While this course provides information about copyright and Creative Commons and some best practices for using them, it does not apply this information to a specific situation and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult an attorney if you would like specific legal advice about your rights, obligations, or individual situation regarding these laws.

Some of the content in this section is adapted from the online course “Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians” by Creative Commons and is licensed under CC BY 4.0. We recommend the original source for a more detailed discussion of these issues.

So you want to create an infographic to share with your class on climate change. Can you grab a picture or graph from the NY Times? Or you want to create a fun video to get kids to sign up for the yearbook club. Can you use a Billie Eilish song as the music for the intro? If you add media that someone else made you will need to take into account... copyright law. *Cue ominous music* Copyright is tricky to navigate but there are alternatives to choose from. There are works that are under Creative Commons license or as part of the public domain that you can use. But how can you figure out what is what?

Why take this course?

• You want to know the ins and outs of copyright law in order to know what your rights are as a creator
• You want to use work or media created by someone else for classroom use but need to know best practices, tips and tricks for how to do so
• You want to understand the differences between the Creative Commons (CC) licenses
• You want resources for finding public domain or CC licensed media for free

More About This Course

This course is divided into lessons that are a combination of text, images, videos and other interactive elements. There are a few quizzes that you will need to pass in order to demonstrate you understand the content and complete the course.

You can go through the course at whatever pace makes sense for you, and review anything afterwards that you might have missed. In order to receive a certificate of completion, you will need to pass all of the quizzes and finish the course within four weeks of starting it. If you don’t finish in time, no worries, you can always re-enroll.

The content of this course aligns with the requirements for PBS media literacy certification, which you will learn more about toward the end of the course.

Before you jump into the course, we want to remind you to OPT-IN to receive email from us so that we (your instructors!) can communicate updates to the courses and feedback on the coursework you submit. Please follow the instructions here to make sure that these settings are enabled and toggled ON.