 OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Hello everyone, my name is Marjorie Olavides, I am a project specialist for the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network, also known as OTAN, and I'd like to welcome you all to this month's OTAN Tech Talk. Our speaker today is Penny Pearson, our distance learning coordinator with OTAN, and her topic today is licensing and copyright. Go ahead, Penny. Thank you, Marjorie. As the slide indicates, my name is Penny Pearson, and I am a coordinator for distance learning projects with OTAN. And the certificate on this page is just a way to show that I am really deeply interested in this topic of licensing your work. You'll learn more about this organization in just a minute, but some of the other items on the screen also indicate that I am originally a student of distance learning, a way, way, way long time ago. I finished my high school through snail mail, believe it or not, and fast forward a bit, and I spent 12 years in the classroom as a career tech ed instructor. And then for the last 14 years, I have been working here at OTAN. And as the title of the Tech Talk is, we're dealing with licensing, but we need to talk a little bit about open educational resources and copyright. So our next slide is what are we are, and I'm going to go ahead and read the slide. Certainly I don't do that, but I do it also for our folks that might be accessing this using accessibility tools. So I'm going to read it, okay. What are OER? Open Educational Resources, OER, are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits sharing, accessing, repurposing, including for commercial purposes, and collaborating with others. Okay. Now, this description that I just read off the slide is actually taken from the 2010 National Education Technology Plan. Now there is a new plan out. And ironically enough, they don't explain what OERs are anymore with a definition like this. It's basically assumed that everybody knows what this is. So now that we've talked about what is an OER, I want you to be thinking about those phrases that are in bold, right, reside in the public domain, have been released under an intellectual property license, permit sharing, accessing, repurposing, collaborating with others. And the reason why we do that is now that we know what are OER by definition, the next question on the slide is what can be an open educational resource? Now the images on the slide represents all the types of things that can be an open educational resource. Podcasts, audio files, music, simulations, games, apps, lesson plans, pretty much anything that can be in a digital or even printed mode can be an open educational resource. Now, as we move on, I'm going to say remember that you need to check to make sure that some items like this are licensed correctly. And before we can go into that licensing, we need to talk a little bit about copyrights and open licensing. So the next slide with these two circles on it is labeled public domain versus open license. Now when we're talking about these two things, we're going to keep in mind that copyright is that whole idea that all rights are reserved. Okay. Now in my humble opinion, the past actions of intermediaries like lawyers and agents and others have muddied the waters on what the terms copyright really were meant to be. Now we're under this high level of restriction that all rights reserved. Everything, every use is restricted in all ways unless permission is granted from the copyright holder. Now the opposite of copyrights is public domain. And as this little circle depicts, public domain is the release or waiver of any claims of ownership or rights, right? So now most people see public domain as the only way things get into public domain is that they're really old, right? They've been published 100 years ago. Well, that's not entirely true. As a copyright holder, you have the right to release those rights to release that item into the public domain, right? Now in doing that, we can find public domain information or public domain assets all over the place. We'll talk about that a little bit later. Now the other side of that of an open license is that the copyrights are still held or owned by the person who created it. Copyright ownership is retained. And what happens is the author or the creator is granting broad rights to the public on how they can use that work, how they can reproduce it, or how they can distribute that creative work. Now because this is so important, public domain is the release of all copyrights. You have released it to the Commons, whereas an open license says, I still own the copyrights on this, but I am going to release those rights with certain restrictions or not. You have that choice. So we're going to take a look at what makes an open license. Remember we talked about open educational resources and what they can be. But now let's talk about what are the actual licenses? How are they made up? Basically there are five elements to an open license. This slide talks about the five Rs of open. Those five Rs are retained, the right to make, own, and control copies of the content, to reuse it, the right to use the content in a wide range of ways, revise it, the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself. You can remix it, the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new, and the right to redistribute that material, the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others. To read more about defining open, I put the link in the slide to David Wiley's blog post. David Wiley is considered kind of the father of open licensing. And that's at opencontent.org slash definition. And you can read more about how David Wiley looks at open licensing. Now I'm going to show a little something that will hopefully help everybody to see it from a broader perspective of the licensing side. We've talked about copyrights, we've talked about public domain, we've talked about the five Rs of open. How does that really apply? So the next slide is what is an open license? So hopefully you have your speakers on and up, and I'm going to go ahead and play this video. Legal resources are automatically copyrighted when you create them under U.S. copyright law. So let's say that I wrote a textbook, for example. I own that and nobody can use it without my permission. When we openly license that textbook, what we're doing is we're giving a license, we're giving permissions to the public to use that book under the terms of the license. Licenses are a part of the copyright system all around the world. They're used by big companies like when a clothing manufacturer wants to sell a superhero t-shirt. And so licenses are part of the fabric of copyright law. But all of those licenses are negotiated one to one. So when a company wants to use a text or a song or a character or part of a movie that belongs to a different rights holder, they have to have their lawyers sit down with the other lawyers and it takes time and money. So adding a Creative Commons license to a work is like saying, hey, this resource is free for you to use however you want. The basic Creative Commons license is the CC By License or the Creative Commons Attribution License. And that's the most basic Creative Commons license. And all it says is you can use this work, this copyrighted thing, this photograph, this book, this song, if you attribute it to me, the creator. The reason a lot of educators and governments more and more are choosing that license is that the only requirement is to give proper attribution to the author, to the original creator. That's really easy to do. It also allows you to remix those works with other openly licensed works in a very easy way. And teachers have always given each other materials and if you know the person you're sharing the materials with, you can give them permission. But when you want to share materials with teachers across the country and potentially teachers across the world, you need a standardized way to do that. And that's what the Creative Commons licenses are. Okay, so as we take a look at this licensing, right, this is the key point of how all of this can work together. So there are six licenses represented on the graphic here on this page. These are basically these modified copyright licenses assigned to textbooks or handouts or videos or podcasts or images, pretty much all of the types of objects that your teachers create that you create for your learners. And the graphic shows two parts, a green zone and labeled at the top as most open and then the yellow zone at the bottom labeled as least open. Now the licenses that fall within the green zone, they're considered the most open. And that means that they offer the most flexibility for the five Rs. Remember the five Rs, retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. That means if you use that license, all of those five Rs are in play. That is allowed under those licenses. Now if any one of those particular five Rs are restricted, then the item is no longer considered an open licensed resource. It's still usable of course, and most likely can be distributed and of course used, but it cannot be say revised or remixed, or maybe it can't be used for commercial purposes. But it's still a great resource that retains certain copyrights or restrictions on that work. So Creative Commons is a way to license work with six different licenses. This license then gives both the creator and the user the freedom to license and use work found out in the wild or through other resources. But you see all these icons, what do each of these licenses mean? So this is a license icon chart. It shows the six licenses and what you would likely see on a web page or on a document that will tell you how these materials can be used. Once you are exposed to these icons, you'll start to see them more and more. They're on web pages, presentations like this one, images, videos, podcasts. So try to become as familiar with these icons as you can so that you know when you find a resource, you will feel comfortable understanding how the author wishes those works to be used. Of course, if you're unsure about the license that it will allow you to do what you want to do with that resource, the best advice is ask, send an email, but ask. Now just as a note, under each of those small circles, there are two letters under each of those icons and each icon that each circle has a different image in it. So the letters, B, Y, S, A, N, C, and N, D each proclaims a Pacific use or restriction. So we're going to go and actually look at what are these different uses for these six licenses. So our next slide is actually another little chart dividing out these six licenses. Again, allowing permissions for the works that you create or that you wish to use. So we're going to review these licenses carefully and then you can understand does the license permit you to do what you want to do with it, revise it, maybe translate it into another language, add more to it, take out some parts, cut it into smaller pieces. As a creator, you must decide if a user can change your work or use it to commercialize it in some way. This is typically a question that causes a great deal of consternation amongst individuals who create OER. But believe me, many artists and entrepreneurs use creative commons and they use it successfully to make quite a lot of money. All right. And I will provide some links to that in the resources. But it is an important consideration. Remember that the author still retains the copyrights on the work. And most producers who would would seek permission to use those materials commercially as a matter of courtesy, or they want to get access to addition materials held by that author because they're so good, then more negotiations could take place for purchasing the licenses. But just be aware, open licenses do not require that type of interaction. You are labeling your work, how they can be used. OK, so I'm going to go ahead and put a link in the chat. And this is something that might help you with how you can understand creative commons licensing, along with commercialism, buying, selling, making money. OK, so right now we're moving so much toward a sharing economy. It doesn't mean that an individual doesn't make a profit. It just means that they're willing to share their own bounty or good fortune with others in a variety of ways. So let's take a look here at all of these little icons. I'm going to start on the left side and the items in the green box. You'll notice that there's the circle with two C's. This is stands for creative commons. The single C means copyright, all rights reserved. You have to ask permission to use it. But now the next icon, the circle with the little humanoid in it is called by CC by or creative commons attribution. And as you heard in the video, attribution means you just give credit to the person who created the work. Can someone use my work to make money? Yes. Can someone change my work? Yes. That's what the license says. Now, the next license, which is CC by by S. S.A. stands for share alike. So it's creative commons attribution, share alike. Can someone use my work to make money? Yes. Can someone change my work? Yes. And there's one additional little hook with the share alike. You must also share the work alike as well. Now we move outside of the green box to the top center icon is CC by and then NC and it's a circle with a dollar sign and a slash through it. This means creative commons attribution non-commercial. Can someone use my work to make money? No. Can someone change my work? Yes. Creative commons attribution non-commercial. That allows you to make the choice between CC by or CC by NC of how you want your works to be used commercially. The second in the center column, which has the CC and the by and then the next circle with an equal sign in it and then letters NB. So that is creative commons attribution, no derivatives. The question is, can someone use my work to make money? Yes. Can someone change my work? No. They can use it in its entirety as is. OK. The third column on the right starts with CC by NC and D. So that's creative commons attribution non-commercial. No derivatives. Someone can use my work to make money? No. Can someone change my work? No. But remember with all of these, these last three, the by is still there. The credit must be given to the owner of the work. And the very last one at the bottom right side, we have CC by NCSA. That's creative commons attribution non-commercial. Share alike. Can someone use my work to make money? No. That's the NC. Can someone change my work? Yes. Because by virtue of we have not eliminated that as an option in this suite of six licenses. So each one of these has its own meaning and its own messaging, both to you as a creator and how you want to license your work or you as a user who is looking for materials and you find these licenses and you want to use that work within your situation, whether you're a teacher or you're using it for something else. Now, here and we get a little sticky sometimes because the purpose of creative commons is to allow you the greatest freedom of using those works. But open licenses, those are the ones in the green box, allow the greatest flexibility. But if you try to mix with several different pieces, several resources, these licenses, you can run into a little trouble. So we're going to look at a little rubric next. This is the CC license rubric. And on the left hand side on the first column, you have all six of the CC license or Creative Commons licenses. And you also have the two public domain, what we call marks, and that's just the designation that something is put into the public domain. Those same licenses are across the top, the public domain marks, and then all six of the Creative Commons licenses. Now, this can help you understand how you can mix these different licenses together or not. The six Creative Commons licenses, along with these public domain marks, allow you to basically go from the left to the right from the license on one side to the other license you want to use to mix. So if you look at the screen and you have works that is CC by and you want to use it with something that CC by no derivatives, could you use those two works together? So if I go across that third row to the column that is CC by no derivatives, I can't because I would be making a new thing with that no derivatives and that's not allowed under the license. Doesn't mean you couldn't contact the author and see if they would release a different version to you that you could use. But this way, you'll notice most of the green check marks are kind of up in the upper left hand side. That's really your safe zone of being able to mix several types of licenses together. And I, in my opinion, it's best to keep to the CC by or CC by share alike, along with public domain materials. It gives you the greatest freedom when you want to mix materials together. OK, so I can post this link here. That's about these different types of licensing and how you license the work. It will also go into the chat here because we're just sort of very kind of high level view here. But you can certainly get your own chart and, you know, you can put it up on your desktop, on your screen, or you could even hang it up on the wall to help you understand how these differences work. Now, moving on from here, we've talked about creative commons, licensees and public domain and copyright and open licenses. And usually the next question is, well, OK, you create stuff, now we have to license it. I encourage all of you to license your work. All right. Remember, by law, anything created by you is automatically protected by copyright. You don't have to register those works with a copyright office. You don't even have to put the C in a circle symbol on your work. Unless, of course, you intend all to know that your works are protected by copyright. And if it's used by anyone else, they must have that specific permission from you. But if you know that you're going to share this or you're going to distribute this school wide, or you want to share it in a way that you make sure everyone understands how they can use that work. They have creative commons has something called the license chooser. And there is a link on the slide and I can put that in the chat as well that allows you to basically use like a little wizard. It asks you questions and you make the choices of how you want your work to be used. It's very easy to do. It generates the text needed to show how a work is licensed. And it provides you with one of those six license icons, those images. So you can just copy and paste that work into the document very easily. And so it shows everyone how your works can be used. So let me show you an example of what that looks like. So here is my licensing statement for this presentation. You'll see that there is an icon CC by that means creative commons attribution. All that I ask of you if you take my presentation and maybe you want to show it to others at your school or you want to share it with other people, all I ask is you give me credit. Now there are four areas to understand here in making this mark. I see the icon. That's great. That's an important piece. But the rest of the text allows for something that we call tassel four areas title, author, source and license. So we know the title is OTT licenses and copyright. We know the author is me. My name is there. And the source I'm providing through my email. So if you wanted to do something different or you wanted me even to ask me questions, you can get to me through that email address and the last and final one is the human readable text of the creative commons attribution 4.0 license. That link links directly to creative commons and their website and tells anybody who clicks on that link how they can use my work, right? So as we go through this, all is kind of settling in and we understand that there's licensing considerations as a creator. It's very personal. It's your choice how you wish to license. But there's also the honoring of other intellectual property creators, other teachers or other people who create works and how they license it to allow you to use it in any way that they have chosen that you can use it. So the next piece is really just a high level view about, all right, you can license your work, but what do you do when you need to find a license? All right, now a lot of people, the first thing they do is they go to Google and they put in keywords. I will recommend to you that you use the advanced options that advanced search button that you can find under the sprocket or the gear. Because you have to know or at least attempt to know that the license has been posted for the works that you want to use. And we're going to do a little exercise here in just a second to help you find them because we'll kind of do it together. But there's other resource lists that are out there. I have one on my website that I'm going to post in the chat right here. Hopefully I can, I can't talk and type at the same time. But this link will take you to my page and at the top of the page you'll see OER resources for adult education. And I've got lots of lists there, other places where you can find materials. So the important thing is there's other, there's some resources that are repositories, places that collect these open educational resources. There's places like OER commons.org and they allow you to take a full textbook and you can mix it up with other content to create your own customized textbook for your learners. OTAN has been working with CK12. This project is really trying to help meet the need of open educational resources for adult education through CK12.org. They now are offering an adult education section and we are working with them to create flexbooks or textbooks for adult basic education, adult secondary education, as well as English language learning and career tech ed. We're not there yet with ESL and CTE, but we're getting there. So on my site that bit.ly.otan penny, I have lots of resource pages you can scroll through through. The CK12 is definitely an adult education focused effort to bring more open educational resources in the terms of flexbooks to adult education. And any one of these may help you get started with perhaps in the fall teaching something new. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to post a link in the chat and if you can spend just a second to open it up and see if you can tell me what kind of license that resource has. So you can just put it in the chat. And in the meantime, I'm going to post a couple others. And again, this is just to help you identify and recognize resource and how it's licensed. And some of them are very easy and some of them are not. So don't be frustrated if you don't find it right away. That wasn't the intent. And I'll put two more in here. There might be some of you that are music files or audio files and like like music. And there's one really nice resource. I'll show you here how a group of cooperative musicians have used Creative Commons to share their work and make money to. OK, so I'm going to switch my screen here real quick. And we're going hopefully if I can get to where I need to go. So that first link was from MIT OpenCourseWare. So anybody find the license? Dominica, I think you won the prize. I will scroll down the page real quick. And you should see. Oh, I might have to scroll right to this is Creative Commons attribution non-commercial share alike. Is it an open education resource? No, because there are restrictions. Non-commercial is a restriction. It makes it not open in the way that we define the five Rs. How about this next one? This JPEG, what is this one? Anybody find it? I have a tiny screen here right at the moment. So sometimes these can be, oh, there we go. This is CC buy, right? And this particular site, which is from Wikimedia, they tell you exactly how you can use this work. The next one here is music theory for musicians. And again, we have the license right here. CC buy, NC, ND, Creative Commons attribution. No derivatives. But there's lots of resources here. If you or someone that you know teaches music, this might be a great place to find free resources. The next one, the cost of freedom. This is a collective book and you can read about it. But if I look down through the page, I see that there's many different options. When I look at trying to find that license, this is one of those that it may or may not be easy to see if they put a icon on the page. And if it's not there, sometimes you have to dig in to their terms of use or their privacy to find out how they can, how you can use this work. So if I scroll down the page, I'm looking, oh, look, there it is, way down at the bottom of the page. This work has been released into the public domain. OK, and the last one, and this is the one that's the most difficult because I'm not signed into this particular page called tribe radio and tribe of noise. But this is a particular group who have released their works under Creative Commons license and at the same time, they're allowing others to buy their work and use it like in their like elevator music or restaurant music. And we have to dive in more down here at the bottom with their terms and see exactly how we can use these works. But you can find it by going and diving into the bottom here, because you'll notice the website and tribe of noise is under copyright, which is fine. It's their intellectual property. But when you start going into their user guides and their terms, you can see a little more quickly how you can use this material. And fortunately, it's right here at the top where it's a Creative Commons 3.0 and 4.0, but they have other. Conditions, I guess you could say, of how you can use this work. So I don't know about you, but most people don't go in and read these things even when they're presented on a web page. So this is a very high level look at copyright and open licensing, Creative Commons and ways that you can license your own work, as well as understand how others license their work. So that kind of concludes my session today. I thank you all for attending and I will go ahead and turn it back over to Marjorie to close us out and move us on to the next section. Awesome. Thank you, Penny, for all of that information. OTAN would also like to thank all of you for coming to this tech talk. If you have a tool or some tips that you use in an adult education program that you'd like to share with the adult education field, please email your idea to support at otan.us. We also encourage you to subscribe to the OTAN YouTube channel where you can view archive tech talks as well as view other OTAN videos. OTAN is a leadership project for adult education in California. And if you are at a well funded site, you can contact OTAN for additional services, including professional development at your site. Visit the OTAN website at www.otan.us or contact us by phone or email. And we hope to see you all at future OTAN tech talks.