Copyright Exposed: Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright

What it is: Copyright can be tricky for students (and adults) to understand.  Copyright Exposed: Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright does a good job of just that, taking the mystery out of copyright.  Here your students will watch a short video/comic that explains copyright.  Next, students can explore how copyright came to be by looking at the milestone files on record.  Reading the Fine Print helps students answer questions such as: “Do I have to register a copyright to secure protection?”; “If it’s on the Internet can I use it?”; and “Is it okay to use up to 5% of someone else’s work?”.  Finally, students can learn what steps they need to take to secure a copyright for their work. How to integrate Copyright Exposed: Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright into your curriculum: Copyright law is important to teach our students of all ages.  As soon as we ask students to create original work, we should be teaching them about copyright.  I always found copyright difficult to teach, students had a hard time understanding what was fair use and when they were violating copyright.  It didn’t help that many of the adults in their lives weren’t model good copyright habits.  When students create their own original work, and you can walk them through the copyright process, it starts to resonate with them more.  Students may think nothing of “borrowing” something off of the Internet for their own use without permission but when they think about someone else claiming the work they created, they start to feel differently about it.  Copyright Exposed is an excellent presentation/site to go through as a class.  It helps answer those “sticky” situations of fair use, owning a copyright, and using content from the Internet.  The site is written in easy-to-understand language so students will have no trouble following along.  Students can navigate this site independently, but I prefer using it with a projector where the whole class can work through copyright together and discuss what they are learning with others. Tips: I wrote about Cyberbee in 2008, it is another great site for teaching about Copyright! Please leave a comment and share how you are using Copyright Exposed: Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright in your classroom! AdsSpy: 2 sites by this AdSense ID