I would not describe myself as a quitter. I am glad this course is the second to last course required to earn my Master’s Degree. If this course was first or second in the sequence I would have contemplated quitting. When I embarked on this graduate school endeavor I fully expected to work hard, and I have. The amount of information and reading for this third week has knocked me on my bottom. I feel as though I understand digital citizenship and have a good working knowledge of copyright law, but this week has challenged my confidence in my understanding. I have had to read and re-read several articles and still to my dismay do not fully grasp their meanings. Honestly, I felt like I was preparing for a law degree instead of an education degree. Yes, a working knowledge of copyright law is essential, but I just became frustrated trying to sort all of this out in my head. I have decided to just be OK with my working knowledge and if any serious copyright situation arises during my teaching career, I’ll call my lawyer friends!
With that rant over, I will now reflect on what this week was about. Intellectual property was the term introduced. As a photographer who has had much of her work used without permission, I understand what intellectual property is. The minute I take a photo it becomes mine, thus copyrighted. I did enjoy the article/video about the monkey who took a selfie and the debate that followed about who owned the copyright (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/monkey-selfie-cant-be-copyrighted-u-s-regulators-confirm-n186296). That would be a tough case for me to decide on. I actually disagree with the ruling that the photo could not be copyrighted by the owner of the camera, but then as I have made quite clear, I am not a lawyer or a judge!
We also went into depth about plagiarism, fair use, public domain, creative commons, transformation, and attribution. As I had mentioned previously, I had a good working knowledge of all these terms, but after this week I realize that my knowledge is the bare necessity! There was also a link in the classwork to the Teach Act, but the links didn’t work, so I ventured out and discovered what that meant on my own. In the classwork there was a link to a video by Piculell (2013) that does a great job of explaining the TEACH Act. It deals with the copyright laws and distance education. All of these copyright terms are even more important with the emergence of the digital age. Works are so easy to access via the Internet. Many people do not even realize they are infringing on copyright when they use works belonging to others. Then there are others that are knowingly improperly using the work of others but simply do not care. I see this happening in the teaching profession all the time. There is a limit to fair use in education. Copying textbooks instead of buying a set is not fair use, it is copyright infringement.
References
Piculell, A. [[Antone Piculell]]. (2013, April 25). TEACH act-dmf [[Video file]]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/flvmGgyJvEI
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