How To Survive Being A Teacher : THIS IS MINE… OR NOT? A REFLECTION ABOUT LICENSES

Hello teachers! :)

In this post I would like to talk about the importance of citing and attributing properly.

From the first ITC class, our Master’s teacher highlighted the importance of sharing only the things we were allowed to, citing and attributing properly.

Sincerely, I didn’t comprehend its importance until I started to create my blog, my board on Pinterest or even my Twitter account. Is in this moment when I realised that I wouldn’t like others to share my material without citing me and also, that it wouldn’t be fair to redistribute or share other’s materials without giving them the credit they deserve.

That’s the main reason I decided to create a licence using “Creative Commons” a website that allows you to create your own license which can be adapted to your necessities.

So here I explain you how my license works (you can see it at the end of this page) and the importance of encouraging students to cite and attribute properly.

- What does my license allow others to do with my CLIL e-materials?

The license I chose allows people to share copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format as long as they attribute an appropriate credit. It also allows others to adapt my work and shared it. However, this license doesn’t allow the commercial use.

During my academic life, I have used lot of materials that colleagues have shared on the Internet and I am sure that I’m going to keep using them. Thanks to that, I have learned more and I have come up with new ideas to implement in class. In my opinion it is fair to share my work and resources with other people who can find it interesting; this is the main reason why I have decided to choose this license. Besides of that, share our work is a way to enrich education since we have always new resources, materials, ideas and different points of view. However, my objective is to “do my bit” in this area, I wouldn’t like someone to take economic advantage of it.

- What are good ways to motivate our students to use Creative Commons material and attribute properly?

Being aware of the importance of using Creative Commons is not easy at all. Sometimes even adults forget to attribute property to works we use to make our own ones. This is why we should encourage students to citing from the beginning.

In my opinion, an effective way which would allow teachers to make pupils understand this importance is by experiencing. In this way, I would propose them to elaborate a work or project in which they were really involved.

Once they finish their work, I will ask them not to sign it because, although the work is going to be exposed in the school’s corridor, their names are not going to appear in the project. The projects are going to be signed by the classmates of other course, so all the credit is going to be attributed to others.

At the moment they start complaining about this idea, I would ask him why, if they think that this situation is fair, if they have any solution for this situation… once this topic is commented, we would explain that this is the feeling lot of authors have when their work is shared without citing them. We would also explain the importance of attributing property, because is a way to value their effort and work.

Definitely, I really recommend you to use this web because, in this way, you can explain and clarify the terms of use of your materials, facilitating this information to others. I also encourage you to respect others' materials by citing and taking into account their license.