Copyright

In today's society, everything that was once inaccessible is not available to use at the tip of our fingertips. All sorts of knowledge is available for us to read, learn, and share. The problem that lies here is the word "share." With the media we access, are we really allowed to share it with others? Because there's billions of content on the Internet, we forget that we're distributing other people's work. Accordingg to Candace Figg, "Basic copyright law means that all rights are reserved - the copying, distributing, performing, displaying, or adapting of digital media found online is prohibited" (Figg, 1). We may all be guilty of sharing online content whether it be a video shared on your PowerPoint presentation, images you use to decorate your presentation or social media page, or music in your YouTube video. Many of us fail to give credit to the original content creators or even ask for permission. Copyright is a difficult thing since many of us don't realize we're committing it.

In an educational setting, there are exceptions but these exceptions are extremely limited. When distributing work in a class handout, only a maximum of 10% of the  content can be shared. As future educators, we need to teach students how to properly use an image without infringement. This may include encouraging students to do further investigation on the image (Does it say that it's copyrighted? Does the creator state that you may use the image?). In addition to this, citation is very important!

We can encourage this by turning our students into their very own detectives. The further they research, the more knowledgeable they may become on copyright laws!

San Jose Library (2008, August 9) Children using the library computers (Photograph)
Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/sanjoselibrary/

Ribeiro, L. (2008, August 9) Children at School (Photograph).
Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/lupuca/