Message Content and Copyright

At first glance, these two topics seem to not have anything in common. Message content is defined, in my words, as being the important information that is put into a lesson and then taught on in the classroom. I am going to assume that everyone knows the main concept behind the meaning of the word copyright. In this blog post, I am hopefully going to tie these two “worlds” together in the light of how they both affect teachers.

In most school room settings, teachers limit their lessons on an objective for the grade they are teaching. An example of this may be  a teacher creates a list of the answers to the test because that is all the students needs to know. There are several issues and challenges that effect what teachers teach. An issue is going beyond this concept of intentional teaching. The above example is a case of intentional teaching. There are other things we need to teach in the classroom outside the main reasons, i.e, English. As a teacher, I will need to teach my students how to think critically and how to make the real-world applications on their own. I can aid them in doing this by giving them the skills to recognize how to make each subject applicable to the real-world. Also, I can give them the attitudes to be positive even when the situation is not the best. Finally, I can give them the best opportunities to learn how to develop research strategies which will help them in every aspect of their work and personal life.

A challenge for teachers is copyright. In this paragraph I am going to talk about three things I personally did not know about copyright. I found these items interesting for I had never really research what the details of copyright entitled. The first item I will discuss is the date the work was created and the expiration date for the copyright. According to the article, What is Copyright Protection, copyright starts when the work is created and put into a physical form people can touch. It is usually the best option to back up your work on a cd or an external hard drive and put it in a safe environment. When the work is created, the author will put their name and the year the work was created on the work. The date is when you actually save your work to a hard drive or to that safe environment—this is the date of creation. An example of copyright would be as follows: Copyright © 2010 John Doe. The expiration date for copyright is 50 years after the death of the author for a written work and 25 years after the death of the photographer for a photo or movie. The article, 10 Big Myths about Copyright, has a myth buster about charging for copyright. Even if you were not charged when you used something that was copyrighted, it is still stealing. Music is exempted from the copyright violation. This leads us into the fair use determinations. Sometimes fair use depends on the involvement of money. The fair use determination has four factors which are to be the basis of whether or not using something is fair. These four factors are found at the Dese Copyright Page. The best route to go if you want to use something that is copyrighted is to ask permission from the owner for access to their material if you don’t want to have to deal with the four factors. As a teacher, I believe that I need to be very careful about what I use and don’t use. When it comes to copyright laws, I am required to obey them. The question is, will I? I honestly hope I will. But there may be times when I will totally ignore them or go somewhere in-between the lines. Why is copyright such a big deal? I know that I would not like other people using my hard earned work for their own. Copyright is a way of protecting those who worked hard for a certain work. As a teacher, if I do not follow any of the laws of copyright I may very well lose my legal ability to teach.

In my classroom, message content and copyright are going to be big challenges to have to deal with. I will have to make sure that my message content is both intentional and unintentional. Preparing the students in my care to be able to properly develop the life skills which are required by my classroom. Also, I must make sure I am meeting this goal by not following any of the copyright laws. Therefore, Message Content and Copyright are relevant to the classroom and are defiantly interdependent of each other.