Exercise: Your Turn to Select a License

By now, you should be able to identify the six license types provided by Creative Commons, determine which licenses can be remixed, and find CC licensed materials. Before we move to Part 4 of this module, please take a few moments to reflect upon the following:

Imagine you are an amateur photographer and want a wide audience to see your work, while not giving up your ability to sell your work and profit from it. Would an open license enable you to do this? If so, which open license might you choose?
Imagine you are a graphic designer and recently created an info-graphic about traffic patterns in your home city. You would like the info-graphic to be widely shared to raise awareness about traffic patterns in your city, but want to ensure it is viewed as you intended. Would an open license enable you to do this? If so, which open license might you choose?
You are currently in an Open Online Course working on lesson plans for basic adult education. You create a great lesson plan and want teachers, students, and other educational professionals to use and benefit from it. What license might you use, and why?
Can you identify or imagine possible issues coming up in using several CC licenses materials to create something new?
Can you identify or imagine possible issues coming up when you build upon one CC licensed work and want to release your derivative under a different CC license?
Do you currently use CC licenses for anything you create? If so, which license do you use and why, and if not, why not?

Before we move on ...

As a reminder, the focus on this course is to develop lessons as open educational resources (OER) for use in Adult Basic Education. Instructional materials submitted by participants in this course that meet the project requirements will be included in Designers for Learning's Adult Learning Zone Group on OER Commons under a Creative Commons license. To ensure the broadest use of your work, we request that you select a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license.

When you are ready to apply a license to your lesson, consider using the Creative Commons License Builder to ensure your selection matches your intent. In addition, if your final project is a remix, compilation, or derivative of other works, and contains a variety of CC licensed materials, keep track of the authors, sources, and licenses. If you have questions or comments about selecting a license for your project, refer back to this Module of the course, and/or Ask a Subject Matter Expert for ideas on how to proceed.

Next up ... Open Educational Resources (OER)

As we have considered within this section, Creative Commons provides a series of license options for creators to more easily share their work for distribution and remixing. These open licenses make it easier for all creators, including those in educational contexts. Next, in Part 4 of this module, we will see how these licenses are leveraged for educational contexts as open educational resources (OER).