Teaching Students About Using Images off Wikipedia
We want our students to start creating…
We want them to use different media to express themselves, demonstrate their understanding, learning and connections to the world.
So, the teacher has agreed to the substitution of the traditional written book report (from years past) with allowing students (5th Grade) to create and record a PhotoStory based on a biography of a famous person.
Step one was to give students an overview of using PhotoStory. Step two was the issue of obtaining images they could us. I was amazed at how many students were STILL thinking that it was OK to just google images, right click, save as and voila!
I know for a fact, that most of them were introduced to the issue of copyright through one of the projects they had done in TechConnect last year.
- They did not listen?
- It was too complex to understand?
- It did not sink in?
- It was not reinforced on other occasions?
Some students had even their parents help them save images obtained from a google search. (Note to myself: Need to offer Copyright issues workshop for parents next school year)
So, Step two was an opportunity to revisit and reinforce copyright issues students encounter when creating digital projects involving images.
Allowing my elementary school students to “freely” search for images on the web is not an option.
At the beginning of this school year, I had created a Media Library on our server, where I placed public domain and creative commons licensed images, sounds and video clips to be used in projects.
The question is though: How are they going to learn, if we (teachers)Â pre-chew everything for them?
For this biography project, I wanted them to search for images of their famous person on Wikipedia and learn to be (1) aware, (2) check the licensing options of each image and (3) cite the image credits properly in the PhotoStory project.
As a whole group. I showed them to check for copyright license by clicking on the image itself .
Scroll down, pass the image to take a closer look at the license of the image.
If the image is in public domain, students are free to save the image and import into their project. They do not need to credit any source.
If the image is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License or Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License, students are free to download the image, but are required to give credit to the author or owner of the image. They are to save the image with the “by author or username” before importing it into their project and include the name in a credit page in their project.
I believe that elementary school students are NOT too young to learn about copyright and copywrong. A school project should not be placed into a different category that make it ok to not follow the law because:
- well, it does not really matter…
- it is not “real”…
- it does not count…
- I am not “really” doing anything wrong…
- no one will know, except my teacher…
Expressions, like “YES!!” with accompanying body language could be heard all around the classroom, when students found a good image and it happened to be in public domain.
They are being aware of copyright issues and they are becoming familiar with terms such as Creative Commons and Public Domain.
Will it “sink” in this time?
What a great idea to thoughtfuly remind oursleves about as we consider our assignments:
“A school project should not be placed into a different category that make it ok to not follow the law because:
* well, it does not really matter…
* it is not “realâ€â€¦
* it does not count…
* I am not “really†doing anything wrong…
* no one will know, except my teacher…”
Thank you for this useful post! I am going to share a link back to this via my Twitter and perhaps via my e-mail.
Well written. I will pass this on to our teachers. We are always looking for new ways to teach and think about copyright issues.
Whata marvellous post! Copyright is a tricky issue even with older students (high school, 16-19-year-olds)if it hasn’t been introduced properly and then reinforced by all the teachers. In my school, there are no joint guidelines about this, and one teacher alone can’t really make a difference if the rest
think “well, it doesn’t really matter…” I will definitely pass your ideas on to my colleagues and maybe next school year we will turn a new leaf with a concerted action plan.
Great post Silvia- great illustrations of your ideas as well as reasoning. It is important and primary grades are not too soon to raise awareness. I also like the idea of a media library but agree about spoon-feeding- I feel there is a time and place for each in primary grades while building attribution skills as they mature.
[...] Langwitches » Teaching Students About Using Images off Wikipedia [...]
Thank you for this thoughtful post Sylvia. I will pass it on to teachers who bring their classes to the library for research.
I’m just learning about these issues with copyright and loved your post. I’m just finishing a course with the Young Writers Project, and am linking this to my final post. I did not know how to use wikipedia and its public domain. You have been a great support for my learning. Thank you for sharing.
Copyright issues are far more complex than this articles simplifies them to be. Even images that claim to be in the public domain may not really be. Copyright laws are in dire need of a huge overhall, and are currently part of a huge worldwide debate. I will allow my students to use any image found anywhere on the web because:
1. I know that I’m not a copyright lawyer and don’t understand copyright like this author claims to,
2. Students should be focused on creativity and exploration, not outdated and controversial laws,
3. All images are used for non-profit reasons and will not be used to make any money.
After the students have gone through a University and have the knowledge and understanding to discuss copyright, then I will teach them about it.