Importance of Copyright Clarity for Digital Learning
Digital and mass media are an important part of contemporary culture. Teachers entering today’s classroom have grown up in an age where there is more reliance on YouTube videos than on textbooks. “Just Google It” is a way of life, user generated content is the norm, and information about the world is consumed not only in print based format, but more and more through the powerful images and sounds of the YouTube culture.
It’s no wonder that every teacher in America has questions about what they can do with copyrighted material. All over the country, teachers, tech specialists, librarians and school leaders are confused about how copyright law applies to digital learning.
As a classroom teacher using technology for teaching and learning, I found that students were much more engaged in learning when they were given the opportunity to create, and connecting to their pop culture was a big piece of that process. I realized that teaching students about copyright and fair use was a fundamental dimension of digital citizenship, and I had to conquer my own copyright confusion.
What stood in my way of innovative teaching was the same thing that is standing the way of most teachers: fear. Fear due to a misguided understanding of copyright laws. Like most educators I believed that copyright is solely to protect the rights of the person who created the material, when in reality, copyright law is designed to promote creativity and the growth of knowledge by balancing the rights of owners with the rights of users. I also realized I didn’t have a solid understanding of the copyright doctrine of fair use. Through the Code of Best Practices for Media Literacy however, I learned the deep, underlying concepts and techniques so that I could learn to make a fair use judgement. I learned to base this judgement on the context and situation in which I was operating. Rather than ignore the impact technology has on our culture,I used this new learning to support teachers and students helping them to embrace the world of mass media and popular culture, so they could begin to develop their own innovative instructional practices.
What did I learn?
The first thing to overcome was the voluntary fair use guidelines developed by librarians, educators, and publishers in an attempt to address fair use and make it easier to understand. While these charts and guidelines were well intentioned, they actually created much confusion and disconnect between way students and teachers live outside school and what happens within the classroom. I found that what teachers needed was a not a checklist or rules, but the understanding of the four factors that must be considered to determine whether a use is fair. I learned that both teachers and students have the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment if they can learn to apply the doctrine of fair use. If the use is transformative, it gives new meaning to the copyrighted material they chose to use in their project. Rather than teaching my students to use just 30 seconds or 10 percent, I helped them to compare the nature of their use of the copyrighted to the nature of the original work. They learned to think about their purpose for selecting the copyrighted material and whether it would have an effect of the market value.
Educators need copyright clarity in order to promote innovation in digital learning. They need to understand that the flexibility of fair use enables it to be relevant and useful to creative projects. Fair use is flexible, but it requires reasoning and interpretation of situational factors. This reasoning process parallels analysis skills used in developing traditional literacy skills. By understanding the acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials, teachers can begin to integrate media rich technology activities into their PK-12 classrooms improving student engagement and achievement in the process.
References
Hobbs, R. (2011). Copyright clarity: How fair use supports digital learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin/Sage.
Center for Social Media, Media Education Lab & Washington College of Law (2009). Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. Retrieved March 15, 2015 from http://mediaeducationlab.com/code-best-practices-fair-use-media-literacy-education