Creative Commons 4 Educators

Key words: licensing, licence strategy, licence compatibility, dual licensing, using other people's material

Due Date: 7 March 2011

Overview
This week we consider the application of the Creative Commons licences to copyright material. How do you make licensing decisions about your material, and how do you execute them once you have made them? We encourage participants to think about how they distribute and manage their copyright material, particularly the ways in which this may enable or limit your and others use in future. We also briefly consider the practicalities of trying to share your material with others in the borderless internet environment.

Case Study
Professor Roger Williams is employed at the University of Wollongong and has written a fantastic introductory text on integrated weather prediction, a new field, which is evolving very fast. He stores his notes in a Word document, which he prints out for his students at the beginning of the semester. He reviews and updates the text each semester.

He is interested in making his introductory text available on his own website, to save printing costs, and to allow his students to leave comments directly online, but is worried that others might take it and use in ways that he is not comfortable with. He is happy for people to copy and modify the text but he does not want others to get rich from his work. And of course, he feels that he should always be attributed.

As well part of the introductory text, he is also interested in making excerpts from selected student research and assignments available, to demonstrate best practice responses to the various questions.

He is also thinking of adapting the material for younger children and uploading it to Curriki (http://www.curriki.org/).

Questions (to be answered by each group)

Note: If you need additional information to answer any of these questions, identify that information in your answer and note how it would influence your responses.

1. Are any of the Creative Commons licences appropriate for Roger to use on his introductory text? 
2. Do you know of any other licences that he may want to use?
3. Can he share the student materials?
4. Can he put the material on Curriki?
5. Write a statement for Roger to put on his materials identifying the licence he has chosen.
6. Using the Creative Commons licence chooser (http://creativecommons.org/choose/) to identify the appropriate html text for Roger to embed in his website. Explain why might Roger want to use this text, rather than just a written statement.
7. Each group member should individually identify a piece of material they have created (you can make one up if you don't have one) and write a paragraph on whether they would share it under a Creative Commons licence; and if so which licence they would choose. Explain your reasons.

Readings and Resources:

• UNESCO OER Toolkit 
  http://oerwiki.iiep.unesco.org/index.php/UNESCO_OER_Toolkit/Copyright_and_Open_Content_Licensing
• Licensing Portal for Educators, Creative Commons
  http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Licensing_Portal_for_Educators
• Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons Licensing, ccLearn http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/cclearn-explanations-oer-and-cc-licenses-05-apr-09.pdf
• Applying Creative Commons licenses to your educational resources, ccLearn, http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/cclearn-step-by-step-applying-cc-licenses-06-apr-09.pdf
• Best Practices for Marking Content with Creative Commons Licences: Creators, Creative Commons http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Marking/Creators
• Otherwise Open: Managing Incompatible Content in OER, ccLearn
  http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Otherwise_Open_report.pdf
• Why CC BY?, ccLearn
  http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/ccLearn_primer-Why_CC_BY.pdf
• Publishing Your Open Educational Resources on the Internet, ccLearn, http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/cclearn-recommendations-publishing-your-oer-on-the-internet-05-apr-09.pdf
• Before Licensing, Creative Commons http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Before_Licensing
• Chapter 8 of Introducing Copyright: A plain language guide to copyright in the 21st Century by Julien Hofman published by the Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver 2009. Accessible and/or downloadable from: http://www.col.org/resources/publications/monographs/Pages/Copyright.aspx/