Being an educator today requires being a maker. That is to say, we are often designing, redesigning, and adapting, lesson plans, videos, and other media to fit the context of our classroom and best serve our students. Being an effective maker in the digital age requires an understanding of the public domain. Educators ought to be diligent about whose creations we are using, ensuring we are given credit where credit is due, and avoiding violating copyright laws. The Creative Commons is a non-profit dedicated to ensuring that around the world it is simple and easy to share and permit the use of content. This video aims to explain the work of the Creative Commons and serve as an example of the effective use of media for educational purposes with appropriate attribution. It is my hope that other educators who may find this video see it as a useful explanation of the Creative Commons and find that it inspires them to take advantage of the public domain for the good of their students. In spending time studying and considering the implications of the public domain, and the work of the Creative Commons, I feel emboldened to utilize more of the media available to me and confident that I have the tools to give credit where credit is due.
References
Creative Commons. (n.d.). CC BY 4.0 Legal Code. Creative Commons. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.en#legal-code-title
Creative Commons. (n.d.). What We Do. Creative Commons. https://creativecommons.org/about/