Blog #1 Copyright and Fact Checking

Growing up I do not think I ever really learned about copyright law.  I was always taught to “not plagiarize” and was always taught that it is only important when you are writing a paper.  I was never really sure what copyright was about except for you can get in trouble if you pirate movies. I never had a cell phone until seventh grade and a smartphone and laptop until high school.  That was right when we had to start writing major papers and start making presentations. While we were writing all of our papers our teachers continued to require us to cite articles and books we used in our papers and presentations; however, they seemed unconcerned about requiring us to put attributions for the pictures and video clips in our presentations.

Even into college, there were a lot of professors that said to not worry about atribute pictures in the presentation, so again I did not think twice about this as you except the teachers to know and want you to follow the law.  With the information I have now learned in this class I know that copying a picture or video and not giving the creator credit is plagiarism. According to the book Writing and Editing For Digital Media, even posting a comic on my Google Site, I use for my education classes, with the proper attribution can still be considered copyright infringement (Carrol, 2017).  This is something I will now be looking into more to avoid any legal trouble.

As a current college student, I realize that now more than ever it is important to expand the way we reach our students.  According to the book Writer/Designer, we need to incorporate the different modes, linguistic, visual, aural, spatial, and gestural to reach our intended audience (Ball, Sheppard, Arola, 2018).  That being said we are always encouraged to explore and share information in different ways to reach every student. Using various forms of educating, such as videos, pictures, text, and hands-on activities are shown to not only increase student learning but also make the students more engaged in the classroom.

My dream job would be either a math or science teacher for the middle school, grades 4-9 and I want to ensure students understand the basics of copyright in both subjects.  In a math classroom, I probably will not run into any issues since there are tons of free resources and problems out there and it is hard to copyright a problem. That is because no one can claim that the math problem 2+2 is their idea. Having just been a high school student I know the trick of putting the first problem from a math homework assignment into Google to see if you can find the same homework assignment with the answer key.  To avoid this, I like to create my math problems or a mashup of various examples. This also helps me design the class for each specific class while "following each of the six key design elements: emphasis, contrast, color, organization, alignment, and proximity" (Ball, Sheppard, Arola, 2018, pg. 12-20). This not only helps make the class more personal but also shows the students I am putting time into their learn to create new problems and activities.

Moving on to science there are some drastic differences far as worrying about copyright and fact-checking is concerned.  Unfortunately, in the age of fake news Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites have made it almost too easy to share information and news stories.  Personally, I only have and use Snapchat; however, I know how quickly those false stories can spread when one person thinks they are true. In science, there is a lot of information that revolves around facts, and I want to make sure my students know where they should look for that information.  Understanding how to fact-check yourself by checking another source that has the same information allows for more credibility in whatever you are doing (Carrol, 2017). This is important for everyone to understand so that we as society can be more educated.

Finally, I want to teach students how they should attribute an image, so they are not violating any copyright laws.  For example, if a student wants to include a picture of the water cycle on this presentation that they found online, I want them to know that they have to give the creator credit (Carrol, 2017).  This is something that could be easily overlooked, especially by students in the younger grades. While I would not take off points if they do not, I still would want to use that opportunity to teach them.

Using what I know now I will try to check double all the data and facts I present to my students to make sure only share correct information.  I will do my best as a teacher to make sure I am using the best multimodal method to help the students learn. I want to use what I know now to teach students about citing, attributing, copyright and fact checking so that they can be educated and make smart decisions in their personal and professional life.

Copyright and Fair Use Graph Fordham University Libraries

References

Ball, C. E., Sheppard, J., & Arola, K. L. (2018). Writer/designer: A guide to making multimodal
      projects. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.

CARROLL, B. (2017). WRITING AND EDITING FOR DIGITAL MEDIA. New York, NY: 
     ROUTLEDGE.