CREATIVE COMMONS, AN EDUCATOR’S BEST FRIEND
As educators, you often want to use external content or resources to help students learn and make your course content more exciting and appealing. You might find interesting content online, but as much as you might want to use any content you see, you need to keep in mind that you are not always legally allowed to use it.
It might be frustrating to find a cool image or video and not know if you are authorized to use it in your course. So what can you do to make sure that you are not infringing on copyright-protected items? The solution will be to use Creative Commons licenses.
What is a Creative Commons License?
Creative Commons licenses allow you to use work created by different authors. You can use text, images, audio, video, and other content as long as you give the creator the appropriate attribution. There are six types of licenses. They range from allowing you to use the content as freely as you need, to content being somewhat restrictive. The license that you will want to use most would be the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY). This license means you can distribute, remix, modify and build upon the original work as long as the creator is given the appropriate credit.
By offering their work in Creative Commons, the creators are offered certain protection levels. All you need to do is make sure you do not infringe on those rights by giving the creators the correct attribution based on the license they offer.
Where can I Find Content Licensed under Creative Commons (CC)?
Creative Commons website – allows you to search for CC licensed content. Its search feature allows you to search across more than 300 million images!
Find OER – provides links to search for CC licensed work to use in your courses.
Wikimedia Commons – allows you to search CC licensed educational media.
Google Advance Search – by using Google Advance Search, you can put a filter to search for content that is free to use, share or modify.
Internet Archive: – American digital library that allows you to access free collections of digitized materials that include images, books, audio, movies, and more!
Flickr Commons – search for images that users have offered under CC license.
You can see how I used Creative Commons for my post Anatomy of a Learning Objective. The two images on the post were both licensed under Creative Commons.
Creative Commons helps educators create rich course content without worry. It allows educators to support each other and draw from each other in different ways to improve learner performance while at the same time enhancing their skills and understanding.
Please share in the comments below the ways you are using Creative Common in your class!
