Students are being asked to use digital Internet content (YouTube videos, web documents, websites, and more) to work on classwork and complete projects. Students are also being asked to publish their work to the Internet as technology becomes more ubiquitous.
The problem many students face is digital content ownership. It's not their fault, the lines of what is, and isn't, FREE to download and use is very blurry. Teachers aren't always clear on the boundaries either. For example, if someone posts a picture to Flickr, most students believe that using it in a project isn't a problem. Even if the photo was taken from a website that didn't intend for the photo to be used for anything other than allowing people to see the product in the photo. If a student wants to use a photo of iPad and sees it on Flickr, it doesn't matter if the person who posted it to Flickr took it from the Apple website without their permission.
Creative Commons is a simple way to un-blurr the line between authorized and unauthorized use of Internet content. Anyone that publishes content to the web has the opportunity to place an icon/badge on it to let viewers/users know how they intend to share it.
Students have the opportunity to use the CC website to locate material labeled for them to use, and the ability to download icons/badges for attachment to their own work to upload to the Internet for others to use.
The great part about using the CC website is the ability to search for content from various sources. Students can search for CC material through Google, YouTube, Wikimedia Commons, Fotopedia, Flickr, and more.
