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COETAIL

23 April 2020

Doing Copy… Right!

As the time teachers, students, and the school community in general spend in front of a computer has increased lately, due to the forced, en masse implementation of online education, so has the need for all participants to create, and be virtually exposed to, more resources and materials.

Educators and admins are creating amazing and meaningful instructional (or just-for-fun) resources, but they need to be aware of copyright laws, and so do our students. Our role as modern educators implies not only understanding what respect for intellectual property requires of us, but also informing students so that they are critical about it and about digital citizenship in general.

Let us take a glimpse at the simple planning life of any educator in today’s reality…

  • Start my online conference using the platform that my school has implemented. If the tool allows the use of a custom virtual background, chances are I’ll want to use a different and fun one other than the default ones. Is that image or photo mine?
  • I, as a teacher, am showing a slide with the class start time as the rest of the students join the Google Meet. The background image is not of my own creation. Have I asked the author if I can use it?
  • I find among my personal library a picture book that matches the theme of the day perfectly and decide to read it aloud online for the students. Is this book out of copyright?
  • I consider just recording myself reading the book, adding questions at the end, and then publishing it securely in my Google Classroom. Does that fall under the TEACH Act?
  • I get that perfect movie or short film that my school (or I) has already paid for, so I assume that I can use it and decide to put it in my Google Classroom. Overall, it is for the same important purpose of educating. Do I know if the same rules apply to the use of this material in my physical classroom and virtually? Did I read the terms and conditions?
  • I receive an email about the Math book that my student Juanito (always Juanito) left at school, asking me to please send him the scanned pages. The book was either purchased by the family or paid for by the school. There should be no problem. Did I verify that this reproduction and distribution does not violate copyright?
  • I, as an expert on video editing, want to go above and beyond and put together a video with pictures of the staff when they were young for students to guess who they are, or maybe put together a flash mob or some funny scenes of staff being goofy, and finally decide on the music that goes perfectly with it. Is this music already in the public domain or under a Creative Commons license?
  • The Visual and Performing Arts Director wants to live stream a TGIF play on Google Meet to help cope with quarantine due to CORONAVIRUS!! (Read as Cardi B). Is this an original script or a modern translation?
  • The fun assistant principal wants to host a trivia night on Wednesday. Lots of copyrighted material. All of the above questions.
  • Then add GDPR, woo-hoo!

Now, let us learn the fundamentals of copyright and fair use in less than 3 minutes with this video from Common Sense Education. Wait… Can I show this? (🤭)

Copyright and Fair Use Animation by Common Sense Education.

The more I learn about copyright, the more inclined I become toward creating my own resources. In summary, before you even think about starting… ask yourself the following questions:

  • Who owns this picture, video, text or music that I am using?
  • Under what type of Creative Commons license is this resource registered?
  • Did I inform, ask for permission from, or pay the author before using it?
  • If it is Fair Use, did I add significance to it in any way?
  • Did I honor the authors by mentioning and redirecting to them?
  • Should I just take my own picture this time?

Here are some possible sources of music, images, books, and videos that may be used without permission (public domain, licensed for reuse by their owners, or with expired copyrights).

Music:

Images. Photos and videos free to use. Attribution is not required. Even though giving credit to the author is not necessary, it is always appreciated.

Books. With a focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired:

Videos and films:

First published on my COETAIL blog on 23 April 2020, lightly edited for this site. Read the archived original.