Before reading through this assignment I had never heard of Creative Commons or noticed their logo on any web sites. From what I have read and seen while completing this module, I think that the collection of works available to use through Creative Commons will have a tremendous effect on how students learn and create projects. While students already use images and videos they have found on the web in their projects and class presentations under fair use guidelines, traditional copyright laws keep them from sharing these further (on a class wiki, for example) without getting permission from the original creators of those files. If students were to use files with Creative Commons licenses, however, they would be able to share their project outside the walls of the classroom.
As a chorus teacher, I often use audio and video clips in my lessons. One of our chorus standards is to be able to evaluate music and musical performances, so my classes utilize YouTube on a regular basis. I am excited to see that Creative Commons includes not only images, but songs as well. One of our other standards is to compose and arrange music. While we can compose our own music and share it, sharing an arrangement we have created of someone else’s music is another story. If we were to use a song with the right Creative Commons license, though, we would be able to share our version(s) on the web. At this time, I do not share my class content on the web, only announcements and links to listening examples. Due to the nature of the classes I teach, most of my teaching materials (musical scores) cannot be posted online because they are under traditional copyright.
The potential negative I see to using Creative Commons with students is that there are several different types of licenses. Some people who share their works with CC only want them to be shared as they were created. Other people allow their works to be changed (such as creating a new arrangement of a song). Students would need to understand how the different licenses work and be sure to follow the guidelines for the content they share.
I chose Little Shop of Horrors as my theme since we are currently preparing this musical for performance. The photos that I found have licenses that would allow students to modify them. This means that students in our cast or crew could use the ideas they see from this production of the show and modify them to meet the needs of our production. In my classroom Flickr could be used for presentations, finding images of time periods and cultures related to the music we are singing, and posting pictures of our performances.
Creative Commons. Retrieved on February 15, 2014, from http://creativecommons.org/
Flickr Creative Commons. Retrieved on February 15, 2014, from
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for
Classrooms. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oak, California: Corwin.