Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Open Submission Web SItes

Although web sites like Creative Commons have some very positive aspects to what they try to bring to bring to the internet, there is a very ugly side to their existence. It is not the fault of Creative Commons, but it is the reality of a site where people can post material of their own choosing. A significant number of the ads and the submissions that are not appropriate for use in the school environment. My first time in to Creative Commons, I saw advertisements for topics ranging from penis enlargement to online dating. No matter how good the core content is, exposure to such unrestricted material means that I can not bring sites of this type into my classroom to use with my students.
I also had concerns with the content of some of the submissions that I found on the site. Again, the concern is not with Creative Commons, but with the content of the pieces being submitted. There is no way that the site can be opened to my students. I realize the site can still be used by me to download pieces to use in class, but the downloads would have to be done at home as the site would never meet the use policies of my school district. I also do not want to be responsible for the approval of different pieces that get used.
I do wonder that Creative Commons does not have a policy on what is acceptable. Many sites like United Streaming and even Facebook have some fairly serious penalties with respect to the acceptability of content. For my purposes as an educator, I prefer to stick to sites that I know to contain student friendly content. The things that the internet community considers to be acceptable online do not meet my standards as an educator.

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