Copyright
Being presented with the monumental task of creating an educational blog, I was faced with many questions. Most of these questions were technical, but one, in particular, was not: can I just put any media into my blog posts? Avoiding this, my first few posts only had photos that I had taken but I quickly realized that I was either going to run out or, not have photos for some of the things I want to visualize.
This brought me to the concepts of copyright and copyleft. I was already aware that it would not be wise to use copyrighted materials in my blog without proper reference but how limited is that going to make my blog in terms of content?
Copyleft
This is where Creative Commons Search is so useful. Creative Commons Search is a huge repository of content that is Creative Content licensed. This licensing system allows creators to retain their copyright while also defining how their works are edited, shared, and used.
Below is the Creative Commons license for the photo of the flowers featured in this post.
Free Inquiry
One of the projects in Technology Innovation in Education (EDCI 336) is the Free Inquiry project. Up until this point in my life, from grade school to the highly structured physics program at UVic, I’d never heard of a free inquiry project before. So imagine my delight when I found out that I could choose to learn about anything I wanted! But how could I pick a topic? I’d need a topic I cared about but didn’t know a lot about. What would the learning outcomes be? Could I finish it in 3 months?
And then the purpose of this type of learning dawned on me; I was excited to learn about something that I’d chosen. I’ve been given the creative reigns to pursue my own learning in an academic setting and it couldn’t be more exciting. But with this freedom, there was also fear of losing the scope of the project.
This is where Trello comes in. Trello is a workshop that students can use to create custom storyboards to document and guide their own learning. It comes complete with checklists, question cards, and the ability to share your board with others.
Images
“Flowers” by Nouhailler is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
