My Copyright Action Plan

Copyright can be a sticky subject. When most people hear that word, they tend to shy around any associations with it. But in education teachers have to face the realities that copyright issues bring into the classroom. They aren't fun, and most teachers don't sit down excited to deal with copyright, but it may keep a teacher out of jail and in possession of their teacher's license.

One aspect of copyright that I did not know that surely will impact my classroom is the issue of copying books or workbooks. Since I will teach English, it could be tempting to copy large amounts of books for students to read if copies of the book provided by school aren't available. But this is illegal. According to the columbia.edu site for fair use checklist, it is possible to copy small quantities of a book, like a page or two, but copying a whole chapter or a whole book, is simply not allowed. So, if I want students to be able to read one book at the same time, I will either have to find copies of the book or find a different book.

Another aspect of copyright I had never thought of is if I wanted to show a taping of a TV show in my classroom. Sometimes authors are interviewed or a certain literary period is spotlighted on TV. According to the fair use standards at stanford.edu, it is only legal to show a recorded TV segment on a tape within ten school days after the airing of the show. After that, it must be destroyed if permission has not been granted to incorporate the tape into the teaching criteria. If no permission is granted, in 45 days, it must be destroyed. If I want to show a taped program, I'll have to show it within the ten days of its airing, or ask the producer of the show if I can have permission to incorporate it into my teaching curriculum.

A third aspect of copyright I had never taken into account is that textbooks cannot be copied according to the TEACH Act from copyright.com. Textbooks cannot be copied and neither can digital content that may come with the textbook, like the CD. This could also pose a problem for an English teacher because with literary textbooks that include many different works from authors, it would be easy to copy pages out of them if the teacher didn't want to use the whole textbook. But this is not allowed. Buy the textbook, one for every student, but don't copy any part of it.

Many more possibilities involve copyright do's and don'ts, but these are three of the many I feel will impact my classroom the greatest.