9 - Copyright and Creative Commons - 21 Things for the 21st Century Educator

Copyright and Creative Commons
Copyright

It is very important that students and teachers follow Copyright law and be aware of the Fair Use guidelines. In this "Thing" you will learn about the Teach Act, Creative Commons, and Fair Use guidelines.

Pre-Assess your skills for this "Thing"

Before beginning this "Thing", complete the Pre-Assessment of your technology proficiency.

It's the Law!
Did you know....

A copyright is a grant by the United States of exclusive rights over the writings of an author, including software.
A Copyright protects only the expression, not the idea.
Expressions are inherently copyrighted at creation.
The right to sue for infringement requires claims of copyright to be registered in the Copyright Office.
Registration requires creator to fill out copyright forms and submit.
Expression must display copyright symbol.
Innovative and/or novel software algorithms or constructions protection requires submission of an intellectual property disclosure form and review by the UTA Intellectual Property Committee as a process patent.
Ideas can be protected through patent application.

The official copyright site from the Library of Congress has information about copyright, how to register a work, how to record a document and information about law and policy.

The Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia defines the limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright holders. The purpose of these guidelines is to provide guidance on the application of fair use principles by educators, scholars and students who develop multimedia projects using portions of copyrighted works under fair use rather than by seeking authorization for non-commercial educational uses. These guidelines apply only to fair use in the context of copyright and to no other rights.

The Teach Act expands the scope of educator's rights to perfom and display works and to make the copies integral to such performances and displays for digital distance education, making the rights closer to those we have in face-to-face teaching.
If you would like to copyright your information on the Internet, you may register it at the Copyright Website.

Check out A Fair(y) Use Tale video created by Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University. He created a humorous, yet informative, review of copyright principles using sayings from our favorite Disney characters.

Aligned to the NETS-T: 4.a,4.b,4.c

Connections to Marzano Strategies: Generating and Testing Hypothesis

Creative Commons Licensing

When educators or students want to use something another educator or student has created, depending on how and how much will be used, they contact the content creator to obtain permission. A Creative Comomons license makes this process easier by the creator identifying use rights before publishing. When wanting to use something which has been identified with a Creative Commons license, the user has specific permission to use the content in predetermined ways, giving the creator credit- eliminating the need to contact the content creator.

Some school districts are adopting a non-commercial Creative Commons licensing for anything created by educators in their district. This understanding makes it clear about how teacher created content may be used.

It is a licensing concept created by Creative Commons that builds upon traditional copyright practices to define possibilties that exist between the standard "all rights reserved" full copyright and public domain "no rights reserved". Works are in the public domain if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all, if the intellectual property rights have expired or if the intellectual property rights are forfeited
A Creative Commons license lets you dictate how others may use your work. The Creative Commons license allows you to keep your copyright, but allows others to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit and only on the conditions you specify. For online work you can select a license that generates "Some Rights Reserved" or a "No Rights Reserved" button and statement for your published work. From:
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/Creative_Commons_license.html.

Here are some informational sites and tutorials to learn more about Creative Commons.

Creative Commons-You Wanna Work Together? -video which explains the value of CC
A Shared Culture- video with testimonials about the benefit to all of sharing and using CC licensing
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/Creative_Commons_license.html.

Creative Commons For Educators

View more presentations from Jessicacoates.

21 Things Hands-On Activity and Assignment

1. Before beginning this "Thing", complete the Pre-Assessment of your technology proficiency.

2. After reading the information on the Official Copyright site and additional resources, create a 10 question copyright quiz for your students or fellow staff members. Once they have taken the quiz, summarize your findings on their understanding of the copyright law.

3. Go to the Creative Commons licensing site. You are going to copyright your Face of the Classroom web site (for an example check out the copyright on the bottom of the 21 Things site). Click on License. Then choose the permissions that are appropriate for your web site. Once you completed the process of creating your license, copy the embed code and paste it at the bottom of your web site page. Please include a screen shot of your Creative Commons License.

4. After completing all of the activities for this "Thing", take the Post-Assessment of your technology proficiency for this "Thing".

Post-Assess your skills for this "Thing"

After completing all of the activities for this "Thing", take the Post-Self Assessment of your technology proficiency for this "Thing". (This is part of your hands-on activity/assignment).

Additional Resources

Creative Commons Images

In some instances, you may need to insert the images on certain works. For the html code, please visit the Creative Commons website. To use the images below, right click and save as an image.