This week we dipped our toes into the vast ocean of intellectual property and learning design. Most of us seemed familiar with the term “copyright” and what that means, but then the idea of “copyright vs. copyleft” was thrown around, and to be honest I am still not exactly sure what that means? As a post-secondary student working through my second degree, I am very aware of the importance of crediting the work of other people, but I had no idea how much change there has been in this area with the growing movement to create a more openly-sourced, accessible, shared learning environment not just at the post-secondary level, but at all learning levels.
In lecture we were introduced to Creative Commons. I have heard the term while being at UVic, but to be honest, I thought it was a UVic run platform for sourcing resources. I had no idea until Friday what it actually was! Creative Commons is actually a platform created to enable the sharing of ideas/materials/images/knowledge etc. in a free, open, and legal way, ensuring that credit is given to creators through the licenses they provide. There are many different license types, and each one represents what you can or can’t do with the intellectual property you would like to use. I can also easily create a license to share and protect my own work through the “Share your work” tab. The website is full of information, and a tad overwhelming when you first open it, but it is so well organized and easy to navigate. I am easily able to go to where I need to to find what I am looking for.
The next important shift I need to make in my practice is photo attributions. Like Valerie said in lecture, students in K-12 are essentially taught to swipe images left, right and centre from Google, and that really is not the best practice to be teaching. I knew from a computer science course that images from Unsplash were free to use without attribution, but it is so easy to give that credit, so why wouldn’t I? Moving forward I will ensure that any photos I post (even my own) in my blog, or anywhere, will follow best practice for attributions.
The learning curve for me is still almost vertical in this course, but I have already learned so much, and am starting to understand the importance of a course like this in our program.
Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
