I have made hundreds of instructional presentations over the past three years. As reflected in my last blog post, recently my focus has been on math. Now my goal is to share these presentations with other educators.
The first consideration is straightforward. I plan on using a Creative Commons license. As I’ve discussed in an earlier blog post, Creative Commons offers a licensing wizard on its site that walks you through the process and generates the appropriate license along with HTML code. I am using an Attribution-Share Alike license for this website. That means anyone can use content from this site and remix it as long they attribute the work to me and let others to do the same with any derivative work. I add the more restrictive Non-Commercial condition for any inter-actives that I have posted online.
While mulling this over, I consulted open content advocate and colleague Karen Fasimpaur. She pointed out that the Non-commercial condition is ambiguous. Could a consultant working for a school district use such material? She also pointed out that use by a tutor or private school could be construed as commercial use. I would not want to restrict such use, so I do not plan to use it. In addition, she pointed Share Alike would prohibit combining content with content that restricts sharing. I now plan on using CC Attribution.
One problem is the use of instructional media. Over the years, our school has had video licenses provided by NY Public Television Stations: first Discovery Education, then PowerMedia Plus also owned by Discovery. I have embedded many of these in presentations. Unfortunately, their terms of service specifically prohibit dissemination of almost all such resources. Worse yet, we must destroy any copies once any subscription has expired.
I have also learned to download YouTube videos to embed them in presentations. I can’t view the videos directly through YouTube because our school’s filter blocks it. Even if it didn’t, I wouldn’t risk exposing students to questionable material on each page such as the often inappropriate comments. While such may be acceptable as fair use in a classroom (I am not a lawyer), sharing it would cross another legal threshold.
I would love to use only openly licensed video, but there simply is not enough available. In an online discussion with Karen Fasimpaur, I alluded to the shortage of such materials as a lack of critical mass.
How can I solve the problem of embedded multimedia content and the ensuing copy right issues? I will work harder at finding open multimedia content, but that usually takes much more time. Perhaps I can replace some of the existing videos with such alternatives. Another option is to remove the video from presentations and insert a reference to the source so that individuals can find it and insert it themselves if they can.
Multimedia is not the only copyright issue. There is other content with such problems. When I have run short of time, I have grabbed images from the Google image search without considering licensing rather than more time consuming searches for public domain or CC licensed content. (Now Google advanced search allows filtering by license) In desperation, I have grabbed problem sets directly from textbooks. Yet other material is routinely and deliberately adapted to presentation format from ancillary materials when I must conform to a textbook and program.
Some of these presentations can never be shared openly. Many others will have to be cleaned up by changing or removing content with copyright issues or ambiguity. Fortunately, I have become more careful lately. I plan to go further by flagging presentations that include such content as I encounter them, so I can clean them up in the future.
As you can see, copyright and lack of openly licensed material make sharing difficult. I try harder to use appropriate materials as time goes on with sharing in mind. I am also gathering resources that help me locate openly licensed materials and streamlining the process. Nonetheless, time constraints will continue to exist; however, they should be less of a factor as I have digitized almost all of my instruction. My next post will consider other obstacles to sharing.
Related Posts
-
Hi Steve;
I’m not sure if you remember me, but I used to work on the Elgg project in the pre-1.0 days (before they did the huge API/re-write transition). I liked your input & work-ethic in summarizing the work done by the community. I created the Pages e-portfolio plugin that was pretty broadly used, but abandoned it due to the effort of re-writing for the new framework (and because I was getting pretty burnt out from finishing my PhD).
I’m actually working now on a separate project to create a html/javascript-based presentation tool that encourages re-use and cc:licensing. It has some cool attributes, and I’m planning on having a working version by the end of the summer (I’ve been working on it for about 6 months now). One feature is that it’ll cache public Internet stuff for a local copy in case you’re behind a firewall or off-network, but still maintains the public attribution so that others can download their own cache if needed.
Anyway, I just mention this as you seem to be interested in sharing your work in a broader fashion. If you’re interested in perhaps piloting the software, give me an email. I can give you an account on the server I’m setting up later this summer, and I’d be interested in your feedback on the overall program.
Nathan
-
Hi Nathan–
Yes, I do remember you and your e-portfolio plugin for Elgg Classic, in addition to some communication during some rocky days during Elgg’s growth.
I have recently started looking for a platform on which to share my work and it sounds like you have a very interesting project. I’ll email you later this afternoon as I am very eager to hear more.
Thanks for the comments and considering me for testing your project.
Steve
-
Pingback from Sharing isn’t simple II | openedweb.com on June 13, 2010 at 10:30 am
Reply
Creative Commons License
Openedweb by Stephen J. O’Connor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
3 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link: http://openedweb.com/blog/2010/06/06/sharing-isnt-simple-i/trackback/