"i have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it"-Thoreau

I found this on the 23things webpage that indicates this project is adapted from a previous online source:

Creative Commons is amazing- it kind of restores my faith in humanity.  We can be nice, we can encourage creativity, we can build off of one another, we can all give back.

Okay, so maybe that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I love that creative commons allows me to make something that (if I choose) other teachers, librarians, artists, and Joe the Plumbers can use, copy, or build off of.  

Consider Art or Literature or Philosphy.  Everything starts out with one small idea, and some one else comes along and refines, expands, explores, repurposes the idea.  And some one else will come by and do the same thing again.  It's evolution at its finest.

Using Creative Commons to create new resources, materials, and opportunities for my students makes me think of family trees.  If I make something for my students and I've seen how well it worked, I would definitely put it online with a creative commons license.  I would love to see how another educator may modify it and make it better, or hear about how an educator didn't change it at all and it worked in her class too!  The more educators that use my work, the larger the community grows.  The community is united by one thing- the original resource, and that uniting factor makes is where I get this idea of creation and family.  Maybe it's a little esoteric.

Creative Commons is also a testament to the individual.  Consider people in general- we are secretive and selfish.  You rarely hear about "the man" helping out the little guy, but you hear all the time about so and so suing the pants off of another so and so.  Creative Commons shows a side of people that indicates we can still be giving and not completely self-involved.  Maybe I am being very naive, but the simple act of sharing your work (even to a small degree) speaks wonders to me about humanity.