Prior to the commencement of the ETL401 Assignment 1, what I knew of Creative Commons (CC) was completely minimal. Apart from what I knew about copyright and plagiarism from learning about this at the beginning my Bachelor’s degree (how assignments are digitally submitted for the purpose of scanning for plagiarism), I did not fully understand how the process actually worked.

After reading up on some information on Creative Common licences, before I embed this into my own blog, I became curious about why I would require a licence to simply blog my own boring thoughts. Would I have to pay for it? Is it like a yearly subscription? How do people even know if they can use my work and publish/share it?

The answers came very quickly and put quite simply after visiting the Creative Commons Australia website (not the most visually appealing/user friendly site on the internet, but it is a non-profit organisation).

The Creative Commons Australia website states that a CC licence “tell[s] others how they can legally share your work”.

Right. Seems simple enough.
A licence put on your work that lets others know how and if they can share it.

And its free! Sweet.

From going through this process and learning what I now have, I will absolutely be sharing it with students in future. The knowledge and education of CC needs to be more apparent in an ever diversifying and increasing digital and social media driven world.

This CC licence chart (helpfully created by Guillaume Déziel) gives you an understanding of what each “button” means when accessing the work of others. I hope it helps you too!

 

References:

Creative Commons Australia. Fact sheet. Retrieved from: https://creativecommons.org.au/learn/fact-sheets/ 

CC licence chart accessed and shared from: https://guillaumedeziel.com/complements/creative-commons-101-fr/creative-commons-101

CC World image accessed and shared from: https://vimeo.com/ccanz