Lab 2: Creative Commons

Week 3: Creative Commons

Creative Commons Lab:

Overview:

This lab covers copyright and Creative Commons.  After this lab, hopefully you realize that using media off the Internet is not as clear cut as we thought.  One resource, however, that helps simplify copyright is called Creative Commons.    

Objectives:

1. To understand the basics of copyright law including Fair Use and how it might apply to education
2. To understand what Creative Commons is, how it works, and what it means for copyright issues.
3. To locate and properly use media that are registered with Creative Commons.

Before visiting Creative Commons, check out the 21thingsforstudents website concerning fair use.

Searching Creative Commons

Now that you have a better idea of what Creative Commons is, let's see what it is like to search for media that is licensed under Creative Commons.  One option is to use Creative Commons own search features.  If you are usingFirefox as your web browser, CC search is built in.  Watch this video to see how CC search works in Firefox.

If you do not use Firefox, you can still access the Creative Commons Search by accessing its web page directly (http://search.creativecommons.org/).

Your Performance Tasks:

For this portion of the lab:

1. Read the instructions and use the 21 things website to learn about Fair Use.
2. Locate a Creative Commons image that you might consider using for a project.  Create a new blog post where you properly cite and embed this image, and include a brief paragraph about what you learned about fair use and searching for items this way. Why is it important to use CC licensed images?