Hello Followers,
After our last class, I found myself very intrigued by the copyright and fair use guidelines we discussed. I did not realize how strict they really are and, to be honest, how many times I have seen these guidelines not being followed. I can remember being in high school and having teachers copy entire workbooks for their classes in order to save money. I can remember copyrighted images being used by teachers in powerpoint presentations and I can even remember using too much of copyrighted material in my own work and never being warned about it or reprimanded for it.
The reason for this is quite simple; too many people do not know what the guidelines are in order to follow them and a majority of the time they do not even know that they are breaking any rules. Because of this lack of knowledge, we will definitely be affected in our classrooms one day. I hate to say it because NYS has enough standards as it is, but I feel as though NYS should mandate that a course be taken by education students in college regarding copyright and fair use guidelines to mitigate the naivety factor.
When I think about the ways in which our past class will affect me moving forward as an educator, I can say that I will be much more diligent in my efforts to ensure that I am not breaking copyright or fair use guidelines. Before I decide it is okay to photocopy worksheets for my classes or create powerpoint presentations with content taken from other authors, I will most certainly check back to what the guidelines stipulate. As I have already said, so many people now-a-days break these rules without even knowing they have...I will do my best to stay out of this group.
-Meaghan
I think part of the problem teachers tend to break copyright laws is that they are just too detailed and many teachers don't think about it. Besides, teachers know that the "copyright police" will not come knocking on their door unless it is a serious breach, like claiming some idea was theirs and profiting from it or using someones logo and broadcasting it to the public. It will take some extra time to make sure we follow the standards but at least we will be in the right.
ReplyDeleteI think a big reason teachers break the copyright guidelines are that they are simply not familiar with how strict they are. It would be interesting if a copyright survey was given to 1000 teachers to see what they know or do not know about the guidelines. I think the other main reason is like mike said, the "copyright police" are not peeking into the classroom window to enforce copyright infringement.
ReplyDeleteI agree that many teachers have broken copyright laws simply because they are unaware of what exactly the laws are. In class when we were going over the laws I was a bit confused by some of them-there are so many of them. I think that I probably will end up breaking some of the laws unintentionally because I feel like there are so many, I'm definitely gonna have to monitor what I do because I really would rather NOT break the laws.
ReplyDeleteI definitely have had the same experiences with teachers not following many of the copyright rules, probably for the simple reason that they do not know most of them. I do agree with you that maybe there should be a course required for teachers to take in order to fully comprehend the copyright laws and follow them in the classroom.
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