Title: Licensing Your Work
Course: Tech Tools for Teachers > Section: Copyright (Required)

How to license your work.

Who owns your work

Per policy Orono Schools Policy 419, “unless the employee develops, creates or assists in developing or creating a publication, instructional material, computer program, invention or creation entirely on the employee’s own time and without the use of any school district facilities or equipment...” the district retains rights to the work, for up to three years after they leave Orono. However, this policy does not preclude employees from assigning a creative commons license, so that work can be shared outside of the district.

So, if you produce any part of your work during the work day or while using any Orono resources (e.g. computers or software), Orono retains the rights to your work. Otherwise, you own the rights to your work.

Which license to use

It is highly recommended - and required if you used others’ creative commons material in your work - that you also license your work with a Creative Commons license. These licenses allow you to retain your rights to the work, while making it easy for others to use your work, following the parameters you set.

If you are licensing a work your created while at Orono, you may not allow commercial use of your work, but may choose whether others may modify your work or not. It is also recommend to require “share-alike”, which requires people who use your work to also use a creative commons license. For more license options, see Creative Common Licenses.

If you include in your work materials that are copyrighted by others, such materials must be copyrighted under a creative commons license or fall under fair use.

Adding a Copyright Notice

The simplest method for adding a copyright to your work is adding a line of text with the word “Copyright”, the year the work was created, and you name; if you authored the material while at work, you must also at “Orono Public Schools”.

For example: Copyright 2011 Jane Doe / Orono Public Schools.

If you choose to use a Creative Commons license, you can get the license wording and/or embed code from Creative Common’s License Chooser.

For example: Copyright Guide for Teachers by Caitlin Cahill / Orono Public Schools is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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