Creative Commons and Storytelling

One of the most important aspects of digital storytelling involves enlarging the boundaries of the audience to include everyone, and in a digital world that's not difficult at all. New sites are emerging all the time to make this a reality (check out digitalstories.org) , and will continue to gain importance as venues for students to have a voice.

A significant issue that stands in the way of sharing globally is copyright. Since the raw material of most digital storytelling projects are still-frame images, and most of these come from a variety of Web resources, repurposing those into a new story requires that students consider copyright issues, and how fair use applies to the use of those images in their personal story. In most cases, kids will build their project, not necessarily worry about copyright, and just keep the story for their personal use, locked away on a CD or network space for no one to see. That certainly defeats the purpose of one of the most valuable aspects of the process.

We certainly have access to music at freeplaymusic.com that can be used in projects without violation of copyright. But what about imagery? What I am proposing is a fresh look at new still frame imagery resources and this means Flickr (now a repository for over 17 million photographs, including my own), specifically the Creative Commons licensing that Flickr permits members to utilize to apply various levels of copyright protection to their photography. To facilitate this, Flickr has added a Creative Commons search on the Flickr site. Using the photography that has Attribution and Noncommercial licensing applied (this licensing would permit use withing a digital story-see the search page for more details on licensing), students would have access to about half a million images. This could go a long way towards utilizing digital resources properly, provide a teachable moment on copyright, and allow students to share their works online.

Anyone interested should proceed with caution. Flickr probably contains some inappropriate photography, although I believe there is some type of adult content label (I'm checking on this). But given imagery that can be found on Google, and the amount of inappropriate material that gets past filters, I'm not overly concerned...at least for high school students...but it still bears further research. So, when I get some time this summer, I'll produce several movies using Flickr imagery. Imagine using a collection of personal photos from multiple authors, and repurposing those to tell your own personal story...