Over last month, our Spartan Tech Squad students have been going through a “Web Literacy” course on Mouse Create.  The focus of this course is teaching students to “think critically, participate safely, and demonstrate good citizenship online.”  It’s a great series of lessons for students because digital citizenship is so important as our schools are incorporating a great deal of technology.  Although our students are very tech savvy, do they truly know how to use it appropriately and legally?  Most of the time, the answer is no – but we can teach them these skills.

Last week, our students completed a lesson on exploring and understanding Creative Commons.  Creative Commons is an organization that is devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.  We started out this lesson by having the students design an 8-Bit GIF.  Our students love doing anything with graphic design, so they spent an entire class period designing their 8-Bit, creating the GIF, and sharing it on their project deck.  Then – we posed this question to them:

How would you feel if someone took what you created and claimed it as their own?

Our students were so offended by this idea.  Of course not! Who would ever think of stealing something they created and claiming it as their own?  Obviously, this was a great lead-into exploring Creative Commons and how to apply appropriate licenses to protect one’s work.  Throughout this lesson, students explored Creative Commons, discussed appropriate licenses based upon scenarios, created GIF’s, and applied their own license to that GIF.  

A large portion of this HyperDoc has come from the Mouse Create which has excellent resources, lessons, and projects for students.  We simply took the project and made it into a HyperDoc!  Feel free to look through the project below and use it in your own classes!

Creative Commons HyperDoc

Objective: Students will use technology to create GIF’s, learn about creative commons licenses and copyrighted images, and apply the appropriate licenses to their creations.

Groups: Individual or Small Groups (2-3 Students)

Tasks: Students will:

• Create a two frame 8-BIT character or design in Piskel.
• Download the frames as a JPEG and upload into their Project Deck.
• Download the frames as a GIF and upload into their Project Deck.
• Learn about copyright and creative commons.
• Be able to classify different scenarios under specific creative commons licenses.
• Learn how to find and use photos that have been approved for specific purposes.
• Create a GIF that discusses a problem that exists in the world and apply the appropriate creative commons license to the GIF.

View the template and a sample below:

8-BIT Project Template (Link)

Have you taught students about copyright and/or Creative Commons?  If so, how did you teach this concept to your students?   I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!