Technology & Learning - October 2008 - (Page 33)

FEATURESTORY Copyright By Judy Salpeter The New Rules of Complying with, and teaching young people about, copyright in an educational setting often feels burdensome. That’s because copyright laws were not designed to facilitate the sort of sharing and collaborating that has become widespread in the digital age. The innovative nonprofit organization Creative Commons turns the process around, making the concept of protecting and sharing work online not onerous, but positive. We asked Ahrash Bissell, Executive Director of Creative Commons’ ccLearn division, for a primer: Q: Why should educators care about the Creative Commons label? A: Creative Commons licenses legalize the sharing of content— something we do on the Internet every day whether we’re aware of it or not. Instead of reserving all rights to one’s work, which is the default in copyright law, Creative Commons licensing makes it easy for an owner to reserve some rights while making the work available for others to use and enhance. The creativecommons.org Web site offers free, easily understandable, machine-readable licenses. By putting a CC license on your work, you are allowing people to share it easily with others and, at the same time, outlining the ways in which you want to be given credit. You are saying, “I would like acknowledgment but I am offering this to the world to help others. If you find a way to make it better, feel free to do so.” It’s a very different take on copyright, and makes so much more sense today. Q: What is ccLearn? A: ccLearn (at learn.creativecommons. org) is a division of Creative Commons focused on minimizing the legal, technical, and social barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials. We are dedicated to supporting open learning and “open educational resources” (OER) and changing the culture of education so that teacher practices (pedagogies) become more transparent and effective. One project we are working on is Ahrash Bissell, Executive an education-specific search tool. Director of Creative Commons’ ccLearn division Traditional education sites feature sets of educational tools pulled together in one place online—a silo. The alternative is to label educational objects located all over the Internet with a set of shared attributes and allow them all to be accessed through a customized search engine. It’s a much more powerful way to do it and opens up a world of possibilities. We already have many examples on the Internet of tagging using key words. Creative Commons takes it one step further, avoiding language barriers with machine-readable code that makes it easy for search tools to locate resources sharing a particular license. Now we want to add more information to those machine-readable labels—information of particular interest to educators. For example, we’re encouraging the creators of open educational materials to label them by grade level, subject area, language in which the material is written, and so forth. Q: How focused are you on younger learners and the concerns K-12 schools have about protecting students from inappropriate materials? A: About 1/3 of the educators interested in ccLearn today are involved in K-12 education. Although we’re not prescreening or hand-selecting specific sites, in order to be found by our search engine, education materials need to be “curated”—meaning they TECH & LEARNING | 33 http://www.creativecommons.org http://learn.creativecommons.org http://learn.creativecommons.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Technology & Learning - October 2008

Technology & Learning - October 2008 Contents Editor’s Desk News & Trends We All Stream for Video Put to the Test Special Needs Guide to Tech Products The New Rules of Copyright Picture Perfect What’s New Leader of the Year Profile

Technology & Learning - October 2008

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