As a teacher, I believe sharing material is the backbone of our profession. We have big jobs and if we couldn’t rely on our colleagues to share resources with us they would be even bigger. That being said, I believe it is important to give credit where credit is due. For myself, if I find an educational resource online I try to get in touch with the teacher to see if they are open to sharing. If the item comes from a more public domain, I try to add the source information for where I found the item.
I currently share resources in a number of ways; Google Drive, Dropbox, SugarSync, Google Sites, Blogger, YouTube and now WordPress. For all of my resources, I am completely open to other teachers, parents, or students using or remixing my materials. If I put my resources in a public forum such as Google Sites or Blogger it is material that I offer up to the public domain. For other resources that I want to be more selective in regards to who I share it with I instead use more private online storage. With Google Drive, Dropbox and SugarSync I am able to share specific items with specific people with just a shareable link.
Lastly, as I move forward in my teaching career the one thing that I am finding myself doing more and more is being increasingly cognizant of citing references. Often as teachers, we find videos, images, etc. online and throw them into a Powerpoint or copy them into an activity. In the past, these resources would remain in a classroom setting and would not violate most copyright laws. Now that I am putting more and more of my material online I am trying to take the time to cite material properly to not only give credit where credit is due but also to set a good example for my students.
I agree that citing resources is an important component of sharing in our profession. I remember my early years looking for images and graphics to support teaching social studies. I didn’t think much of where they had originated (though most were from various government collections). When I left K-12 teaching I put all my resources online on platforms that were then just starting (Slideshare and Scribd) with a creative commons license. Since then they’ve had thousands of views and downloads.
My mentor teachers were very generous with their materials (three thick binders with social studies 9, 10 and 11) but their resources were on paper. If I wanted to adapt them I had to write them out again on a computer and then make my changes. I think the fact that almost all teacher-developed materials today are in simple digital form make the future of sharing much brighter.