Exterminate Copyright Confusion: Tools for Attributing Creative Commons Licensed Images ThingLink

Digital Citizenship in a Remix Culture

Recently, I have been teaching Digital Citizenship in my class as part of a unit on building a Google Site. In the process, I have been teaching about the importance of students learning more about Creative Commons, copyright, and Fair Use. I am currently taking a course at UVM that requires me to write a literature review about a topic of interest. Since I chose "Digital Citizenship in a Remix Culture" as my topic, I created this Symbaloo web mix to keep track of some of the resources that I've come across on the Web.

Today I learned today that Mozilla has a remix platform similar to YouTube's video editor. It is called Popcorn Maker. I haven't checked it out yet, but it's something new that I plan to try!

Screen Casts to the Rescue

One of the most challenging things about teaching a class of 23 seventh graders about copyright and Creative Commons is that they all learn at their own pace (and almost no one wants to listen to a lecture about the importance of citing sources).

I learned this the hard way, prompting me to create a series of screen casts that would allow my students to work at their own pace.

This week, I used Screencast-o-matic to create lessons about Creative Commons!  I saw with my own eyes that this was much more effective than a live, linear, step-by-step performance.

Royalty Free Music

One of the concepts that I am focusing on with my students is the importance of digital citizenship. While teaching students about the importance of citing their sources, and reminding them to only use media that they have the right to use, it's important that educators make this process as easy for students as possible.

I recently spent an afternoon looking for an easy way for students and teachers to access high quality audio clips for presentations, without a lot of fuss. I am pleased to report on two very impressive sites. The first site is called Royalty Free Music.

Educators/Students who visit the link http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-music-clips.html must provide a live email address and complete a brief survey in order to download 30-second music clips. These clips are free to use for educational purposes, so long as the site is properly credited. I highly recommend this site!

The second site that I recommend is Freesound.org. Like the previous site, this one requires users to sign in with an email account. Freesound.org is notable because users may search for music that is licensed under Creative Commons. There is also a bookmarking feature within the site, making it easy for users to mark notable sounds for future reference.