Copyright and Fair Use

Why do we respect copyrights and fair use rules? Why is that so important? How will you teach your students about this?

We need to respect copyrights and fair use rules so that everyone gets credit for their own work and no one else can profit from their hard work. It is not fair for someone to work hard and do all of the research to create something and have someone else come behind them and steal it and claim it as their own. Even if properly citing and giving credit to someone, we are still "stealing" it if we are not obtaining permission and the rights to distribute it. Students have more leniency than teachers and other adults because they are generally using the materials for educational purposes. I will teach my students about this by directing them to the sites listed on our assignment : http://www.copyright.gov/ and www.stfrancis.edu/cid/copyrightbay/index.htm . I felt that both of those sites had great information pertaining to the laws. The St. Francis, Copyright Bay, site was unique and used fun imagery to relay the information in a non threatening and memorable way. Both of these sites are a great way to begin a discussion about copyright laws and fair use rules.

What is online safety and is it different than cyberbullying? How can we protect students and ourselves from potential online predators?
Online Safety is more important now than ever before in our past. There are so many news staries every day about children being abducted and homes being robbed because of something that they posted on the internet. Cyberbullying has become even more prevalent because of the use of FaceBook and other social networking sites. Just this week a college student killed himself because his room mate posted video of his sexual encounters on the internet. There was an incident in my town just last week where cyberbullying was found to have occured. A middle school age girl had created a male profile on FaceBook and Myspace in order to speak to other middle school aged girls. She had kept this farce going for almost a year using a prepaid cell phone and the social networking pages. She requested and received nude and suggestive pictures of the teenaged girls through this media. The girls that were "tricked" are now humiliated and are now harassing the girl that "tricked" them. Luckily, for these girls and their clueless parents, this was just another little girl. But, it could have just as easily been a middle aged dirty pedophile that was trying to find his next victim. Parents and teachers have to monitor and educate students on the use of social media. Students should be reminded that they need to keep personal information private and not post status updates stating any specifics on where they are at any time. They should only have "friends" that they actually personally know, on their social networks sites. Parents should routinely check their childs computer and cell phones to make sure that they are being responsible and only talking to people that the parents approve of. Pesonally, I have checked my privacy settings on FaceBook and made sure that I do not have anything extremely personal posted. My "friends" can not even see my address or phone number. I have disabled "Places", and "tagging" of photos and status updates. I have the ability to approve if I want a photo of me to be "tagged". I do not have my current employer or city listed on my profile. I have also changed the spelling of my name to ensure that it is hard to find me on the site. I am careful to only add "friends" that I legitamately know in person, and to only "Fan" sites that are official, such as Official brand or TV show sites or my friend's home businesses or bands.

What do you think about this weeks activities? Did you learn anything new?
I did not learn anything new with this weeks activities. I am employed by a local school district and we recently did a pretty extensive training class on Copyright and Fair Use. The training that I did covered the exact same copyright quiz questions, just in a different format, in Eduphoria. I feel that I have a pretty good handle on the Copyright Laws and Fair Use Rules. It is always good to have a refresher though, because you can never be too careful in this day and age.