Copyright Clairity was an interesting read this week. I was always taught in school that you can be taken to jail for copyright and plagiarism. In relaity the rules are not as strict as teachers have made them out to be. As gullible as I am, I believed them. I mean who would dare challenge their teacher. Teachers know everything and are never wrong! That's what I always thought at least. But since I have became a teacher, I have overlooked a lot of copyright laws that I was taught. I mean as a teacher, we are all about sharing, borrowing, collaborating and adapting materials and tools to meet our needs in the classroom. I mean name me a teacher who hasn't borrowed a worksheet from a fellow colleague or saw a great activity to do in your class off Pintrest.
I feel the big question I have again comes back to TPT. If I purchase something off TPT and the teacher next door wants to use it, I would feel weird saying no sorry you will need to purchase your own instead oft taking two seconds to make a copy of mine. From the teachers perspective, it seems silly. But to the owner who took the amount of time to make the material, then I understand. But as a teacher who is given no curriculum and materials to teach, I spend countless time and dollars on materials then I feel as though we can share among each other. As long as someone bought it.
Now i know that is considered "wrong" but I now understand as long as I transform what I borrow, I am not breaking any copyright laws. I do not even have to explain me reasoning. As long as I am using the item in a different way than it was originally intended. Seems simple enough. It is almost funny that my perception of copyright has been wrong for so long. When all I had to do was look up the actual law. This happens a lot in education as well. The meaning of something or explanation is easily butched or misinterpreted when it is passed from one mouth to the next. When all we have to do is go to the original source and look it up. Then we would easily find what is valid and what has been added on from word to mouth. I will definitely make a more conscious effort on looking up and verify information for myself and disregarding any misconceptions.
I was under the same impression that I could be jailed for copyright infringement. I did feel some relief from the book but I’m still not convinced that what teachers create on TPT is really so original they should get to copyright it. I’ve never actually bought anything from TPT - I’ve always found what I needed in the free portion or created my own stuff when I needed to. I’m extremely frugal. I don’t understand how all of the TPT stuff is written using the same/extremely similar cutesy font or how the clip art they use is not somehow copyrighted, they certainly didn’t draw any of it themselves. I’ve also found that so many of the products seem very similar - do you think they have copyright issues amongst the sellers?
ReplyDeleteTPT is an interesting creature... I know one of my coworkers was irked by the fact that one of her former teammates posted items on TPT to sell that they had created together, but didn't include her in the listing or in the proceeds. Not cool. I have found one or two things on there, but I've modified them since they don't exactly fit what I needed. Good place for ideas! Jasmine, I agree that it's hard to NOT share with your teammate if you're supposed to be on the same page and working together on curriculum. Ugh!
ReplyDeleteWrote about the same ideas in my blog!! Same wave length. It's interesting that the book makes the rules seem so simple, but then in continuing to read some more information, it doesn't seem so simple anymore. I'm starting to question what the real story is. But I can't get past the fact that we're TEACHERS in an educational setting--who is going to take away our teaching license for showing a video clip we didn't have official permission for?? It doesn't seem reasonable!
ReplyDeleteWhen TPT was created I thought it was for the purpose of teachers not reinventing the wheel and working smarter not harder but seems to have strayed from that because they don't want you to share their product with your team members. They want you to spend more of your paycheck to get another licenses to share it. I created a lot for my previous team in first grade. I shared it with them and left it with them to use after I left and they are still using it. I find my old centers and test in the copier all the time. It’s a nice feeling that my hard work helped someone else. This year, in a new grade, with a brand new team, very little left from the past team, and starting a masters, I am using TPT a lot because I don't have the time to create exactly what I want for my kindergartners. I don't like that I can't share it with my small team but at the same time I don't have time to create my own which I would share with them in a heartbeat.
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