When I read Copyright Clarity by Renee Hobbs, I could not believe what I was reading. I was one of the ignorant educators, she mentioned in the book, that was towing on the line of conformity and hesitant to use what I was finding on the internet.
I learned that Copyright is designed to protect both the rights of owners and users in order to promote the spread of knowledge, creativity and innovation. And that educators, like me, do not understand how to use Copyrighted material, causing us not to use the vast resources that are available. The truth is that Fair Use gives us the ability to use parts from any copyrighted works with these factors to consider.
- Purpose of the use
- Nature of the copyrighted work
- Amount used
- Market impact
Fair Use is a user right.
Now that I know this, I have been telling my colleagues and students, informally. I plan on including the information that I put in my Pecka Kucha, along with the searching and sorting guidelines that I created, into a Digital Citizenship lesson for my students. I have to admit that I felt liberated when I read Copyright Clarity and learned about Fair Use. Now, I can practice fair use with copyrighted material and promote the spread of knowledge, creativity and innovation.
I think that liberation is the perfect word to describe our collective feelings after learning that we have quite a bit of leeway as educators. For me, it all comes back to the following questions. How can we dispel this myth? How can we get students to solve the problem of understanding copyright and fair use rules? How can we continue to encourage them to use information responsibly?
ReplyDeleteThe most important place to start is to educate the students and teachers in our own buildings so that we don't prevent the spread of innovative teaching and learning. One of the dangers of not understanding fair use is that creative product creation is destroyed if people don't understand the idea of transformativeness.
ReplyDeleteI have been an ignorant teacher and I have even given many lessons on copyright, fair use, and intellectual property that were completely wrong. I recently read an article on the National Association for Music Education that was wrong too. My eyes are open.
ReplyDeleteI too felt duped, but now have a drive to spread the truth to others and the freedom to use all of the resources available to me.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the next step is to spread this information in our schools, to our colleagues and students. It is great that from your position you can design trainings based on this information. Hopefully, over time teachers will learn more about fair use and will open that door for their students as well.
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