Week 1: Free Choice!

With this blog being a free choice activity, I just wanted to reflect more into copyright.  As I was posting responses to other's blogs, I started to think...what if we as educators were not able to show famous copyright works?  How would our teaching style and curriculum be if we were not able to bring the world outside inside to our students?

I remember in my English classes listening to the works of Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Alan Poe, and Langston Hughes.  How would I know about these famous writers if they were never wrote down nor able to be used in the classroom.  Or if in History class, I was not able to see a picture of the White House, and if I never visited Washington, D.C., would I really be able to understand the depiction of my teacher's words better than a photograph?

With teaching, we must be careful what we reproduce, but we must also ask ourselves, "Will the students understand without a visual or an auditory piece?"  Within our lessons, we should embed modifications to our lessons for different learners.  We have all learned about our auditory learners, kinesthetic, visual, etc.  I am happy that during a lesson, I can go on Google and freely show my students a picture of who Emmitt Till is or a video about World War I.  Fair use make teaching much easier than creating original items each day for class!

Picture via creativecommons.org

Week 1 Reading: Copyright Issues: Response to Sarah

Wk1/Blog4: Free Choice--Copyright & the Classroom

After listening to all of the information regarding copyright laws and fair use, it seems as though it's pretty difficult to easily incorporate copyrighted works into the classroom.  Permission can take a while to receive and would require intense future planning of lessons and projects.  I mentioned in one of the discussion boards this week that I use Prezi to introduce and review vocabulary words in my classroom.  A few weeks ago, one of the words was "awe." My students read the definition and I tried providing examples to paint a clear picture for them, but I could see they didn't really grasp what it meant to be in awe of something. Finally, I remembered the movie "Toy Story." At one point in the movie, the little green men in the toy vending machine are in awe of "the claw," and they "ooh" and "aah" over it.  Once I recalled that scene and shared that with my students, most of them knew exactly what the word "awe" meant. But this could have been so much more powerful if a movie screenshot or movie clip could have been used to portray this.  There were some students who hadn't seen the movie, and the connection didn't mean anything to them. It's instances like this that copyright laws can be disheartening. Even though the nature of the video clip I wanted to use was for educational purposes and not much of the movie would have been used, I didn't use it. After hearing the things in the videos this week, I'm glad I didn't.  The lesson could still be taught without the video clip, so it wasn't an absolute necessity that this clip be incorporated into the lesson.

Sarah-

You have some valid points in your post in regards to copyright and fair use.  Seeing that you would have used "Toy Story" in the classroom, I believe you would have been OK using the clip.  When I taught Language Arts a couple of years ago, we were using the College Board SpringBoard Curriculum.  For the 6th grade curriculum, they had to analyze part of "The Lion King" with plot and climax.  When using movies as a part of your curriculum, it is under fair use.  Now, if you wanted to just show it to a large mass of people and say that you created it, then you would be breaking copyright laws.

"Toy Story" picture from creativecommons.org

Week 1 Reading: Copyright Issues

We had several videos to watch in regards to copyright.  It can be a very "sticky" issue, but in this post, I will try to clarify some common issues.

First off, copyright, as noted from Nathan Bamey of Expert Village, is a form of protection for original works in a tangible medium of expression.  In other words, if you create it, you have the right to protect it as your own.  Items that are protected are musical recordings, works of art, or architectural designs.  Not everything is not subject to copyright.  Improvisational works, titles, slogans, or items of common property are examples.

Copyrights are not forever.  For an author, a copyright can last their lifetime plus an additional 70 years.  For a company, a copyright has a duration of 100 years.  All of this does depend on the type of work, the date of origination, and countless other factors.

What was very interesting to me was the last video.  I have known about sampling for a number of years.  Listening to many R&B and Hip Hop tracks over the years, many I have found to be unoriginal, thinking back to "what song did they take?"  I did not know that filmakers have made a documentary about this process and so many people that I would have never imagined having a hand in hip hop.  I think that it is something that will continue for years to come, seeing that it is easier to me a "beat maker" with all of the programs and technology available.  It is so easy to be a musician today without knowing how to play an instrument or read a music note!

Picture via creativecommons.org