Copyright and more

Greetings!

At this time of year our students are into the routine of school and are likely beginning to work on bigger projects. I notice more of these happening at our school. As children are beginning to learn research skills, let’s add copyright lessons. These are easy to incorporate as you present the parameters of the assignment. If students are old enough to read and learn information whether from print sources or the internet, then they are old enough to tell where the information came from. My May 11, 2011 post was on copyright and I encourage you to go to my blog and reread it to remind yourself of the simple basics of copyright. In the blog post I also have a link to a website that was created for teacher education on copyright for Henrico county schools. The great thing is that anyone can take the quiz to learn, but we don’t get graded on it!

There are a couple of pet peeves of mine regarding copyright issues. First, Google is NOT a source. Students often cite as their source “Google.com”. If your students do this, have them type in “google.com” and see what comes up. This should clue them in to the fact that Google is NOT a source.
Second, “Fair Use” does NOT mean that teachers can automatically use whatever they want without citing their source. I mention a couple of examples in the May 2010 blog post about what is fair use and what is not.

If you want to do some fun lessons on copyright with your students, check out the free educational program called “B4U Copy”. www.b4ucopy.com There is an Elementary school guide and a Middle School guide. I have used this guide in library lessons and we just discuss the lessons, rather than use them as worksheets. The kids like it and there are some wonderful teaching moments. This free program is part of the website www.ymiteacher.com site. Take a look at that site and you’ll find other free units already prepared for you to use. But make sure you cite your source!

I hope you take a look at the May 11, 2010 post and while you are there, peek at a few others. You might be surprised what you see.
Have a great week!
Audrey