Comments on: Teaching Copyright?

By: David Muir

David Muir — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:53:54 +0000

Hello John Just mentioned this post in a recent one of mine. I especially liked Theo's response. Are you aware of anyone else doing this kind of lesson?

By: BlogTeacher

BlogTeacher — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:07:31 +0000

I’ve approached this with a class of adult learners by asking what kind of things they might want to be able to control about their work.

They usually come up with the main points without too much prompting. “I want people to know it’s mine after I’ve put all that work in” , “I want to be able to sell it”, “I don’t want it to be misused to make me look bad”

This leads into a discussion of the POINT of copyright, and helps prevent them seeing it just as an annoyance to be overcome.

By: John Connell

John Connell — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:11:22 +0000

Very interesting idea, Dave – thanks for the link!

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 14:53:50 +0000

a little off topic but I thought you might find it interesting

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-11-06-freereading_N.htm

By: Alan Coady

Alan Coady — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:07:04 +0000

This, as you can imagine, comes up quite frequently in Music. An example might be someone not having bought the advised book and saying, “why can’t you just copy it for us?” The most straightforward and convincing reply is something like the following:

Imagine you were writing a guitar book. This was your job. Everyone else was going out to work but you were staying at home to make your book really good – working on the music, the words and the drawings. People would come home with the money they’d earned, but you wouldn’t worry because you were going to get yours later – once the book was ready for sale. But, hardly any money appeared because somebody was giving away free copies of the book to all his pupils. How pleased would you be about that?

By: John Connell

John Connell — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:26:17 +0000

Excellent, Theo! Creative Commons itself might be a useful source of learning here for kids (and teachers!).

By: Theo Kuechel

Theo Kuechel — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:43:26 +0000

A good question; looking on the web, most resources aimed at 'copyright for kids' were pretty black and white with a don't do this message followed by varied scenarios of what might or might not happen to you. As it stands, even for us grown-ups, copyright and IP can be pretty complex issue. I think the key things to get across to kids are the need to check, ownership, (help them find this) and where appropriate seek permission from rights holders. In recent workshops I have done, kids have thoroughly enjoyed the activity of seeking permission; (equals: literacy, communication and 'real world' experience). But this did raise the hackles of some of the teachers (raised on Google images) who thought it was too much trouble/hard work and distracted from the 'curriculum. They wanted easy fixes and quick solutions. My argument is that if it is worth having then you need to take the time and trouble. So to try and answer your question; a good place to start would be explaining the Â© symbol and the alternatives offered by of the CC licenses,( perhaps showing this clip). I would do a Flickr based activity because each licence is clearly explained , (including Â©) very clearly. Perhaps a good exercise would be to do a Flickr CC search, check which license is attached to that image, then ask the kids to produce some work using that image within the parameters of the image - result - you get a good discussion and some real creative work showing what is possible in each category. I think we need to change the emphasis from the restrictive to the productive. Adjust for age as appropriate