A letter arrives from the Hilltop Makers, a made-up club in a nearby town. They loved the Commons Count bar graph.
"They want to use it in their own report," Comet says, flipping open her sketch notebook. "They already put their club name at the bottom!"
Wren reads the letter twice. "What do you notice about whose names are missing?"
"Ours," Comet says. "And the members who gave the answers in the first place."
Nova hovers over the letter. "Would you like a hint?" she asks. "Ask who made each part: the answers, the sheet and the graph."
Comet grins. "Okay, that is a real puzzle. Data analyst, who should get credit?"
How do we share what we learned without harming the people in it?
This week you will give credit, share totals instead of rows, build the data story and review the whole project.
Material created on a computer is the intellectual property of its creator, or of an organization.
Easy copying and sharing of digital work raises questions about who owns it and how it may be used.
Using material someone else created, without permission, and presenting it as your own is plagiarism.
Material created by someone other than you should always be cited.
| Part of Commons Count (made-up, from the story) | Who made it | How to give credit |
|---|---|---|
| The answers | 40 members (M01 to M40) | Say "answers from 40 Commons members" |
| The data sheet | The crew | Name the crew as the makers |
| The sign-in book counts | Keeper Ines and the front desk | Cite the Commons sign-in book |
| The Q3 bar graph | The crew | A source line on the graph |
Creative Commons, open source and open access let people legally share and build on work.
Creative Commons is a public copyright license that lets an otherwise copyrighted work be shared freely.
They have widened access to digital information. The crew could share its blank survey form this way, asking only for credit.
| Statement | True or false? |
|---|---|
| Material created on a computer is the intellectual property of its creator or an organization. | ? |
| If a graph is easy to copy, anyone may put their own name on it. | ? |
| Work made by someone else should always be cited. | ? |
| Creative Commons lets a work be shared freely under a public license. | ? |
Fair thinking, data analyst. Tomorrow you will decide what is safe to share.