Creative Commons

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

I have to admit, this is the first time I have heard of Creative Commons. After reading about the Creative Commons, I believe it is a great idea that can easily help teachers create and protect their lessons/ideas. As a teacher, you have to be constantly aware of copyrights, and not stealing people's work. On the other hand, as teachers, it is important to share the unique plans and lessons that we come up with. When I was hired, I had a number of people give me all of their unit plans and materials. It definitely made my life easier and allowed me to have the basis of their materials and add my own flair. I have heard of some teacher's being very protective of their work and I have heard of some saying, "Why reinvent the wheel? Here ya go!" It is the right of every teacher to decide how and if their work gets shared.

I believe that Creative Commons is a great compromise between strict copyright laws and not being able to protect one's intellectual property. It allows people the choice on how they would like their property shared. Some people might feel that someone else profiting from their ideas as wrong, and some might not care! The different licenses allow the author of works to share as they see fit. And that is exactly what should be happening.

I have taken lessons from the internet and adapted them to fit my students, teaching style and classroom. I always give the author credit on my rubrics but I never know if I am doing that right, or if I am violating the wishes of that teacher. This system would clear this up!

Creative Commons allows teachers to share ideas, but sets boundaries. I really like Creative Commons and I hope that more people use it in future.

I picked the Attribution, Non-Commerical Share Alike license.

I picked this license because I am a believer that, as educators, we should share the great lessons and ideas that we come up with. We are teachers to provide the best education we can to our students. If I created a lesson that can help an educator do the best job they can, then why not share? On that note, I don't believe that other people should profit from my work. Because of this belief, I picked the non-commerical aspect to the licensing. I really like the share alike portion of the licensing. This insures that the work that was derived from my work also holds the same licensing. They can share the work, just as long as nobody profits of their work (that was based on my work). I don't think its right for someone to be willing to take my work and adapt it to themselves, but not share the ideas they came up with. This is the license that is right for me and my intellectual property.