ccunning has voiced some important reservations that I'd like to address. I think noding your homework is fun and lucrative; I've already noded a couple of essays I wrote as assignments in university, namely Ritual Satanic Abuse and Areopagitica.
Most concerns can be quite simply addressed. Really, lengthy, essay or dissertation-type homework is the best. Lecture notes are also fair game in either the Arts or the Sciences. Noding homework is best for essays and termpapers, not mathematics-intensive exercises.
1: "What do I own?" Generally, you own what you write. It doesn't matter if you wrote it for publication, as an assignment, or to hide at the bottom of your sock-drawer; if you wrote it, you own it, and all the rights to it. The only time this wouldn't apply is if you had already signed away your rights to it to a sponsoring firm, such as a corporation or university – if it was an industrial project, dissertation, or somesuch. For university or high school classes, you own what you write. You don't really own class handouts, nor do you own lecture transcripts, although you are entitled to node your own paraphrase of what your teacher may have said. In the case of solutions to mathematical or scientific problems, in theory you own the solution, not the problem. But that brings me to my next point:
2: "What is ethical?" In the case of stuff you don't own, "Fair use" basically means that, without the author's permission, you can't make so much of it available to others that it would invalidate their actually buying the author's original product. So, noding transcripts of every single lecture in a semester is right out of the question, but noding your notes from a couple of lectures, and including the professor's name, would certainly be fair. If you node the solutions to the above-mentioned science or math problems, disconnected from any context other than the fact that they are answers to problems in a textbook, the only reason anyone's likely to find them interesting is if it's for the purposes of cheating.
3: "Whose solutions anyway?" Well, as I said, it's not really a good idea to node solutions to exercises. It's better to node essays, termpapers, or proofs. In any event, it's never cool to put up incorrect information on Everything. I really can't stress this enough. If you get back some homework and the grader has included some corrections, you can rework your piece to include the correct information in your own words. Don't use anyone else's words unless they are credited, and even then, it's best to avoid it like the plague in favour of original writing.
4: "How do I node it?" There are, as I see it, three options for transmitting the information for symbols that have yet to be encoded in HTML.
- Describe. If you can't find the code for the integration symbol (you know, the elongated "S"), just say "Integration symbol." If you know what you're talking about, and describe it accurately, those with the least interest in what you're talking about will know what you mean.
- Do some sexy ASCII Art. I know it's primitive, but it can be done.
/\
| 2x dx = x2 + C
\/
- Unicode Coordinates. You can get them for free from www.unicode.org. In the case of the integration sign, you could just say "Unicode 222B."
For the record, the integration symbol ∫ is ∫. I was only using it for the sake of argument.
5: "How do I control it?" Everything you put on Everything is automatically copyrighted to you. See Citing Writeups. But the simple fact of the matter is that it's not your responsibility to stop students from committing plagiarism. It's the professor's responsibility. You have no real control over your work in the real world. If this disturbs you, don't node it.
To summarise – although it's probably not a good idea to node the answers to assigned exercises, some really awesome stuff to node can be had from your homework, including:
Go forth and node!