Here are some SlideShares about Creative Commons and fair use of the resources hosted on this site. I am happy for others to make use of my work, but please respect the conditions in this presentation.

If you scroll to the bottom you can see ‘interview’ responses I wrote for Julie Lemley’s (@JulieLemley) Design class ‘Honor the Creator‘ unit.

If you are encouraging students to use CC materials in their work, try some of these CC search engines:

Creative Commons Search (http://search.creativecommons.org/) – gathers some search engines for information, wikimedia, photos and videos.

photo © 2009 Ethan Hein | more info (via: Wylio)
For a brilliant Creative Commons image searcher for bloggers, go to Wylio. It finds images, formats them for your post (you can adjust it easily) and then gives youthe embed code – with citations! Brilliant. The image of the neurons posted to the right of this paragraph was sourced through Wylio and links to the original.

FlickrCC (http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/) – searches Flickr for photos with a CC license. I love this tool.

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Some specific guidelines:

With all resources, please do not save and re-upload them to the public internet – they get edited regularly and I prefer my work online to be the best possible versions. It is OK to save files to host on internal servers, with citation.

Presentations – embed them if you can as they get updated regularly. Please link back to the appropriate content page here on i-Biology. Embed codes are on the Slideshare page for each presentation.

Essential Biology – I no longer use these in class. Feel free to use them as a foundation for resources for your own class, but please do not contact me asking for edits or answer keys. Please do not re-host them on the public internet.

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Find out more about about Creative Commons in education from some greater authorities:

Finally, here is YouTube’s Copyright School video:

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Stephen’s responses for Julie’s ‘Honor the Creator’ unit interview. 

1. Who are you?  Maybe briefly about your path/what you are doing now/ any work you want to share/future hopes?

I’m Mr. Taylor, and I teach Science in the High School, including MYP Physics, Chemistry and IB Diploma Biology. Over the last seven years I have been sharing my science resources, including presentations and notes, on my website, i-Biology.net. It is used by teachers and students in IB schools for learning about Science and Biology. As well as teaching I’m the MYP Coordinator at CA and I am studying for a Masters in International Education.

I hope to keep working in education for many years to come: it is highly rewarding and a great privilege. I would like to continue my academic studies and writing.

2. How/Where do share/promote your work?

My work for students is on my website, i-Biology.net, as well as on SlideShare, Box.net and the IB’s resources sharing site for teachers. There’s so much of it out there now that I lose track of where it all is: sometimes people email me to ask questions about things that I forgot I’d made. I have a Twitter account as well, which I use to share my work and have conversations with other educators and scientists from around the world.

3. How do you license your work?  – copyright, creative commons, other?

Nearly all of my work is Creative Commons, attribution, non-profit, share-alike, so that they can be used in and adapted for other people’s classes. The slideshows can be embedded on anyone’s site, though I don’t allow my work to be re-hosted on public sites (they can be shared on internal servers or folders). This is because I update them periodically, and I want the most recent and correct versions to be public and associated with my name. One great thing about sharing things online is that if someone spots a mistake and lets me know I can fix it quickly – it’s like having many editors making sure that my students get the right information.

4. Why do you share your work this way?

When I started my my site its purpose was to share class presentations and resources with my own students in Indonesia. Eventually other people started using it as we teach the same Biology content in all IB Diploma schools. The presentations and resources I make take many hours of preparation; I realised this must be happening everywhere and so decided to allow anyone to use them so they can save time and focus on other things. I often get messages from teachers, especially new teachers, who say it has helped them plan and teach in their class. Sometimes students leave messages as well, which is nice.

A few years ago I decided to start a charity account, called Biology4Good, so teachers who used the resources could make a donation to their choice of one of my favourite charities if they want to say ‘thanks’. If people give a donation of GB£20 or more (about US$32) then I give them access to a folder of shared presentations and documents that they can edit and use in their own classes. I didn’t think it would take off, but people have been very generous and we have raised money for charities like Water Aid, Save the Children, the Mines Advisory Group and more.

Another example of why it is cool to share is that it helps me make connections with people and sometimes interesting opportunities come from these connections. We came to CA because the teacher that I replaced used my website and suggested I should apply; now we’re happy to be here! I am able to have conversations and collaborate with teachers from all over the world, and I feel that this helps me learn and keeps me excited about science and about education. I feel that our digital footprints are becoming more and more important in our careers, and having this kind of resource helps others understand who we are, what we can do and what we value.

There are a couple of downsides to having so much online. I do have to check a lot of spam comments, though usually WordPress take care of this, and I get emails quite often asking for advertising on my site (usually from sources that I don’t think are very honest). There can sometimes be a lot of requests for help or proposals for projects, and I have to try to balance my time and work, but overall I am happy about what I have out there.

5. Has anyone ever used your work without your knowledge?  What happened?  How do you feel about people using your work without asking?

One time I saw a lot of my presentations re-posted back to SlideShare with the front slide (my name) removed and the slides were screen-shots of the original and looked fuzzy. I contacted the teacher privately – they were removed quickly and we still maintain friendly contact once in a while. It wouldn’t have helped to get mad, as we’re all learning and this resulted in a positive connection in the long-run. When I started posting them years ago my own understanding of fair use was different, and so I had to update a lot of presentations to try to make the images link and show attributions – that takes a lot of work. I also decided after that to make sure that all the presentations could be easily embedded on sites, blogs, etc, so that teachers could use my real slides (and if I updated them, they would appear everywhere), and wrote a page on the site about Creative Commons and fair use so that teachers know what they can do with the resources.