Policy | News

SETDA, Creative Commons Partner on Digital Resource Policy Brief

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 06/10/14

The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) has partnered with Creative Commons United States to release a policy brief on the effective and legal use of digital content created by teachers.

"The brief, Clarifying Ownership of Teacher-Created Digital Content Empowers Educators to Personalize Education, Address Individual Student Needs, examines important legal considerations regarding the ownership and use of teacher-created digital instructional materials," according to a news release. "The paper identifies a range of policy options for education leaders, including those related to open educational resources (OER)."

The brief covers ownership of digital education content, policy options for both copyright and licensing and seven policy recommendations.

Those recommendations include:

• States and districts should implement current policies and practices for digital resources that include ownership issues;
• If the use of OER is appropriate, states and districts should encourage sharing and customization;
• States and "districts should empower educators to create, use, and modify digital learning materials";
• Educator access to repositories of high-quality digital resources should be assured by policies;
• Policies should include guidance on quality control;
• States and districts should invest in or otherwise support research into digital resources; and
• "States and districts should address questions of funding implicated by the use and sharing of digital educational content."

"Teacher-created digital instructional materials, when copyrighted and licensed appropriately, can and should be an important resource for teaching and learning," said Douglas Levin, SETDA executive director, in a prepared statment. "We are pleased to produce actionable guidance on this important and emerging issue for educators and state and district education leaders."

The full brief is available at setda.org.