Teachers and students can freely use Creative Commons (CC) licensed material and can apply CC licences by using the licence tool to material they create. This allows sharing of resources with other educators and schools. The main focus is on what you CAN do with the material rather than what you cannot do.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Open Educational Resources (OER) are open-licensed or public domain materials for learning, teaching and research. OER can be created in any format and medium, and permit the ‘5 R’ activities for users: Reuse, Retain, Revise, Remix, and Redistribute.
CC licences and tools can be employed with OER, as long as you keep the ‘5 Rs’ in mind. The illustration below highlights which licences are compatible with OER:
Image: Slide 26 of Updated Keynote Slides (November, 2014) by Cable Green. Licensed under CC BY 4.0
The following sites are useful starting points to locate OER materials:
Why Open Education matters
Creative Commons for schools and TAFE
The National Copyright Unit and CC Australia have jointly developed an information guide for teachers and students. The guide explains what CC is, how to find CC-licensed materials, the best way to attribute materials, and more. Each guide page includes a download option at the bottom.
Creative Commons at universities
Educators at universities should reach out to their library or copyright unit to discover what their institution is doing in this space and the support available.
As an example, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) has employed the Pressbooks platform to adapt and create their own open textbooks with CC licensing. The USQ catalogue can be filtered by subject and licence.
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