Thing #5: Creative Commons

Back by popular demand, sorry for the lull and thanks for the prompt …

The aim of ‘Thing 5’ is to find out about Creative Commons and how the re-use of original content can be controlled by its owner. 

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organisation which offers copyright licences for creative works such as photos, music, text, etc. It allows the author(s) of the work to share their work under a licence chosen on the Creative Commons website. Websites such as Flickr, Google and the White House use Creative Commons.

Task

You will be exploring Creative Commons and the task will to a Creative Commons to copyright to the text in your blog.

1)     Go to the Creative Commons website http://creativecommons.org

2)     Click on ‘About’ and explore the ‘Learn More’, ‘Licenses’ and ‘Who Uses CC?’ sections.

To add your Creative Commons license

3)     Click on ‘License’ on the green title bar at the top of the page

4)     Click on ‘a list of things to think about’ and read the information given.

5)     Go back to the License section and complete the details on the page deciding whether you wish to allow your work to be used for commercial purposes and whether you agree to your work being modified.

6)     In ‘Source Work URL’ you will need to paste the link to your blog and select ‘Select A Licence’

7)     Select the Licence you wish to apply

8)     In the ‘Have your own website’ section, copy the text in the box and paste on to your blog.

Thing #4: Photos, images and Flickr

The aim of ‘Thing 4’ is to explore Flickr and to think about how you might use images at work.

Flickr is a photo management website allowing you to upload, organise and share images online. Images can be uploaded from a variety of sources (including computers, mobile devices and the web) and can be displayed on the Flickr website, shown in RSS feeds or emailed to people.

Images can be displayed publicly or privately (for only select people to view). Descriptions and tags can be added to all photos uploaded.  A tag is a keyword that is assigned to the photo that allows users to find information related to the word used. The words beach and animal could be used as tags on Flickr if you had a photo displaying a donkey on a beach. Clicking on the tag could lead you to find other photos tagged with the same word.

Task: You’re going to create a Flickr account, upload some of your own photos, tag them and add descriptions to them.

1. Go to the Flickr website
2. Click on ‘Create Your Account’
3. Log in using an existing or creating a new Yahoo! ID account (it has to be Yahoo but an account can be set up at this stage if you do not already have one)
4. Choose a Flickr screen name
5. Personalize your profile (making sure to customize your Flickr URL)
6. Select ‘Upload your first photos’ and follow the on-screen steps to upload some of your photos
7. Add a description and a tag(s) to each image and click ‘Save’ at the bottom of the screen.
8. If you have friends that use Flickr, connect to their accounts using Step 3 on the welcome page.
9. Explore the Flickr website and find the different features available to you. Make sure that you read the Community Guidelines.
10. When you have finished exploring, make sure you ‘Sign Out’ of your account.

Further Task (optional)

You may wish to explore how to edit your images online using free image editing software packages such as Picnik.  You will need to connect your Flickr account to the Picnik site and try using the different editing tools available and save them back to Flickr.