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!

Do you teach about Creative Commons (CC), either as a kind of resource that your students can integrate into their work or as a way they can license their own?

Here’s a vibrant, easy-to-read resource that can help. The Power of Open tells the stories of creators, entrepreneurs, corporations, and not-for-profit organizations who have used Creative Commons to leverage their influence.

I admit that I use CC much more as a consumer than as a creator. I love CC sources like Jamendo and FlickrCC to help me find CC-licensed music and images for my projects. In my work as a creator, I do some projects for which I hold onto copyright, some for which I assign a CC license, and others that are copyrighted but freely available at no cost online. I have friends and colleagues, though, who expressly license the great majority of their output, from lecture slides to articles, under Creative Commons licenses.

Either way, kids need to know more than the traditional story of copyright or the version espoused by mega-corporations!

The Power of Open via kwout

**Update 4/2, 1:30pm – That was fast! The book is not priced at $0.00 any longer on Amazon.com. As I mentioned below the screenshot in the original post, free Kindle books don’t always stay free forever, so you always want to check to make sure the price hasn’t changed before you buy. (Also, the “Buy with 1Click” button should change and list the price if it is no longer free.) “Free for Amazon Prime” means it’s free if you pay Amazon’s yearly membership fee — but that won’t be your price!

However, you’re not out of luck — check out Alice’s comment below for where you can find the book for free on Duke’s Web site in various formats. It’s been around — and free throughout that time — for a few years.

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Check out this awesome free download for Kindle … and remember, if you don’t have a Kindle device, you can still download it to the Kindle apps on a smartphone or tablet or to Kindle software on your computer.

Amazon.com: Bound By Law: Tales from the Public Domain [Open, DRM Free Kindle Edition] eBook: James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins, Keith Aoki: Kindle Store via kwout

Note: Although this Kindle book is free, “free” is often a temporary status for Kindle books, so make sure the price says free (and not “free for Amazon Prime”) before you buy!