Harry Holds Class

In an effort to drive support—and donations—to nonprofit Creative Commons (CC, creativecommons.org), technology trainer and blogger Beth Kanter enlisted the help of her eight-year-old son, Harry (below), to create a tutorial about the organization. Celebrating its fifth year of turning the traditional notion of copyright on its head, CC offers a flexible range of rights licenses that help foster the legal sharing and remixing of creative works.

The screencast, narrated by Harry, a second grader, explains CC's mission in practical terms: users can borrow photographs for use on projects like blogs or PowerPoints, as long as they, in turn, grant some rights to other users. Kanter posted the project on her Web journal Beth's Blog (beth.typepad.com) last month, and it's been making the rounds on the Net ever since. “I looked at the [photo] licensing and mommy told me what it meant,” says Harry, who has his own digital camera and uses it to create visual diaries.

Kanter believes that students should be taught about digital use rights early on in school as they begin to create their own projects. “I worry they're being told they can't use things because it's bad or they can only use clip art,” she says.

Does Harry think his friends would find the experience of making a screencast and learning about CC as fun as he did? “They might think it's boring,” he says. “But maybe they could then have a blog and make pictures for it and teach other kids about it.” Sounds like a class project in the works.