people anywhere to use it, learn from it, and be inspired by it” ("About the licenses,").

“Creative Commons allows copyright owners to release some of those rights while retaining others, with the goal of increasing access to and sharing of intellectual property” ("7 Things You," 2007). With that being said, I decided to put an Attribution No Derivatives license on my blog. In a short description, this means that anyone can use the information on my blog, but they may not change it and must give credit back to me.

Why did I choose this type of license?  I spent quite a bit of time on several websites, but http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Licensing_Portal_for_Educators#tab=License_Your_Work_2 was a great resource to me. Jacki’s Journey gets an attribution license because I think it’s important that my thoughts and compilation/application of research be credited back to me. If it’s important for me to cite where I gather information, I think it’s only fair that others have to cite it when they use my thoughts and information. I chose to do a no derivatives license because the intent of this blog is for educational course work only. With that being said, I didn’t want others to change my thoughts. They are more than welcome to use and share them, but I’d prefer that they stayed in original context.

In the near future, I would like to start blogging with my own classroom of students. Until this point, I’d never thought about having them choose a Creative Commons license for our class blog. Doug Johnson brought up a great reason why they should, though. “Students should be required to place a Creative Commons license on their own work to increase their understanding of intellectual property issues. Only when students begin think about copyright and other intellectual property guidelines from the point of view of the producer as well as the consumer can they form mature attitudes and act in responsible ways when questions about these issues arise” (Johnson, 2009). Currently, however, I’m the student so thank you for guiding me into understanding the importance of copyright so I can pass that on to my students.

Resources:

About the licenses. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Johnson, D. (2009, May/June). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/creativecommons.html

[Web log message]. (2007, March 15). Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/library /resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-creative-commons