Is there such a thing as a stolen idea in education?

During my early years in education, my colleagues and I were continually searching and sharing ideas and approaches as we looked for ways to transform education (or so we thought). Some of the best in-service days we had was when we had the chance to share with each other (such a novel idea) . . . and along the way, our catch phrase became "In education, there is no such thing as a stolen idea."


We meant this in the best sense - we viewed our overall work, work that fed off of itself, much like an artistic community. Perhaps even a Creative Commons. There was a real joy of exploration, discovery and delight in our work - and the learning our kids would exhibit.

Perhaps they were simpler times.

In our second COETAIL course we are having dialogue about copyright and fair-use issues that has caused me to pause.

The easy availability of all sorts of materials through today's technology - my goodness, what can't we download or access?

Things have gone far beyond creatively using the Xerox machine or making custom cassette tapes from LPs. (Oh, and I made some great ones!) I wonder some of the dialogue has gone past common sense.

Perhaps websites like A Teacher's Guide to Fair Use and Copy Right are now needed, and appropriate use policies need crafting. And while I found many of the threads on Doug Johnson's blog on Copyright to be interesting because of numerous issues and situations that are raised . . . and some have made me re-evaluate some of my own specific practices (like all these photos come through Creative Commons and being linked to their sources) . . . . I have found that my intent, as an educator, has remained the same.

And that intent is to be an ethical user of other people's works in the transformative work of education . . . and to assist my students to do the same. True education is sacred, and to help guide young people in their education is a sacred trust.

In that shared journey, my bet is that we will wrestle with the questions around whether being legal equates with being ethical . . . and wondering if something is ethical, will it necessarily be legal?

In that work, I hope our use of organizations like Creative Commons will flourish, so we (and I am paraphrasing here) can share our work, and build upon the work of others, while being consistent with the rules of copyright so that the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share in and remix the work . . .

So that together we can move forward.

Kind of like our idea a generation ago.