Creative commons and plagiarism

Jenny Luca’s post about Creative commons  I have used with staff at a PD session.  I found Tania’s post on the new citation   a reflection of what is happening more and more these days with online documents tending to have hyperlinks rather than footnotes or endnotes. It is difficult to get students to understand the need for footnotes when they hyperlink to the website.

Over the years I have found the smartcopying website to be very useful, the information sheets are great to direct staff to when they raise questions about copying.

We are more and more directing students to Creative Commons Australia for music, images and video that they can reuse and remix when creating products as they learn how to manipulate and use various tools and software; and also in response to set tasks and assignments.  We also try to make them aware of the need to acknowledge the source and owner of any materials so used.  But it is a slow process to get them to label materials they have used appropriately.

Plagarism is a concept that students find hard to understand.  However they soon learn when teachers mark their work down for copying directly  and not acknowedged the author and or source of the material they have used.   The range of video clips and presentations explaining the requirements and how to do it is growing.   By incorporating one of these in a class presentation they realise thaat it is not just the teacher saying it, but that it can be a legal requirement and a courtesy to the creator.