Copyright Issues in the Classroom

I think that the first and foremost rule about copyright issues in the classroom is always cite the source you use no matter what. It is the simplest rule, yet probably the most overlooked. Another simple rule is to make sure that the source you are using is going to be used for educational purposes and will provide some sort of aid to the students' learning process. A lot of teachers in my school would just show movies in their classrooms to take up time, or when they were absent, they would tell the subsitute to play a movie. Most of the time these movies had no relavance to what we were learning, and now I know this was a clear violation of copyright laws.

When I researched this topic on http://www6.district125.k12.il.us/staffdev/Copyright.html, educators are only permitted to use the specified amount stated below in their classrooms:
"Motion media: 10% or 3 minutes, Text: 10% or 1000 words, Music, Lyrics, Music Video: 10% or 30 seconds, Numerical Data Sets: 10% or 2500 fields or cell entries , Illustrations and Photographs: 10% or 15 images in a collection; no more than 5 by a single artist or photographer." I didn't realize that we were only allowed to use such a small amount of these resources even if we cite them. I know that most of these guidelines are not followed by most teachers because most of my teachers in my educational experience have violated these.

I think that dealing with these copyright laws in the classroom can be very difficult if educators are not educated on the topic. I think the first thing that teachers need to do is to attend seminars and conferences dealing with this topic because it is obviously very important in the educational setting to set a good example for students. My teachers never knew about these rules, and therefore did not apply them to their instruction. I also think that principals or supervisors of instructors need to rutinely check up on instructors to make sure that they are following these guidelines. If schools are available to be sued for these copyright issues, it is important that advisors make sure that these rules are being applied if they do not want their school to be sued. I think educating the teachers and making sure that they actually use these guidelines are very imprtant to assure copyright laws are taken more seriously.