Making Sense of Creative Commons Licenses

Interview with Jane Park

Last week I was fascinated to interview Jane Park, director of Platforms and Partnerships at Creative Commons. I always have to look up what the various licenses mean, so I was happy to have the opportunity to listed to Jane make sense of it for me! Following is a transcript of your interview. 

Tell us about you and your role.

I've been at Creative Commons (CC) for a number of years and currently I lead our platform initiatives. Which means working with OER platforms like Edmodo, Amazon, and Microsoft, as part of the U.S. Department of Education GoOpen initiative.

What is Creative Commons?

We're a nonprofit organization and we offer a suite of legal tools that make it easy for creators to share their creative work online. Prior to us, there were only two options if you wanted to share your work- all rights reserved copyright, where you had to ask for permission every time you used any part of someone's work, or in the public domain (you had no rights to that whatsoever). CC licenses are a set of copyright licenses that allow the creator to flexibly say, 'you can use my work and you have to give me credit,' and they allow the creator to manage those different permissions.

What does "open" mean in the context of OER?

The "Open" requires the 5 Rs. Retain (you can retain a copy- download/duplicate/store on your own computer), Reuse (use it in a class, in a study group, re-share it in a website or in a video), Revise (modify it, adapt it to your classroom, translate, and alter the content in other ways),Remix (combine the work with other works to create a collection or mashup), and Redistribute (share it on a website or video publicly).

On Edmodo Spotlight we have 3 choices: Attribution, Attribution Sharealike, and Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives. Can you tell us about what those three mean and why I would choose one over the other?

Attribution is the most liberal and accommodating of the licenses we offer. It essentially says hey, you have to give me credit for my work, but you can do whatever you want to do with it- you can remix it, adapt it, even use it for commercial purposes. We recommend this license as a default for OER.

The second option is Attribution Sharealike, which is basically the Attribution license with one extra condition attached. If you alter or modify the work in any way, you have to Sharealike your derivative work under the same license. You're still allowed to use it commercially. For example, if you take a song and sync it with a video, that video with the song you would have to Sharealike under the same Attribution Sharealike license.

The third license- Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives - is actually our most restrictive license. It signals to the user that you can redistribute my work verbatim, but if you make any modifications or changes, you cannot share it out. So it's saying "don't change my work but you can share it widely."

http://www.masternewmedia.org/how-to-publish-a-book-under-a-creative-commons-license/ 

What about paid resources?

If you're the owner, you can always sell it and/or add a Creative Commons license. If you're not the owner, you can use works under the first two licenses for commercial purposes, but not the third one, since it has a non commercial condition.

Do I need to worry about using someone else's work in my classroom? We teach our kids about fair use. How does that apply to this?

When you're using work in the classroom, it's more lenient than re-publishing in the open web, since the classroom is a closed setting. If the work is under a CC license, you're free to use it as long as you abide by the terms of the CC license. It applies in and out of the classroom. When it comes to using all rights reserved copyright works, you're free to use them both in and out of the classroom, the difference is the rules might be more liberal in the classroom, under fair use.

I'm not a fair use expert but there are 4 fair use factors that any court of law will judge fair use by. That is: the purpose and character of your use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion you use, and the effect of that use upon the potential market. But I would definitely read the wikipedia article on it, it will explain much better than I do.

What's the most common mistake teachers or students make when labeling using CC licenses?

If you are not the owner of the content, you should not be adding a CC license to that work. That's a common mistake, people put a CC license on works they don't own. A second one is adding a Noncommercial No Derivatives license, and say it's OER. As we discovered with the 5 Rs, if you can't remix it, then it's not OER. So if you want it to be OER, choose one of the licenses that allow derivative works or allows Remix.

What's the most important thing you want teachers to know?

There is a large world of OER out there. If you take 10 minutes to familiarize yourself with the CC licenses and how they work, you can tap that world of OER and clearly figure out what you can and cannot use and under what conditions. CC licenses really provide clarity, where there is often ambiguity, especially when it comes to fair use. That being said, we do encourage teachers to rely on fair use, exceptions and limitations to copyright, when using any educational resource.

Thank you Jane, for helping to make sense of this for us!

Quality Content on Edmodo Spotlight

Background

Edmodo Spotlight is a repository for Open Educational Resources, (ROER) as well as a source of content which is not considered "open" but is being made available, either for free or a nominal cost, from educators for educators. Edmodo Spotlight hosts and facilitates access to these resources.  

To be truly open, content must satisfy the 5 Rs: the consumers ability to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute the resource. In an article published in the online Research in Leaning Technology journal, titled: Questions of quality in repositories of open educational resources: a literature review,  J.Atenas and L.Havemann discuss certain indicators of quality in the design and implementation of ROERs, and some of these include user evaluation tools, peer review and use of keywords (emphasis mine).

Call to Action

To ensure high quality content is available for Edmodo users, users such as the Luminary community can provide the most meaningful, authentic reviews. To help with the review process, I've come up with some suggestions.

When I introduce  Edmodo and blogging with my students, I use an acronym, R.A.M.E to remind them than any comment should be relevant, appropriate, meaningful and edited. The same is a good start for reviewing teacher created content. 

RELEVANT: When providing feedback, be sure that you have actually looked at the contributor's resource and that your comment reflects that - what is something you liked? what didn't you understand? what connections can you make to your own possible implementation? in short, is your comment relevant to the resource you are reviewing?

APPROPRIATE: Consider your audience. Is the public comment section the right place for your feedback? As fellow teachers, we may be reluctant to give negative feedback publicly - I know I am. When I see an issue that I feel needs to be addressed by the resource owner, I direct message them.The good news is, Edmodo understands this reluctance to 'call someone out' and they are building in a messaging option on the product (Spotlight Resource) page.

MEANINGFUL: The Huffington post had a nice article written by Kim Pisolkar about Why Good Job Isn't Good Enough where she provide the analogy of a gift:

Feedback is like a gift... and as with any gift, the initial impression is in the wrapping. Think about how you’d feel receiving a gift not wrapped nicely, just sort of thrown your way with little thought or sincerity. Now think of how differently you might feel receiving a gift that is lovingly wrapped, given with pride and thoughtful consideration. That analogy represents the difference between giving ordinary, bland feedback like “Nice job” and delivering effective, sincere feedback that actually tells a person what was good.

The article goes onto cite the SBI model developed by the Center for Creative Leadership. SBI is an acronym for situation, behavior, and impact:

1. Describe the situation where the behavior was observed.
2. Describe the behavior- the specific and factual actions or interactions that were observed by you or others.
3. Describe the impact - the effect the behavior had on others such as clients or team members, and/or the results.

So please include meaningful, perhaps even actionable feedback. Contributors are able to update their resources in Spotlight and often will based on community feedback.Your words do have an impact. 

EDITED: In general, please try to make sure your review comments are edited.

After studying Socrates, my students also added the final two letters of the acronym: N and N to make RAMENN - is your input nice and necessary? Are your comments, even criticism delivered with kindness? 

When you look at at resource in Edmodo, you have the option to rate it 1-5 stars. You can also post a comment, preferably using guidelines similar to what I have outlined above.

A final note about keywords. Users, content consumers, look for and find content using keywords. When you are reviewing a resource, if you notice they are missing some valuable keywords, please let the owner know. If they add them, your suggestion might make the difference for someone looking for just the right amazing resource.