Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons in Education
These three terms scare me more now than ever before. I believe that we, as educators should be able to utilize any means to help our students. Fortunately the fair use covers this, for the most part. When a school purchases material for the classroom the teachers should be able to use that any way they see fit within the school. It seems unfair for a school to be required to purchase more than one copy when all copies wouldn’t be used at the same time. In addition to this point, if a school did purchase video and wanted to show it during assembly this should not be a problem; it is paid for. The laws and rules are so confusing. I found in most cases, if it sounded wrong it was ok and if it sounded ok then it was wrong. I understand people need to pay the bills but taking teachers and school districts to court over something they paid for seems a little petty to me. I will be extremely careful when I am choosing my materials for my classroom.
I will also teach my students to be careful. A picture should not be posted on the Internet, for the world to see, without a stamp on it stating a copyright is in place. We the public should not have to go looking for that information, no matter how simple it may be. The person who posted the image should be responsible for protecting their work upfront. Students should be aware of copyright, fair use, and creative commons. Students should be able to look at an image and know whether or not they should have to ask permission to use it.
umhanson13 