Message and Copyright Info

Copyrighting, we have all heard of it, but what is it exactly? Copyright is the thing that protects creativeness in a sense. If there was no copy write, people would be stealing everyone's awesome ideas left and right! Richard Baraniuk has a TED Talk, that you can watch here, that talks about having an open access place for teachers and students alike. A place where everything is freely shared so as not to infringe upon copy write laws. This is very inventive, because as teachers we have to teach the students that copy write is not OK. As a teacher, every move we make is seen by the student. If we burn discs of music (as a professor of mine used in her lecture) and hand it to the students, we in the long run are teaching the students that it is okay to steal music. A lot of people believe that if there is no copyright sign on something, or if it is on certain websites that it is free game. However, as explained in the article talking about myths of copyright, that thought is completely wrong. Anything written or created that is put in a tangible domain (such as this blog) is technically copyrighted. This is something I had never known honestly! The only way that it is for public use is if the creator of that content explicitly says that it is for public use. Another thing that was new for me was the fact that you cannot write something based on anything else, unless it is a parody or it is a criticism piece. Those are the only two exceptions to the rule. Another crazy new thing I read here, was the copyright years. Did you know, that those are not the years that copyright ran out, but rather, it is the years that it was written and/or modified? So when you see the years on the inside of a cover and it is like 1998, 2002, 2005 and things such as that, the copyright did not end in 2002, it was just modified! Which this a great to know as a teacher. Especially if I end up teaching older children I will be able to explain that to them. It is really hard as a teacher to abide by the law, because there are just so many fun pictures out there! Most people do not even think twice just Googling a picture and just pasting their favorite into a powerpoint. I will admit, I have done this. You don't even think about it unless there is a watermark in the middle of the picture. But as a teacher, I think it is especially important not to do this. To only use things that are explicitly for public domain. The children that I teach deserve to be taught how to respect others' creative property and to be taught that their ideas are still theirs. Even in this crazy world of technology that we live in. So even though, that means that making a fun powerpoint might take a little longer to make to keep it legal, it is important to do so, because children absorb everything around them. I would rather my students be respectful online and respectful to other people's ideas than to just have fun powerpoints.


Thank you to the following websites:

• http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
• http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning?language=en
• http://www.whatiscopyright.org/