Sunday, March 6, 2011

Copyright and Education

Instead of writing about our speaker (I missed him) last week, I will write about copyright and education.
I would like to start off by saying that I think copyright law have a purpose in today's society, they do provide some good. The real issue I have with copyright issue is in education and teaching students.

I do not think we as teachers should have the added worry about violating copyright laws when we teach our students. When we show our students video's or photos to try to help them learn, the last thing we think about is violating copyright laws, we care about the learning of our students. When I was in high school there was an English teacher who flat out refused to show movies because of copyright issues. Many schools today do not worry about copyright laws and just break them because the chances of getting caught are slim. All it takes however: is one person who is "passionate" about upholding those laws to make things difficult, but you will have to act as a professional and work with that person. We have most likely met one of those types of people, maybe during your placements.

What ever your view are on the subject, either for or against it will be apart of our teacher lives and we will have to deal with it. Let me ask this question: If you show a movie in to your class are you going to show the one that costs $25-35 or show the same movie that costs $200 so you adhere to the copyright law??

I know there is way more to this issue, this is just my opinion/rant.
Only 2 more days left!!!! 

3 comments:

  1. Copyright is tricky and I agree there should be away to let educators get around it if it helps get their students motivated to learn. I don't see how it hurts film or music studios bottom lines, no one is showing movies in the classroom that are still in theatres and most teachers would never show more than a couple movies in a term. Hopefully something will eventually be done about this, but I have a feeling it is a long time away.

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  2. I agree that copyright laws can be tricky. I can see why they are in place, but I also know that they make the job of the teacher (finding resources and incorporating fun and educational materials into the classroom) more difficult. There need to be more sites like creativecommons.org to help find materials that can actually be used in class. I also think that schools should help as much as they can if they want their teachers to be good teachers and for material to relate to their students. A fellow student told me that, in the school that she was student teaching in, the school had teachers write down any movies that they showed in class and the school took care of the copyright/ making sure whoever needed to get paid was paid. This type of support is great and should happen in more schools to help learning happen.

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  3. This will always be an issue. We should, however, model good citizenship - and lobby for laws that allow educators to use materials within reason. Good questions to ask, Andrew.

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