Copyright Confession

When I began teaching Social Studies 11 years ago, I thought , “Wow, I’m so lucky I can use the internet to help find resources for my classes!” I would share full episodes of National Geographic videos from YouTube to my students. I found articles anywhere I could for assignments. I used clip art and searched Google images to make my worksheets and presentations more interesting. The internet provided me with everything I needed and I never thought twice about copyright infringement, asking permission or giving attribution for a thing I used.

I made sure my students understood what plagiarism was. I drove home the importance of being creative and speaking your own voice. I made sure they gave credit to the resources they used in all their essays and projects, requiring bibliographies along with proper MLA formatting.

I was a hypocrite.

I held my students to a standard that I myself did not follow. It was my belief that because I was using online resources to educate my students and not profit that I was allowed to use anything however I wanted. Also if I wasn’t publishing anything on the web then it was fine. Everything was ‘fair use’ because I work in education.

Since becoming a Computer Science teacher, I have become much more aware of Copyright law and I am now holding myself to a higher standard. More importantly I am explaining to my students the reasons for the laws as well as how they can benefit from it. We always use Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org) for searching for images we want to use. When publishing to the web we are sure to provide attribution for the images used as well. If there is an image students would like to use but cannot find it, they are encouraged to create their own using Google Drawing.

As a teacher, I am conscientious of the videos I show in class. The majority of videos I have purchased or are part of the curriculum provided to the school. Also I no longer show entire episodes or movies, mostly because it is a waste of time in the classroom, shorter videos are more effective. But also I did not have the rights to show those in my classroom.

When using online resources for creating activities for my students, I now provide attribution including the creator and weblink in the document. This is necessary in modeling for students when using resources I personally did not create.

I am working hard to practice properly following copyright laws in my classroom. It is a work in progress but my goal is to make it a habit. Knowing that it is not just the law but necessary for my students to understand and embrace as well is the real reason I will continue these practices.