Copyright Issues in the Classroom a presentation for high school English teachers

The issues are… students who plagiarize. students who think paraphrase removes the issue of plagiarism. teachers who misunderstand copyright law and break it through ignorance.

Students who plagiarize Students plagiarize because they don’t know how to use information without breaking copyright (Top Ten, 2006). Students plagiarize because the do not understand the difference between summary and paraphrase (Top Ten, 2006).

Paraphrase “Some composition scholars argue that students who abuse paraphrasing by simply inverting word order or changing word forms are just trying to digest new material” (Howard, 1995 cited in Top Ten, 2006). What this means is that the best approach when a student turns in work that has been plagiarized in this way is to accept this “patchwork” product as a rough draft and re-teach summarization (Top Ten, 2006).

Images and Videos Students often forget to cite videos and pictures that they use in projects and teachers often do not require them to do such. We MUST, if we are teaching proper copyright and intellectual property respect, have student cite resources for images and video. Why?

It’s the Law Students as well as teachers must follow copyright law or the teacher and the district may be liable for suit, or at the very least, lose access to important content that students need and illegitimize our district in the eyes of our peers. We are role models to our students. It is tempting for teachers to be blasé about copyright due to our position as educators, but if our students mimic this attitude they could be sued. We must teach them to respect copyright for their sake and ours.

It’s logical If we expect them to cite sources and not plagiarize, while passing out copies that clearly say “Do not duplicate” at the bottom, link to illegally posted novel texts and resources from our websites, and use videos and images in presentations without taking the time to cite our source or link back to the maker, we shouldn’t expect our students will either. We need to practice what we preach.

What about Teachers? The TEACH act allows teachers, “to display (show) and perform (show or play) others' works in the classroom” for educational purposes (Harper, 2007). What this means is that you have license to use most anything in your classroom, but you need to be careful about what you post on your websites or YouTube. Different Rules Apply

What’s public domain? “Many people assume that everything posted on the Internet is public domain, probably because our law used to protect published works only if they displayed the proper copyright notice upon publication. The law, however, has changed: neither publication nor a notice of any kind is required to protect works today. Simply putting the pen to the paper…” (or posting a image or video) “…in the electronic medium, putting the fingers to the save key creates a copyrighted work” (Harper, 2007).

OK, so is anything Public Domain? For the purposes of our students’ work, nothing. Public Domain just means that you don’t have to pay to access it, not that you don’t need to cite it (Harper, 2007). Have your students CITE EVERYTHING. It’s just a good habit (and we should too as role models).

Fair Use “It used to be safe to say that reasonable analog educational, research and scholarly uses were fair uses” (Harper, 2007). Recently Fair Use has gotten far more complicated. Consider the following video:

Bibliography Harper, G. K. (2007). Building on others' creative expression: The public domain and orphan works. The Copyright Crash Course. Retrieved June, 2013, from http://copyright.lib.utexas.edu/pdandorphan.html Howard, Rebecca Moore. “Plagiarisms, authorships, and the academic death penalty.” College English. 57 (1995): 788-807. ProQuest Education Journals. ProQuest. DePaul University Libraries, Chicago, IL. 18 December 2005 http://proquest.umi.com. Top ten reasons students plagiarize & what you can do. (2006, February). Writing News. Retrieved June, 2013, from http://academicintegrity.depaul.edu/Top10.pdf The Campus Guide to Copyright Compliance. (n.d.). The Campus Guide to Copyright Compliance. Retrieved January 26, 2014, from https://www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/links/index.html