copyright, pictures and mashing

Last Tuesday I learned a lot about websites and software that I can get for free on internet. It’s a very exciting learning experience. At the very beginning of the class, Fei brought up one notion “copy right”. I think that’s very important and necessary to put that part in beginning of the class – we have known there are many free resources that we can easily get online, and we have been using these resources for professional use or personal use. But as Fei and other classmates mentioned, most of us didn’t know some resources are “some right reserved”. After learning Creative Commons, I think I should redefine “online resources” – you may easily find a lot of information and get what you want, but before you “copy and paste”, think about “if I am allowed to do that”. I think this is not just a rule for internet users, it’s also a courtesy to internet contributors – only when the certain rules are set and carried out could we can use and share the internet resources in a better way. Otherwise, the free resources will become a big mess for lack of protection.

Since I have learned Creative Commons Research and FlickrCC, I have been using these tools for searching pictures for my researching work. I am really happy to know how to get pictures without violating contributors. I think in the future I will definitely teach my students about copyright rules before I tell them to search information online. It may take a while especially for young kids, but it is an important rule for everyone to know.

I also enjoyed using Google Map and Google Earth. In the past, I only used Google Earth for fun – to find some tourist spots. But the class on last Tuesday opened a new way to use Google Earth and Google Map. The GoogleLitTrip is very inspiring. I think I can try to put some history stories with pictures on Google Map and Google Earth. It will be more vivid for students to remember what happened.