Overview
You grabbed a picture from Flickr and you want to crop it to remove that blurry finger in the upper left corner. Or you found a Wikipedia article related to your topic, but only parts of it are relevant. Now is the time to modify, revise, edit, or remix the resources you found in order to teach your topic the way you want to teach it.
You can often make these changes and edits to the resource directly, depending on where the resource is hosted. For example, YouTube's Video Editor allows you to remix CC BY-licensed videos on its platform, and Wikipedia allows anyone to edit articles. Or, you may just want to download the resource and modify it offline.
Example
A note about "No Derivatives" and "Share Alike"
No Derivatives. Some CC licenses have a "No Derivatives" or ND clause. It says that you can only use that resource exactly how it's been shared with you. That means no cropping the image, fixing the grammatical errors in a paragraph, or even brightening a picture. If you want to edit or modify the resource you find, be sure to choose one that does not have the ND clause.
Share Alike. Other CC licenses have a "Share Alike" or SA clause. This means that you are allowed to make changes to the work, but you have to share that altered work using the same license as the original. If the original was CC BY-NC-SA, the edited version you create must also be CC BY-NC-SA. If you don't want to share your work under the same license as the original, choose resources that do not have the SA clause.
To learn more about the different CC licenses, check out the
Get CC Savvy challenge.
Exercise
Modify the resources you found so that they better suit your topic, teaching style, and needs. What kinds of changes did you make, and why? If you were lucky enough to find resources that suit your topic and teaching style without any modification, tell us what makes them work so well for you. How did you remix your resource? What tools did you use?
