Copyright

This month we bring you a list of sites to help teach students about copyright and deal with copyright issues at your school.

Quick Links:  Elementary/Middle school | High School | Teachers & Librarians

Elementary/Middle school

Copyright Kids! supplies information about copyright aimed at elementary or middle school students. The site is from the Copyright Society of the U.S.A.

The Taking the Mystery out of Copyright is an animated tutorial on copyright from the Library of Congress site for teachers. A text version is also available.

Copyright with Cyberbee is a simple interactive question and answer lesson on copyright for elementary or middle school students.

Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for School Projects from Cathy Schrock is a simple chart for students to use to evaluate their own use of copyright materials.

Heartland Area Education Agency 11 in Kansas provides these Copyright BriefNOTES for students, as well as this Copyright Flowchart.

Copyright for Students, from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction provides simple guidelines for students working on projects.

High School

What do you think about intellectual property? Scroll down this Copyright and Intellectual Property page from Ball State University for an interesting video about music and intellectual property rights for high school and college students.

Get Creative, from the Creative Commons highlights the other side of copyright – the creative commons license and how and why it works.

MyBytes is a site sponsored by Microsoft, designed teach "digital citizenship" -- respect for the rights of musicians, filmmakers, video game programmers and other creative content providers. Users can mix their own tunes, assign copyright status, "buy" or "sell" tunes using site credits.

Musicians and recording artists provide information on music copyright issues at Music United. The site includes posters about music sharing, a video with an appeal from well-known musicians such as Madonna, Eminem, and Sheryl Crow, and resources for finding legal music.

A Student's Guide to Personal Publishing offers guidelines for high school students about copyright, free speech, personal privacy and other issues involved when you publish blog posts, pictures, videos, or other content to the Internet.

Define the Line contains the Business Software Alliance’s guidance on using and sharing copyrighted software legally. Also available in Spanish.

Copyright Criminals is a video-based unit from PBS that explores the origins of sampling culture in hip-hop music, copyright, creativity, and technological change. It features video clips with accompanying teacher and student handouts, note-taking guides, rubrics and more.

This Permission Template for harvested internet sites provides an easy way to request and document permission to use information from Web sites.

Teachers & Librarians

A Fair(y) Use Tale is a humerous commentary on copyright and fair use policies from a professor at Bucknell University.

The Center for Social Media at American University provides clearly written, up-to-date and authoritative information on Copyright and Fair Use in Teaching. These include a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video and a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.

Learn about the Creative Commons, the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright (all rights reserved) and the public domain (no rights reserved). Creative Commons licenses help creators keep their copyright while inviting certain uses of their work — a “some rights reserved” copyright.

Columbian University's Fair Use Checklist is a valuable tool to help educators and librarians evaluate whether a contemplated use actually fits the fair use provisions of copyright law.

The Podcasting Legal Guide from the Creative Commons highlights copyright issues to consider when creating podcasts.

Teaching Copyright from the Electronic Frontier Foundation contains a five-lesson curriculum for teens, including handouts and recommended books and articles.

The Digital Citizenship and Creative Content program is a curriculum sponsored by Microsoft, designed to teach 8-10th grade students the rules that dictate the ethical use of these digital files and creative content, such as online music or video files.

Copyright 101 Tutorial from Brigham Young University includes short videos, reference materials, case studies and a game.

The Bloggers FAQ: Student Blogging from the Electronic Frontier Foundation addresses legal issues arising from student blogging. It focuses on blogging by high school and middle school students. Additional information is available in the Legal Guide for Bloggers on the same site.

The ALA Copyright page provides information on copyright from the American Library Association (ALA).

These Copyright Lesson Plans for Middle School from the American Library Association, the American Association of School Libraries and the National Council of Teachers of English are on the International Reading Association's Read Write Think Web site, and are correlated with AASL’s Standards for the 21st Century Learner.
Exploring Plagiarism, Copyright, and Paraphrasing
Students as Creators: Exploring Copyright
Students as Creators: Exploring Multimedia
Copyright Law: From Digital Reprints to Downloads
Technology and Copyright Law: A “Futurespective”

The National Association for Music Education provides copyright information especially for music teachers, including a curriculum designed for 4-6th grade students.

Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers is a 2-page chart with copyright guidelines for teachers from author and Discovery Educator Network Director Hall Davidson.

Copyright Condensed, from Heartland Area Education Agency 11 in Kansas offers information on copyright, fair use, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and more.

The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use, from Education World, is a series of articles with information on copyright, fair use, new technologies, and school district liability.

The Stanford University Copyright and Fair Use Center is a comprehensive site that includes information for librarians and reports on current issues and legislation.

The United States Copyright Office at the Library of Congress includes information on copyright basics and on how to register a work for copyright. Users may search U.S. copyright records, and download many forms and brochures.

Copyright and Fair Use is a reference guide for educators who use PBS television programming and multimedia in the classroom.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction provides information on Performance Rights for Copyrighted Videorecordings. The Department also provides links to other copyright sites for schools and libraries.

Video and Copyright is an ALA fact sheet that outlines the conditions under which teacher videos may be shown in schools.

Check Issues of U.S. Copyright Law Relating to the Use of Movies in the Classroom from Teachwithmovies.org for information on use of movies in the classroom for instructional purposes.

Managing Copyright in Schools contains information from a Webinar on copyright by school copyright authority Carol Simpson.

The TEACH Toolkit from North Carolina State University provides information and guidelines concerning the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act. TEACH redefines the terms and conditions under which accredited, nonprofit educational institutions throughout the U.S. may use copyright-protected materials in distance education-including on Web sites and by other digital means.

North Carolina State University Library's Copyright Tutorial provides sample forms for requesting permission to make copies of copyrighted material.

A summary of Guidelines for Classroom Copying of Books and Periodicals is provided by the University of Texas in their Crash Course in Copyright.

Copyright and Primary Sources is a professional development module for teachers from the Library of Congress. It is a narrated interactive guide that covers using and reproducing primary sources and how to determine copyright restrictions.



Created 4/2008
Last updated 9/21/2011