Saturday, August 13, 2011

Inspiration vs. Stealing

I've read several blog posts where people have created things and then someone else stole it and started selling it. It makes me really nervous about posting things that I've created. Not because I'm afraid something like this will happen to me but because I don't want anyone to think I've stolen their creations. I find myself inspired by the things I see online and want to try to create my own materials to use in my class. I have issues and don't always like to use what other people have done. It seems that I have this need to tweak it a bit. I have been very inspired by Fran at Kindergarten Crayons. She makes these really cool tiny books to practice sight words. Well I worked on this today and figured out how to do it. I'm really proud of myself for figuring out how to turn the pages around.(If anyone has publisher and wants to know how to flip the text, leave me a comment and I'll be glad to share) So here's my question, what is ethical to post? Would it be ok for me to post this little book that I made? I looked at Fran's and then created one with the sight words that we use. Is it ok if you aren't selling it or if it is based off something that they aren't selling? If you give complete credit to the person who created the original , is it ok? I'm very confused by all this. I don't want someone to think I was stealing. I love this community of blogging teachers and love that you can put your questions and ideas out there for other teachers to use. I have always thought the sign of a good teacher is someone who is willing to teach other teachers and to share what they know. When I was in college, I wrote a honors paper about good teaching practices in reading. There were so many amazing teachers that I observed and the best were the ones that dragged out all their materials to show me and copy for me. I want to be one of those teachers but I want to do it ethically. So some advice is needed.

1 comment:

  1. Kerri, I totally get what you are saying. That's one reason that I haven't created a blog and am still blog stalking. I wouldn't be interested in ever selling any documents, but do also modify things to fit my needs. I think that, as teachers, that's what we do. I personally don't see anything wrong with tweaking someone's ideas. If people are sharing things freely on their blogs, it should be o.k. to change those documents to fit the needs of your kiddos. I, too, have been watching the talk on other blogs about "stealing" work....I'm hoping that is all work that the others are trying to sell. I look forward to hearing the answers to this discussion.

    Shelly
    projectqn@tx.rr.com

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