Full Description
Summary
Creative Commons 4 Educators is a free online course for educators who want to learn about the Creative Commons licensing system and how it can be used to simplify the use and management of copyright material in education. It will teach you how to find copyright material that can be legally copied and remixed, and how to share your own copyright material with others.
Copyright often seems like a major barrier to educators, with rules that are complex and ill-designed for the modern classroom environment. Teachers frequently feel frustrated and uncertain whether the use they want to make is legal. The simpliest way to get around this is to get permission to use the material directly from the copyright owner. You can always use copyright material anyway you like as long as you have a licence.
It is this principle that has led to the growing open education resources (OER) movement, of which Creative Commons is one of the biggest players. Creative Commons and other OER organisations provide free licences that creators can apply to their material to give permission in advance for certain uses. This helps those copyright owners who want to share their material to do so, and at the same time creates a pool of material that can legally be reused by others. The licences and materials are all free and can be used without paying copyright fees or needing to consult a copyright lawyer.
The course material is built around practical case studies, designed to assist teachers using Creative Commons material in their day to day teaching or who want to license their own material under Creative Commons licences.
For a brief introduction to Creative Commons, see this video: http://creativecommons.org.au/about/videos/mayer-and-bettle.
Image credit: Creative Commons by Cambodia4kidsorg, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Learning Objectives
The goals of this course are to:
- help you find and identify material under Creative Commons licences
- understand your rights and obligations under each of the Creative Commons licences
- use Creative Commons licensed material correctly in a classroom situation
- apply Creative Commons licences to your own material, and consider the pros and cons of open licensing for educational materials
Prerequisites
There are not prerequisites for this course - however, some understanding of copyright law helps.
Sign-Up Task
Find an item that is Creative Commons licensed and identify the licence and what it lets you do with the material.
This should help: http://creativecommons.org.au/learn-more/fact-sheets/findingmaterial