Thing #10

I had honestly never noticed the Creative Commons logo on the websites I visited before watching the two videos on Creative Commons. I do believe that Creative Commons will impact the way in which students learn and create projects. Just the other day I had 3 students from a couple of years back come to visit me with a song they had mixed for an English class. They had taken a bass line and beat from some R & B song and had replaced the words in which case they described some book they had read. I was impressed! They had made a 5 minute song in lyrical form with rhymes and rhythms. "How did you do that?", I asked perplexed that these 3 could do such a difficult task. Apparently they used some computer software to make an instrumental beat and then used a microphone from Guitar Hero and made up a rap of their very own. In class I am always using pictures, music, and video from the web. I am sure that I have shared pictures on the web at some time as well. Never did I know that there was a copyright label on the pictures I had taken. I sure didn't know that no one else could use those pictures without my permission. I love that Creative Commons has taken things that others have made and have made them available to others to use or "remix" as per Lawrence Lessig. Knowing that I can take these works and use them for educational purposes makes me that much more eager to get out there and find things that I feel would help my students to learn. The only problems I could see using the Creative Commons is someone taking a work by someone who had meant to represent one thing and make it represent something bad.