There's something in the share

I’ve been trying to put together some resources for my grade 9 computer literacy class to use so they can find some legally usable images to use in an assignment. In addition to links to public domain and CC licensed search engines or repositories, I want to give them a sense of why they should use images or other media that are explicitly usable instead of just picking out whatever images show up in a Google image search. How do I convince them that it’s better to share stuff than just take anything whether it is meant to be shared or not?

Dean Shareski gave a presentation entitled “Share Everything” at TLt 2008 earlier this year that has made me think a lot about the importance of sharing. Coincidentally, I read a few posts about sharing while reviewing the infostream in my RSS aggregator just today. Scott Leslie started by sharing his views on how to get sharing really happening instead of just planning to share (I describe it poorly – read Scott’s own words to get the full impact of what he is saying). Alan Levine and D’Arcy Norman picked up on the idea by sharing their own experiences of sharing content within institutions and personally.

Grade 9s may be fairly self centered (I mean this in a nice way – it’s one of their endearing qualities if one remembers that it’s just a stage they are going through). They do, however, understand the value of sharing albeit for self centered reasons – sharing stuff increases your status/respect/karma rating. When you share stuff, people think you a better person. When you share, people will get respect for your ideas. They are highly motivated by peer recognition. They also know, deep down if they don’t admit it out loud, that sharing stuff makes you feel good.

So how do I explain the importance of using freely usable resources. I’m going to point out that they could use any resource they find online, but using a resource that someone has explicitly decided to share is a more rewarding option. With very little extra effort, they can find some images (or videos or music) that someone wanted to share with them. I’ll point out to them that it feels good when someone uses something that you have shared with them. I’ll ask them to consider how they would feel if a photograph they took or a video they made or a song they wrote then decided to share was used by someone else. The important point is not to avoid breaking intellectual property laws (although that is a consideration) but being part of a community of sharing, as a producer and a consumer of content, is going to be a rewarding experience for them.

Here are a couple of videos I think I’ll show them: