Step 1: Watch "Wanna Work Together?" videos. [from CC About the Licenses page]
Step 2: Click here to watch a screencast video that will show you how to navigate through the Creative Commons website
Step 3: There are SIX difference Creative Commons licenses. Click here to view the different Creative Commons licenses. Use this guide for searching the different licenses.
Step 4: Spend some time (maybe 15 minutes or so) searching for Creative Commons licensed content that interests you. Follow this link to the CC Search page, in the top section put in a topic you are personally interested in and then click on the tabs for results of the search on different web sites.
Step 5: Pick one of the most interesting things you just found to share.
Make sure to find the copyright/license information about that content on that page. If it says "All Rights Reserved" then it cannot be licensed under Creative Commons. Likewise, if it says "Public Domain" it is already freely available to anyone and cannot be licensed under Creative Commons. It must either say what the license is in text or a CC icon and It MUST include a link to a Creative Commons license. Without a link to the license that is a dead give away that the work in question is NOT properly licensed.
LOOK FOR INDICATIONS that it is something legitimately licensed through Creative Commons. This means there are some contextual clues that make it reasonable to believe that the person posting the content actually OWNS/CREATED the content and therefore can legitimately attach a Creative Commons license to it (there are MANY idiots that do not understand content ownership and licensing and will slap a CC license on whatever content they find and like). Some context clues to watch for are things like: the caption text, professional quality of the content, or even an embedded copyright mark for someone other than the poster.
Step 4: As it showed in the screencast in Step 2, copy the URL of the page displaying the content you want to share. BE CAREFUL:
Depending on how you searched, it is possible that the URL in the address bar of the browser does not change as you search and only shows the URL of the top frame (e.g. http://search.creativecommons.org) and not the full URL of what is displayed in the main frame of the browser. One way to address this is:
From the page you want to share, click the Back button on your browser.
Scroll on that previous page and find the link to the page you were just on.
Hold down the CTRL key and click on that link.
That link will open in a new window or new tab in your browser without the frame which will allow you to easily grab the URL from the address bar to copy and share in the discussion board.
Sometimes, especially with images, you may have clicked a link that displays a larger image but it is a direct link to the IMAGE and not the PAGE where the image is displayed. DO NOT share those kinds of links because there is no way to know if indeed that image is licensed or not. The URL you share must go the PAGE where the content is displayed so we can see the creator/author information and the link to the Creative Commons license.
Step 5: Go into the Discussion Board forum called Creative Commons by clicking the link at the very top of this item. Then start a new thread and then paste the URL into your message and write a brief description. BEFORE YOU SUBMIT IT: Turn your URL into a hyperlink using these directions.
Step 6: Take a few minutes to browse the other postings of your classmates in the Discussion Board and see what they found. Pretty cool, huh?