Here at the University of Michigan, the Creative Commons (CC) approach to copyright — by which you articulate in advance how people can use your work — gets a lot of air time. But when traveling recently, I realized that CC might be new for some folks out there.

So if you’re new to CC, this video gives a good introduction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeTlXtEOplA

You can find more videos about CC here.

Creative Commons-licensed music, video, audio, slideshows, photos, and more can be a stress-free way to get your students practicing good digital citizenship with robust and intriguing resources. So using CC stuff is one angle you can take.

But you can also choose to license your work under Creative Commons. In that case, Creative Commons has a new pick-a-license online worksheet worth checking out:

Choose a License via kwout

To find CC resources, try:

• Google Advanced Search (now hidden under the gear icon)
• CC Search
• We at UMSI are big fans of Open Michigan on our campus, and you can find their list of open access resources here.
• And here is my favorite CC search engine for Flickr images. I search for them here, then click through and grab the embed code on Flickr itself.

Cool stuff, legal to use. Good for your blood pressure, good for the community of creators. Have fun!

I like to keep a running collection of examples of “problem solving” and “creative thinking” in action. Here’s one I’ve been meaning to post for some time.

Abundance of plastic soda bottles + low salaries with little disposable income for electricity = soda bottle lights!

It’s also a great example of synthesis — taking two things and mashing up for a completely novel solution.

I love this video as an example of how interesting process work can be. How do they make a globe? More complicated than you might think! How might this video model the importance of process to students?