John Finch's Copyright Talk

I am aware of the SOCAN license businesses are able to attain, but I was surprised that Spotify or even the radio was not technically allowed to be playing in the classroom. I know many teachers who play music while students are working on assignments, I know I would. Many students and teachers enjoy listening to music in the classroom, so I was relieved when someone had asked the question in regards to playing music via YouTube. John mentioned that videos can legally be played through YouTube in the classroom. John also discussed the ease of asking permission to use songs in different school projects. Living in the digital age we are in, it is easy for students to find out who actually owns the rights to different songs and how to get in touch with them. John used an example of a student wanting to use Thunderstruck by AC/DC in a project. The student used Google to search who had the rights and sent an e-mail to them, to which they replied no. Through this process, the student learns the importance of copyright but also improved their persuasive writing skills in the e-mail. I found this part of John's presentation very interesting and plan to possibly use this process in my own classroom.

Listening to John speak about copyright and everything that plays into it brings up many concerns for a classroom. Whether you are showing videos, pictures, movies, listening to music, photocopying texts, etc. there are steps and precautions educators must take. There were two things that stuck out to me; using music in your classroom and the Creative Commons resource.

The other aspect of John's copyright presentation that stuck out to me was the Creative Commons (CC) resource. I did not know about this before, but am glad that I know about it now! Instead of taking a picture from Google Images, not knowing the rights to that photo, one can simply search for an image through CC where they tell you who/what to acknowledge. This is much simpler and quicker than searching through all of Google Images and finding the rights to that specific photo.
Overall, John's presentation was very interesting and a little bit frightening! There are many ways in which educators could find themselves in hot water over copyright issues without even knowing. As an educator, I plan to watch what I do more carefully offline and online! Be careful out there!