Copyright, Fair Use, & What it Means in the World of Education

Copyright & Fair Use in the Classroom

When first introduced to copyright and fair use laws and regulations in Dominican's MLIS program, I questioned what that had to do with my future career in an elementary school library. As I quickly learned, copyright and fair use not only have MAJOR implications in a school setting, but also hold a role in activities as seemingly inconsequential as streaming music or sharing content online.

Copyright and fair use laws and regulations are complex and ever-changing. In the following infographic, I tried to summarize the information that educators would find most important when ensuring that both themselves and their students are not infringing on copyright content. 

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The infographic begins by giving the user basic, yet factual, definitions of copyright and fair use. From that point, information on how images, music, videos, and curricular content can be used in the classroom is outlined in easy to follow terms. Finally, the infographic concludes by giving educators access to theedublogger, the Fair Dealing Decision Tool, and the U.S. Copyright Office. I found these three sites the most helpful when researching copyright and fair use information myself, and I think that other educators could benefit from these easy to navigate sites when making sure that they and their students are not breaking any laws. 

Especially today, when content and information is only a click or tap away, it is important that educators be informed on copyright and fair use regulations so that they can both model for and educate their students on how to legally use and share digital works. While explicit lessons on this topic makes more sense for middle school and high school grade students, I think that elementary school teachers and librarians can integrate these ideas and lessons into projects and assignments their students are already working on. For example, as students are collecting and inserting images for a social studies presentation into a Google Slide, the educator can do a mini lesson about TASL, model for the students how to add these citations for a picture, and then support students and they work to add TASL citations to their images. 

Whether they realize it or not, many students have seen the impact of copyright laws thanks to social media. For example, any student that has used TikTok in the past six months got a lesson on copyright infringement as UGM (Universal Music Group) pulled all of their artists music off the platform. These ideas can be confusing for an adult to understand, let alone a 4th grader. But, having students practice these rules and regulations in a meaningful context will not only give students a better understanding of these complex rules, but have them start practicing their proper implementation at an early age. 

In my opinion, if students start learning about copyright and fair use at the elementary level, they won't require such intense lessons and interventions from their high school teachers and college professors. Our Gen. Alpha learners are incredibly tech savvy, and I believe that copyright and fair use, when introduced in an appropriate manner, are yet another set skills that they could master.