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Simple answer: try using materials that are explicitly 'licensed' for free distribution. Two of the most common are CopyLeft (used mostly for software) and Creative Commons.
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CopyLeft
Copyleft is a distribution/licensing method often used for free/open source-type software projects. Free, in this case means "free as in free kittens" -- – you still have to take care of and maintain it yourself -- – as opposed to free as in free beer.
The GNU Project http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/ defines it: "Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it."
- Anyone can edit, change or distribute it without explicit additional permission.
- No one can place proprietary restrictions on any 'derivative works' -– edited or changed versions - – made from the work in question.
Usually Copyleft uses the GNU General Public License: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. The license requires that you include a copy of that license with your program. There is also a GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html license.
If I use Copyleft, GNU public license material what's my responsibility? Basically, you can't license the material, or any derivative of the material, such as your course pack, yourself as proprietary. You can charge something for providing a copy, but you can't stop other people from making copies of it. Which makes it tricky to combine material with more restrictive licenses with CopyLeft material.
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Creative Commons is a licensing scheme for free(ish) content that is used both for content and for software. http://creativecommons.org/
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This licensing scheme is designed to, as the Creative Commons organization puts it, provide "a simple, standardized way \[~jheise:for creators\] to keep their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work." |
Creative Commons licenses have several options (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/).
- All Creative Commons licenses require that the user provides Attribution (BY)-- that is, identifies the copyright owner of the work. No plagiarism allowed!
- The No Derivatives (ND) option restricts other people from preparing things based on the work (derivatives)
- The NonCommercial (NC) option allows people to prepare derivative works using the work, but not to distribute them commercially.
- The ShareAlike (SA) provision allows users to create derivative works from the work, but those derivatives must be released under the same Creative Commons license as the original.
There's a nice license chooser available: http://creativecommons.org/choose/
Finding Creative Commons Educational Resources
Creative Commons itself links to some educational projects: http://creativecommons.org/education including MIT OpenCourseware.
The Open Educational Resources' OER Commons also provides links to courseware: http://www.oercommons.org/
as does Connexions http://cnx.org/ , an educational module repository hosted at Rice University.
The Basic Guide to OER, http://www.col.org/PublicationDocuments/Basic-Guide-To-OER.pdf, Prepared by Neil Butcher for the Commonwealth of Learning & UNESCO, has these further suggestions:
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1. Use a specialized OER search engine: While search engines such as Google and Bing are a good general starting point for finding content online, there are also some specialized search engines that search specifically for OER. Their listings, however, are selective based on different search criteria so it is a good idea to try more than one. Here are a few of the popular ones:
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If you're interested in more information about Open Educational Resources, we can highly recommend the website for the online course: Open Content Licensing for Educators:http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/Home