Janice’s Adventures in Web 2.0

I am sure that our technology instructor already knows about royalty free music websites but this was new information for me. I learned a lot about creative commons as it applies to music from Judy O’Connell’s blog post, “Good sounds-royalty free to schools.”

The post addresses the realm of royalty free music online. Judy discusses the fact that when our students are creating productions via podcast, video, etc. they need to be introduced to ideas about creative commons, royalty free images and sound bites. She talks about Soundzabound Royalty Free Music which licenses the music at their website with unlimited rights for education, superseding fair use restrictions. They provide music with  ”education approved content in a searchable database” with a web-faced interface.

Judy emphasizes that if our students are adding music to their productions that is royalty free then they “can share their magic creations” on the web via YouTube and other venues. She also included a very useful school list of websites for productions, creative commons and music. As I begin to put some of the ideas I am learning about Web 2.0 into practice with my students, this will be very useful information for me.

Wow-not being that involved in my job with the copyright side of projects I was not familiar with Creative Commons so it was very illuminating watching the two videos. I have never noticed the CC logo on any of the websites that I visit.

I think that our students need to be taught about copyright and how it works and it is our job to help them interpret the world of Creative Commons licenses as part of that process. I think it is great that people are sharing their creative efforts with others. Students still need to know that they must give credit to their sources and cite them, whether they are online or, in the rare instance, in print,  but it is nice that they do not always have to contact those sources for permission to use those photos, etc. in their own creative efforts. 

I will definitely now be attuned as I begin to use digital images, video clips, etc. in my teaching to what the copyright/cc restrictions, if any, there are to those digital items that I plan to use. It is also nice to know that there are many resources out in the OER commons that I can look at to enhance my teaching, without having to reinvent the wheel myself. I plan to be sure to help our faculty become more aware of the OER commons and other sources they can go to online to find lesson plans, etc., though more and more teachers are using such sources already on a regular basis.

I have not shared much  of my own content yet on the web, though there is online my workshop that I gave several years ago about Hebrew Children’s Books at the Association of Jewish Libraries convention. I still receive requests periodically from people for my bibliographies and handouts from that workshop, as seen by them on the web, so I know that people are using those types of resources online.