Thinking through Web 2.0 and Creative Commons

Recently I gave a presentation on Web 2.0 tools to a few teachers as a part of a technology sampler class I led. I've embedded the Prezi presentation below.

What interested me about this presentation wasn't necessarily the content, though. It was what I did with that content after I created it, namely this:



I gave it a Creative Commons license of Attribution Only. For a number of months now I've been talking about how to respect the ownership rights of content creators when I chat with teachers and students, but I haven't taken the step to license my own work. The act of licensing was an interesting process for me - I had to think about

• where I got the content that made up the presentation,
• the method I chose to deliver that content,
• the amount of time I invested to create the work, and
• how I wanted others to use what I created.

In this case I made a quick decision to license right after I finished the presentation, but after some reflection on each of the points above, I decided to remove it and release it from any license at all. The people I learned from were all over the web, and the information I was presenting wasn't unique or (that) uniquely displayed. For all intents and purposes, my presentation is public domain, and I'm okay with that. In fact, I like that designation for this work. I simply aggregated something that lots of people were talking about anyway and delivered it in a way that fit my specific purposes. If someone wishes to remix that content and present it again, I'm happy to have obliged.

So, what's the possible implication for kids? If I were in the classroom again, I think that for each project my students created, I would ask them to license it in some way, explaining their reasoning using the same or a similar process I went through myself. If an individual's personal process was different than mine, I don't think I'd mind - so long as she outlined it for me so I could see that she was thinking.

Kudos again to Creative Commons for giving us control over our own creative work. I'm happy to spread the good news and participate.

Oh, and here's the presentation. Feel free to remix.