Creative Commons 101

Creative Commons licensing is CRITICAL. I've been saying this for years. I've presented at conferences about it and each time people are shocked when I tell them the reasons why we should be using them. Seriously - we need to be adopting CC licenses in our kura.

What is it?
A creative commons licence is an open source copyright platform used to protect individual and collective intellectual property eg school resources that you make for your students. There are a range of different ways you can protect yourself through CC and more importantly share these licenses on your work. 

Why use them?
To me they're a better alternative to traditional copyright. More importantly - as you may or may not know - school boards of trustees own anything that is produced for the students at that school. Even if you create something in your own time, it will still be under the copyright of the school as you are employed via salary and employed by the school. Eg - the board of trustees own all of your resources you've made.

If you wanted to create a series of resources to share for example, you couldn't, because you don't own them. The school BOT does. You are illegally sharing resources if you do not have a creative commons policy in your school as you would be breaking copyright.

Another situation might be that you want to publish and make money from your series of resources - you couldn't because school doesn't have a CC policy. If it did - you could publish your work and use the CC licences of your choosing.

Also - if you've created resources in one school, moved to a new school - LEGALLY you can't take your resources. Because they're owned by the previous school's BOT under their copyright policy.

How do you use them?
Like I said above - there are different ways to use them. Usually I have BY-NC-SA -- meaning that if you used my resource you would have to say where you got it eg attribute my name in the adaptation, non commercial eg you can't make money from it, share alike eg you'd use it as is. To me - this is a very strong copyright. But flexible.

There are heaps of other options too though. And a really simple way of using them and figuring out which ones to use.

Where to access the licence?
Access it here: https://www.tohatoha.org.nz
There are heaps of helpful videos too and info for schools to use eg example policies and explanations of why we should use CC licensing.

Ngā mihi,
Alex Le Long
BY-NC-SA