I was interested in seeing some good information for teachers and students about the creative commons licensing and resources on the Smartcopying website. <br>
<blockquote><a href="http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/">http://www.smartcopying.edu.au</a><br>
</blockquote>
This is certainly an improvement from a few years ago when I asked this
question of the Australian Copyright Council. At the time I
was rather
disappointed to by their response 'of no interest'. After revisiting
their website, I was initially delighted to see that although they now
freely acknowledge the existence of the creative commons licencing
model, their <a href="http://www.copyright.org.au/pdf/acc/infosheets_pdf/g094.htm/?searchterm=creative%20commons">analysis seems to be overly cautious and dismissive</a>. It is almost if they some are in denial of its successful use by different licences by Indi musicians, Open Source software developers or
the work by Wikipedia.<br>
<br>
Educators have an obligation to inform and educate our students and we
need to embrace the brave new territories of the Internet whilst
respecting local laws. Many schools now make considerable use of open
source software and creative commons resources downloaded from the
Internet or directly authored by teachers then allocated a creative
commons licence to correctly attribute, modify and share.<br>
<br>
Only when we are armed with the refreshing and helpful information on
your website, we are in a much better position teach our students about
copyright issues and direct them towards appropriate and freely
available resources and software. :-)<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College<br><a href="http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au">http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au</a><br><br>"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead