It is the responsibility of each researcher to be an ethical digital citizen. Students and teachers should be honest, fair, and courageous in gathering, interpreting and expressing information for the benefit of others.

  • Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error.
  • Always identify sources.  The consumers of your information product must be able to make their own judgement of its value.
  • Always question the sources’ motives.
  • Never distort or misinterpret the content of photos, videos or other media without explanation of intent and permission from the information’s owner. Image enhancement for technical clarity is permissible.
  • Distinguish between opinion and fact when expressing ideas.  Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.

Creative Commons:

http://search.creativecommons.org will help you find photos, music, text, books, educational material, and more that is free to share or build upon utilizing Creative Commons enabled search services at Google, Yahoo!, and Flickr.

Copyright applies fully and automatically to any work — a photograph, a song, a web page, an article, pretty much any form of expression — the moment it is created. This means that if you want to copy and re-use a creative work you find online, you usually have to ask the author’s permission.

This “all rights reserved” protection is a good thing for many authors and artists. But what about those who want you to use their work freely without permission — but on certain conditions?

This search service helps you quickly find those authors and the work they have marked as free to use with only “some rights reserved.” If you respect the rights they have reserved (which will be clearly marked, as you’ll see) then you can use the work without having to contact them and ask. In some cases, you may even find work in the public domain — that is, free for any use with “no rights reserved.”

You should always verify that the work is actually under a CC license by following the link to the original post on the Internet.