My Thoughts re: Copyright Laws and Fair Use

"Are we (educators) responsible users of technology?" That is the main question to ponder in this week's blog. Personally, I think that if the teacher is aware of the copyright guidelines herself, and is thinking about them as she is producing a lesson and/or teaching a lesson to the class, that she is more likely to be a responsible user of technology. It can be very easy to find information on the Internet, including text, pictures, graphs, etc..., and I think it can be easy to not give credit to where credit is due. We may have a tendency to take advantage of the fact that the material is so accessible that we may altogether forget to cite where it originally came from. However, I think that if a teacher is first aware of the fact that copyright guidelines do fall in place whenever borrowing or using another's work, whether it's a written work, a work of visual art, a song, or a graph, etc...then she will be more prepared to use it in a way that is fair and legal.

Once a teacher has this knowledge herself, she can pass it along to her students. There are times when students will cut and paste material directly from the Internet and put it in their work and act as if it is their own. Students do this to save time and to get the work done. What they do not fully realize though, is that this is against the law. Students need to be taught about fair use and copyright guidelines, just as we adults and educators do. Since we are their teachers, we need to set a good example. We need to make sure we cite our sources whenever we use them in the classroom if we are incorporating them into something we have created on our own. The students need to see this being done. I remember once when I made a class set of short stories which were taken from a textbook my school doesn't use, I cited the source information right on the bottom of the first page of the story. The students asked why I had written that there and I explained to them that it was taken from a book and I needed to give credit to it. I could not just make copies without citing where it came from. I told them they will need to do the same sort of thing when it's time to write their research paper. The students cringed at this, but at least they were learning an important, life-long lesson.

All in all, I feel that teachers are responsible users of technology. I think that a teacher who is more aware of copyright and fair use restrictions will make more of an effort to cite sources and only use material which is absolutely critical in going along with what she needs to present or teach, rather than a teacher who is not as aware of these restrictions. Therefore, the more education one has on this issue, the more careful and cognizant she is going to be when it comes to borrowing others' works.