Copyright for Teachers

I am extremely appreciative that I learned about copy right in my class because honestly I heard of copy right before but I did not know the seriousness of it. I thought it was something that only big companies discussed and worried about. I was very surprised that our social networks could be considered a violation of the copy right law. Another aspect of copy right that I found very interesting is the fact that copy right laws are extremely controversial because the law can be interpreted in many different ways. For example, a case can be a violation of copy right in one state but in another state it is considered okay behavior.

For teachers it important to know that we are allowed to use short part of movies,  copy parts of books, and share music in class only if  it is part of the curriculum and going to enhance the students learning.

Since I learned about copy right, I constantly see people violating the copy right law. First time I saw it when a teacher copied a whole book for the class to take notes from. Another time I observed people violating the law is when a teacher showed a whole movie to their elementary class because she felt they were tired due to P.S.S.A; showing a movie was thoughtful but I do not think it fit into their curriculum.

Out of school, I see people violating laws as well. The most common one is  when a person downloads music, movies, and ringtones for free. Another time is when a songwriter used the instrumental of an India Bollywood movie and did not name the source that she receive the music from. Instead she pretended that she produced the song herself.

Like I said earlier, I am very thankful that I learned about copy right during college because  I do not want to get in trouble by making an honest mistake. I think it is teachers jobs to provide students with information of copy right because information on copy right is not  easily obtained and it is not a topic that is discussed often throughout every day conversations.  I think teachers can first show their students by example. If students see that their teachers always site their source or only copy a certain part in a book instead of the whole thing, they will learn because teachers are role models. Another idea to teach students about copy right is by having them do website on the topic they are learning about. This way you can teach a quick mini lesson on copyright.