Copyright, Fair Use, and Online Safety

Plagiarism was always a serious issue when I was in grade school with teachers making huge ordeals about not stealing information from the internet. I learned at an early age that using sites such as easybib and son of citation machine would be necessary. Copyright appeared to be a rather complicated task, made even harder with citing our information. What I didn't know was that copyright is a very difficult subject to wrap the brain around and citing sources made the issue a little easier to truly grasp. From the reading, I have begun to understand that most information on the WEB is usually copyrighted. There are certain guidelines that must be followed in order that the guidelines not be crossed. Fair use protects us as the public, enabling us to use copyrighted materials in the classroom.  I never knew that using the internet was such a complicated task, I just simply opened to google and searched with no knowledge on the hefty amount of barriers that were present. With all the copyright issues, there also exist problems with students using it. Cyber bullying has now become a common phenomena,with facebook and other social networks becoming the new grounds where bullying now occurs. In order to combat these brutal conditions that have been moved from playgrounds to facebook, an educator must address the appropriate netiquette to their students. I have learned that I as a future teacher, needs to show kids how to become productive and honest members of society when using online sources. This will help prevent online bullying and create an online environment in which cyber safety comes to existence.

My feelings after reading the materials about copyright, fair use, cyber safety, netiquette, and online bullying have left me in a state of befuddlement. I am confused, and sort of angry all at the same time. The guidelines of copyright appear to make using the WEB to incorporate into my future classroom near impossible. I can recall the days when I was in 3rd grade,getting to watch Hoosiers as a reward to filling up our jar with marbles for good behavior. Also I remember in the 7th grade when my class got to watch Pearl Harbor as part of our lecture time. I don't understand how these examples would be against the fair use; copyright almost makes education in this technology saavy generation a lost cause. How can we possibly teach our kids if copyright stands in our way? If we manage to get past all the copyright laws, then I do feel it is important to encourage our students to understand how to be safe while online and to have the appropriate netiquette to surpass online bullying.

Additional information:

"Copyright for Educators" at http://www.copyrighteducation.org/ hosted by KOCE-TV. You can find series youtube video clips at YouTube.com

Below is a video clip of "Copyright for Educators (Multimedia Guidelines)"