Copyright for Educators - What I've learned so far

I have decided to enrol in the Copyright for Educators course to broaden my knowledge of Copyright particularly in a legal and educational context.

I am hoping it will guide me in teaching academic integrity to students, particularly as a student may not be aware that they are breaching copyright.

I have been interested so far with the overview of copyright and who owns material.

Several weeks in, I have been amazed at the regulations associated with using material for educational purposes. I have to admit that are all guilty of some sort of copyright breach on a regular basis, and most of it, we wouldn't even notice.

So were actually running the risk of being caught.

I remember a few years ago, a colleague at one school told me that the school claims ownership of any resources that the individual teachers might have created for classroom use. I thought it was bizzare, but that school under the law was in fact correct. They are the owner of the resource, not me. If I use a resource at another school, under the law I cannot use it because the resource is the property of the school.

And I recall one colleague embedding watermarks on their sheets to claim ownership, well the school owns them under the law, not the teacher. They would have to create the resource at home and publish it through a publisher to claim any ownership.

Copyright is a complex topic, but it will certainly inform me on how to advise teachers as to what has to be applied in terms of copyright in the classroom.

Revised Contact Form

The Contact Form has been updated. For some reason, it had disappeared as of late. I apologise to anyone who had been unable to access this feature

Library websites

Reading this article gave me an idea as I try to play with ways to attract people into a school library that may be underutilised. One positive about being a casual or temporary teacher is the ability to experiment and I have been progressively creating a template/s based on content on what I have found and links to various resources etc. It even helps me to manage the resources that I have created or used. The ultimate goal is to create a layout for a library website. I do like libguides as it allows for management of learning resources, but the cost can be prohibitive depending on the school that I might be based at, so I need to be able to have that format or layout ready to go. The fact it requires the use of Web 2.0 software allows it to happen. Anyways, I am having some fun with it. I am hoping to also write up on a Copyright Course that I am doing as I move along with it.