Teaching Copyright in Elementary School

Image by PugnoM

Every teacher with a degree most likely has written MANY research papers in college. You probably were fighting with your citation page and the proper citation style to quote any sentence or idea. MLA, APA etc. were most likely part of some nightmares you had during those times. Some professors were stricter than others in reinforcing and double checking your work.

Copyright should be a grand issue in all schools, not just universities. Teachers need to make it their business to know of copyright, especially how it applies to digital media. We need to teach and expect respect for intellectual property from our students from early on and above all OBEY it in our own work.

A couple of years ago while looking at my Spanish classroom website’s statistic page, I noticed a particular URL responsible for many incoming links. I followed the address and was surprised to arrive at a website from another Spanish teacher in the US. I was surprised, because her website looked IDENTICAL to mine. My page had taken me many hours to design in Photoshop with original images and remixed clipart from image collection CDs that I had purchased. The site was a labor of love, with newsletters, songs and games that I used with my students many years in the making. It was a shock to see that someone had simply used “save as” and uploaded to her own school website, changing only my name wherever it appeared with her last name. I felt someone had entered “my home” and stole my property. There was no e-mail address provided, but I followed the URL path to the school’s website and called to speak to her. Since she was not “available” to speak to me, nor had an answering machine, I left a message with the school office to please take down the site, since it violated copyright law. The next day, the site was taken down and I received an e-mail from her apologizing “that she did not know” that it was against copyright to do that. Long story…. but very real to me.

As the Technology Integration Facilitator at an elementary school now, I am confronted with the same kind of copyright ignorance from some of our own teachers when it comes to digital content. I feel that it is important to stress and insist first on AWARENESS that anything you find online and is easily copied DOES NOT mean you can. We are doing our younger students a disservice with an attitude that it seems more “ok” for them to just copy and paste into their reports. It is a disservice to them to be more lenient when it comes to copyright, simply because the issue seems too complicated for them to understand or for us to explain. We need to find a way to explain copyright on their level and answer the following questions (which are real questions that have been asked of me by students):

• How to cite content from digital sources in my work?
• Is it ok to google for an image and use it in my presentation?
• Where can I find copyright free images, audio and video for a project I am working on?
• If I absolutely want to use copyrighted content in my work, how do I ask for permission?
• What does Creative Commons mean?

I would like to start putting together a simple handout for our elementary school students with answer to these above questions and to help them be aware, understand and follow copyright law while creating. Any help, tips, links and experience you have would be greatly appreciated.

PS. Kim Cofino has shared in her Google Reader items two great posts dealing with copyright. They are worth checking out to inform yourself about creative commons and how we teach copyright in schools.

1. Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog- Changing how we teach Copyright Part 1
2. Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog- Changing how we teach Copyright Part 2
3. Creative Commons in our Schools Slideshare by Mark Woolley

 

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