While volunteering at a high school library for my
practicum, I observed a class doing a project on Spanish speaking
countries. Each student was required to
chose a country and create a brochure on the country. The brochure was to include demographic,
historical, cultural information and images.
The school librarian was in a meeting and not available for
the class. The teacher did not give the
students much direction on how to find information – only the requirements for
the project. I observed as the class
googled information and copied and pasted information from different
websites. There was no lesson on fair
use, copyright, giving credit for content.
I pulled the teacher aside and asked her if she wanted me to
do a review with the students on these topics.
She told the class that they needed to have some type of bibliography to
give credit for information. It was good
that she made this requirement, but it was disturbing that the students did not
understand the legality issues with taking information especially images from
the web. (Of course, the students were
using the content for educational purposes, but what if they were not. Would they understand that they cannot steal
from websites?)
This got me thinking about copyright and fair use –
especially with images and photographs.
What role should the school librarian have in a school to help students
understand these topics? Should this
content be in the curriculum? Isn’t this
information just as important to understand as math, English, social studies?
I think of all areas of modern teaching, this might be where we can most help classroom teachers. I think some teachers do not push their students on some of these issues because they themselves are unsure about the rules, laws, and practices. I think this is an area we can tackle and make more familiar to teachers through development programs as well as collaborative teaching and assignments. I think this is also a great place to use libguides and the types of tutorials that can walk students through some of these quagmires.
ReplyDeleteAlso, another blogger I follow, posted this clip from an ARTHUR episode that discusses some of these problems. You can find it here:
http://librarydoor.blogspot.com/2012/06/scarlet-p.html
I have to agree with Mr_T-- I think teachers aren't aware of the laws about fair use and copyright, and therefore don't teach them (not that that's ever a good excuse).
ReplyDeleteWhat frustrates me, too, is that this not only doesn't teach kids about legality, but it also doesn't teach them about the right/wrong of crediting people for their work and research! You were right to discuss this with the teacher, and while a bibliography is a step in the right direction, it probably only asks them to credit people for information-- not images.
I like the idea of collaborative teaching and assignments-- maybe a discussion with the teachers about the ways in which this information could be presented in an elementary or middle school classroom would show them that this IS teachable material.
I would second both Mr. T and Audrey. We must work together with teachers to teach students about copyright issues. It would be such a fantastic opportunity to assist with introducing a new project in a class if we, as librarians, were invited into the classroom to assist in explaining more of the research portion of the project. We could then take time to show were resources may be found, both online and in the library, and discuss copyright issues. This would be a fantastic idea for school librarians to begin approaching teachers about this topic!
ReplyDelete