Thing #8

I can't say that I've ever seen the CC logo on any site, but that's probably because I wasn't looking for it. I can say, however, that I wish I had known it existed.

Several years ago, a friend/fellow teacher and I came up with a way to help our students summarize and recall information from things they read. We called it the "WHATSUP" chart. It caught on with our kids, and we used it regularly. Fast forward a couple of years to a class I'm taking for my Masters degree. I used the WHATSUP chart in a project on student assessment. It was among several different tools teachers could use for student assessment, all copied and neatly tucked into a pink file folder, one for each person in the class. I thought nothing of it. That is, until another couple of years later when my friend and co-creater is in a staff development where someone presents the WHATSUP chart as a learning tool. This particular teacher had gotten the idea from a staff development she had taken at Region X. My friend and I were, all at once, stunned, flattered, and wishing very much we had put our names on the thing so that we could have some credit.

I mention the above story because had I known that anything you create is automatically copyrighted . . . well, honestly, I don't know what I would have done. I do know that had we known about Creative Commons , we would have GLADLY shared our idea and let others expand upon it. Our goal was to help ALL readers, not just our own students. In retrospect, we would love to have some credit for the idea. My creative ideas are few and far between, and the fact that one of them is out there makes me incredibly happy. Lesson learned: Put your name on your paper!