Using Creative Commons in the Classroom

Before this Master's program, I never looked too much in to Creative Commons, beyond simple images. After looking a little deeper into the way that CC can be used in the classroom, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there is quite a list.

There are two in-particular that got my brain thinking…The first idea was actually one that I found as I searched around to understand more about how exactly things could be used. I read through a presentation about ways Creative Commons can be used in a classroom and how a presentation that was licensed could be used, modified, and adapted to fit your needs. With some of the major changes that are going through the educational system at the current moment, I can see this coming in hand quite a bit. I have already found a few interesting resources that I will be looking at using in/with some of the new flipcharts that I am making to correlate with the new Common Core Standards.

I also came across some information about how to teach students about copyright and finding appropriate resources for reports. This is always something that I find a little difficult to teach younger students because of all the details that are involved in citing and acknowledging the source. Using some of the guidelines that were shared made it a bit less intimidating to address and for students to understand.

Here We Go...

Holy buckets! Get ready for a load of work!

I do have to say that one of the perks of this program versus another is that the final task is a portfolio and not a thesis. However, as a few of our cohort members have already mentioned, it would have been greatly beneficial to have some understanding and mention of how the portfolio was going to play into everything else. There were several tasks that I struggled with putting together, mostly because I couldn't see them having an immediate place (or any place) with my little kiddos in early elementary. Having the guidance of the standards that we had to select, or knowing how it would be used later on for the portfolio, may have helped give me a little more direction, which also creates a peace of mind and confidence that what I was doing had a place and focus. I pulled a bunch of artifacts and put them into my site already, but realized that most of them were created with an inspiration from the program, not necessarily for the program. I hope that at some point, there will be an opportunity to look through them with the class (not just teammates) and that the instructor will be taking a peek, so that if something isn't correctly placed, it isn't addressed on the last week, but sooner.