I’m guessing when Doug Johnson said, “Be a Copyright Counselor, not a Copyright Cop” this wasn’t the demeanor he was imagining. As an educator, I’ve struggled with copyright for a long time, and it’s only became more important to me since I became a librarian. Sometimes I really want to just Coach Boom! people right in their copyright disregarding cajones. But…. I am doing my best to be a counselor, with a smile and an unending patience for the all too common attitude of, “We live in Angola, so who cares?”.
Particularly since I moved to Angola, a developing country in Africa with a complicated relationship with the law, I have decided the best way to go about supporting teachers and students in not breaking the law or the general “what’s rightness” is twofold.
- Promote public domain, fair use and Creative Commons licensed resources. I am a long time fan of Creative Commons, so I regularly work CC into my lessons and professional learning sessions.
- Class Discussion on the Obama Hope Poster Copyright Case – There was a poll embedded into this, but it no longer appears.
- Creative Commons Activities – The end point, of course, was to find their own CC licensed photos.
In my current job as the secondary school librarian at LIS, I reprised this lesson with success. It was interesting because I basically apologized since it was centered on an American example. The upside, however, was that everybody knew about the image and we were able to have a fruitful discussion. Unlike my old job at a very small school, I can’t reach every student in the school through collaborative teaching. Therefore, I am trying to develop resources which can be used by teachers and students when I’m not around to be helpful.
One of those is the Media for Free and Fair Use post on our library blog, which I continue to develop as students and I discover new sources of free and fair use materials. When teachers and students work on projects, I point them to these resources. Also, we’ve started a student library assistant program in our secondary library, and one of the departments is Technology Support. Our Tech Support library assistants are currently working on creating resources such as year 8 student Nate’s post on FreeStockMusic.com. That same student is currently working on a series of slides introducing people to Creative Commons.
2. Empower teachers and students to license their own creations with Creative Commons licenses
- If you look at the bottom of Nate’s post about FreeStockMusic, you’ll see a Creative Commons license. Yay!
- I recently helped students who are creating their own website (I will not share it here, because I am still working with them on making sure they have a positive digital footprint. Suffice it to say we have different views of what that means. ) to add a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license to their page instead of copying and pasting someone else’s copyright statement…without giving them credit. Oh the irony!
- I model use of Creative Commons media and licensing. Any presentation I create on my own is all fair use licensed media, and I license it with a Creative Commons license, usually CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
- I talk about it, talk about it, talk about it. I haven’t yet gotten teachers to jump on to a project where students create products, license them and share them online, but I know I need to just keep it up. Everybody eventually falls to my smile, unending patience and copyright counselor charm. 🙂
On my to do list: I need to actually learn if there is any copyright law in Angola. Even if there isn’t any copyright law, I don’t believe that gives residents of Angola carte blanche to do whatever they want with disregard to copyright, international or otherwise. It would be nice, however, to be able to meet the uninformed with information. After all, that’s the role of a counselor: forcing you to, when you are ready, face uncomfortable realities like just because it’s easy, doesn’t make it right.
What about you? How are you addressing copyright in your school? What’s your favorite resource for fair use materials?
LIS Secondary Library 
Great post Katy; as usual, you offer a plethora of resources which I find invaluable (as I am sure many others do as well). Your list of resources students can use to search for images, songs, video and the like that meet the Fair Use criteria is extremely helpful and much appreciated.
You mentioned that you haven’t “yet gotten teachers to jump on to a project where students create products, license them and share them online”. I must admit I am that teacher as I feel like we fly through our curriculum fast and furious. There never seems to be enough time to accomplish what we set out to accomplish and so cut corners to carve out time.
I realized more than ever while I read through the assigned readings this week and perused the web for more information, that this is absolutely no excuse for not being more vigilant in promoting public domain, Fair Use and Creative Commons licensed resources and modeling such practices myself. Honestly, the more I read, the more I felt I needed to visit a confessional. I haven’t even wrapped my head around the idea that students license their products, but I will. My blissful ignorance is over.
My point being that the teachers at your school will come around much more quickly with your patience and amazing repertoire of knowledge and skills that you have to offer them. Angola is lucky. Thank you.
Hi Sharon,
Look what I found: your comment! Thanks for dropping in.
Yes, I think the biggest thing standing in the way of teachers (and me!) collaborating on projects that ask students to create the complex, real-world, authentic public projects is definitely time. I would love to work at a school that has fixed collaborative planning times where the teachers, the EdTech specialist and the librarian all sit down together to plan units that address a wide range of student needs and 21st century skills. The places I’ve seen that do this are really exciting, and there is usually powerful teaching and learning happening.
Thank you for your kind words about my blog. 🙂 It makes the time it takes to put these posts together feel worth it. I hope you are also getting this sense of gratification from your COETAIL blogging.
Have a wonderful day,
Katy
P.S. There is definitely something wrong with the Spam filter. When I tried to post this reply all at once, it was blocked by the spammy word filter. Then I went through and posted a sentence at a time of the EXACT SAME RESPONSE, editing my reply each time, and it didn’t block anything.
ARGH!
Love that you address both sides of this and I think that’s what we need to do. Not only give students places to go to get free use content. But also help them to create content that can be used freely by others. By seeing the side of the creator we have a better respect for the content that we take so freely.
Hey Jeff,
Yes, there’s nothing like having your stuff “stolen” to make you think a little sensible crediting and sharing is a pretty good idea. On the other side, it feels so good to see something you made referenced, credited and shared. 🙂 Just like this course: you got us all sharing and now you’re making sure we give and get the credit we deserve.
Have a great day,
Katy
Katy –
Great post. While you are struggling with being able to teach the “Let’s Talk About Copyright” lesson to all the students in your school, know that through this post and COETAIL, you are sharing it with all of us. I’d like to use this lesson too. What would be interesting is when you do it again next year that our students talk together somehow. I think it’s interesting to have kids talk about this when they come from different perspectives. I totally agree with the coaching – honor the creators – share what we know and make it infectious.
Hey Julie,
It’s so true, and I am trying to remember that the very good bloggers I follow or have followed are generally quite good because they don’t offer perfection. Rather, they show what they’re doing, ask good questions and struggle in public.
When you said it will be interesting to see how students talk next year, it got me thinking about how I can incorporate more of their examples when I have them. It might be nice to create a Pintrest board (or some other visual display) showcasing LIS student work licensed with Creative Commons. That might be a good way to show that it’s not just the “old lady librarian” who thinks this is a good idea.
Thanks for your feedback,
Katy