Thing 9 Copyright and Creative Commons Reflection

It was interesting that among my senior students and faculty that answered my questions there was a difference in how photos and text would be treated. Seventy-seven percent of responders answered no to the statement “any photo on the internet is in the public domain and I may use it without attributing it to its creator.” Sixty two percent of responders answered no to the statement “any text I share on social media like Facebook, twitter, or a blog is copyrighted to me immediately upon publishing it to the internet”. Sixty two percent of responders answered yes to the statement “any picture or video I post on the internet is my content and is copyrighted to me.”  Seventy-seven percent of responders answered true to “Copyright protection is given to an author or creator of a work for his or her lifetime and 70 years after the individual's death.” Ninety-two  percent of responders answered yes to “It is best to ask the owner of a work for permission to use it rather than be found in violation of copyright.”  Eighty-five  percent of responders answered true to “Registration of your created work allows you to have a public record that you created the work in question if there is an issue of copyright violation.” Fifty-four percent of responders answered no to “Using a Creative Commons attribution allows another user to use content someone else created as long as the new creator shares the new content with others.”  Fifty-four percent of responders answered yes to “You can use short video clips from another individual and put together a montage of these clips. You own the new montage.” Fifty-four percent of responders answered yes to “I can use pictures I find on the internet for backgrounds on a presentation without citing who took the pictures.” Fifty-four percent of responders answered yes to “As long as I don't make money off of what copyrighted content I use, it is okay to use it for my purposes.”

When I use Creative Commons I feel like it gives other educators a helping hand in creating something for their classroom without reinventing the wheel. I think that more educators should use Creative Commons and make their great ideas open for others to build upon their work and share the newly created work more. Collaboration is so important and Creative Commons gives an excellent vehicle to make this collaboration less cumbersome with respect to copyright and fair use. Educators have the best interest of their students in mind as they create their new tools. Creative Commons allows great minds to create even greater text and media to share and strengthen education.