Copyright and Multimedia

Throughout my studies at West Georgia, I have come across many pamphlets, websites and other resources for learning about Copyright laws.  I still do not feel comfortable as an authority figure on how the Copyright laws work.  I sometimes feel that trying to understand the guidelines for copyright and fair use require a legal background, because there seem to be so many loopholes and legalese that are included in the copyright laws.  I think as educators first in the field of media, it is our job to understand the laws of copyright and fair use.  In my own school system, DeKalb, we do get to view a power point or something similar during our preplanning session.  It seems as if it is the same thing shown year after year and it is obviously unmemorable because I can't remember the details of the training. I also have been to several schools that have a faded copyright sign posted in a dank corner that no one ever looks at.  I think as a media professional, it is one of our major responsibilities to not only understand the copyright laws but also to interpret them for others and execute them.  I do think these laws are complicated, but we must try to familiarize ourselves with the guidelines.  I also think that the copyright and fair use policies will become more complex in the future, with the new types of media that is constantly being introduced. I feel like it is incumbent upon the media specialist to get the information out to educators and perhaps send reminders about the copyright policies or video clips, pamphlets, etc.  I have never seen a school in which copyright and fair use were things that were readily promoted by the media specialist.  I would like to see a media center place just as much emphasis on the copyright guidelines as they do the Accelerated Reader program.  The SLM program should be a place where other professionals can come to seek advice on the copyright guidelines.  I have been to several of the DCSS media center pages and most of them were lacking any sort of link or information about copyright policies.  I feel like the bottom line is that yes, copyright is a complicated topic, yes, copyright as it relates to media and fair use policies can be very difficult to navigate, but that is no excuse.  It is the responsibility of the media specialist to explain and interpret the guidelines and if this is not an option then educators should feel comfortable seeking the advice of a trained media specialist to help assist with the interpretation of the laws.  If the media specialist can not do these things then, she should at least be able to point other educators in the right direction.

Copy-Right & MultiMedia

We place a strong emphasis on copyrighting laws to our students; but when we as teachers want to use something—the concept of copyright laws seems to fly out the window!  I am not a media specialist, yet, but I see misuse daily.  The most common issue I notice is teachers bringing Disney movies to class and showing them to their students.  Disney has very tight copyrighting laws over their products.

Rebecca Butler in her article, Borrowing Media from Around the World: School Libraries and Copyright Law, states the following:

          “Copyright law in the school library environment is a gray, cloudy entity with many interpretations.  Add to this the fact that internationally there is no single copyright law, and the confusion grows.”

Countries have different copyright laws.  If you are using something from another country, you will need to find out what their copyright law is for that item.  This brings to mind several questions:

          Can students legally borrow music from the Internet to add to a class project if the selected Web site comes from a country other than their own?

          Is it acceptable for a teacher to make class copies of an article that he or she read in a foreign journal for use in his or her classroom?

          Are Internet entities such as blogs, wikis, and social interaction sites copyrighted?

These are good questions to ask before students begin working on projects.  Especially projects, maybe like a digital story which requires extensive use of online resources.  The answers to these questions can be located in the above article. 

Our school has never addressed copyright laws to the faculty when using different types of media.  We do not have anything formally written at the school in which I work.  The only thing that I was able to find in our District was a statement that “all visual and/or audio material in projects adheres to the Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers.”  I was able to secure a copy of this by going to the Georgia Department of Education website. 

Personally, I think it is the role of the media specialist to inform the faculty of these guidelines.  With technology becoming an important part of the 21^st Century Classroom; this is an area that needs to be brought up to the forefront.

Copyright & Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers

http://halldavidson.org/  - This is a good resource for copyright laws

Butler, R.P. (2007). Borrowing Media from Around the World:  School Libraries

     and Copyright Law. School Libraries Worldwide, 13(2), 73-81.

Video Distribution and GPB

Video distribution in schools is normally made possible through the efforts of Channel One News(http://www.channelone.com/about/).  Throughout the years, schools have utilized this "free" network to broadcast news and videos to students during the school year.  Along with this channel, schools can play their own student news channels and/or videos requested by teachers.  This type of video distribution allows the media specialist (and the administration) the ability to limit the number of videos and the types of videos distributed to teachers.  Now, I have somewhat mixed feelings about video feeds.  In my school, the "free" tvs donated by Channel One were removed from our classrooms when our projectors were installed.  I didn't think much about it until the day my light burned out and my whole day was planned around using the projector.  Why did it blow?  Everything I "project" must come through my projector.  There's no telling how many hours I logged on one bulb with the use of PPT, films, overheads, etc.  The biggest drawback was the fact that I wouldn't receive a new bulb until the work order was processed and our technology person could go get the bulb from central office and install it.  So, there I was...no bulb, no projector, not teaching.  Well, not "no" teaching, but you might as well consider me back in "the dark ages." (no pun intended)  I digress.  Back to the whole Channel One thing.  The other drawback is distribution of videos.  It's hard for the media center to monitor which videos are being used in which classrooms when anyone can show one at any time.  I really, seriously, only show movies that are relevant to our course study; however, many others do not feel the same way when our administration decides to change our schedule and we're sitting with students for 2 hours or longer.  How many times have I heard, "Ugh! We watched this last week in math class!"  At least with video distribution, teachers must create a list and their films are logged with the media center.  I guess the biggest complaint then would be not having autonomy in the class room.

Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) is another excellent source of educational videos for teacher and classroom use.  Each video includes class room activities and lesson plans that can be adapted to meet the needs of all students.  Media specialists can run GPB videos through video distribution, order videos from GPB, or teachers can access them online.  I'm not very familiar with much more than what I read and perused while writing this blog.  I do think GPB is great on Saturday mornings, though!

Video Distribution and GPB

 So, here is what I learned about video distribution:

• The most common use of this is the school news, which is a live program that is completed daily.
• The cost has increase dramatically with digital verses analog.
• Due to the cost increase most schools in my county are paying to have cable run into one television (in our school that would be the MC television) and no other classrooms
• Our VCRs act as a remote control and allow each classroom to access three school channels and 3 cable channels.
• With the increased use of Discovery Education and the autonomy this has afforded our teachers, it is very rare that anyone requests that a program is recorded and then played back over the closed cable system
• We have used this system to play programs (vocal programs, target competitions) and the Presidential inauguration.

Overall it seems that in my county this is relatively dated concept, replaced by Discovery Education and online streaming.  Having said that we have used it for other issues than the school news broadcast.  We streamed the Polar Express or the lower grades during the holiday season.  We recorded the school vocal concert and played it  the following day, in addition to playing competitions that target participated in.

There seems to be a definite place for this system, but I think as technology continues to grow and increase, we will find that streaming online videos is more cost effective and easier to access.

Social Media Networks and the SLM

The term social networking is a relatively new term that seems to have been coined with the increased popularity of Facebook, Myspace and several other websites.  Up until the current school year, my own employer, DeKalb County Schools did not allow access to the websites that are categorized as social media sites.  DeKalb County realized that the social media frenzy seemed almost impossible to avoid so they opened their own Twitter and Facebook accounts.  I thought this was interesting because anytime before, they blocked access to both of these accounts and it seemed as though society was dictating how the school board would carry on business.  According to the article, Social Networking and Your Library OPAC, by Barbara Fiehn, more businesses are open to the idea of using social media networks and have blocked access to them in the past, like my own school system.  For example, Destiny Follet has a component which allows users to review books and provide other feedback on the books.  They can even recommend books to other Destiny users to read.  This is the type of component that would be helpful in a SLM setting.  It has a social aspect without allowing the students to have full access to the internet.
I personally think that social networking sites could be very beneficial in a SLM setting.  For example, my son, a fifth grader was allowed to use the Edmodo.com site to give feedback about stories that he read in his class and he even has some assignments that require him to turn  in the assignments via Edmodo for a grade.  I like the ease of him being allowed to turn in assignments this way because he can do it from home and he can discuss it with the other students.  It provides a safe and secure place for him to converse with others about school related topics of interest. 

I appreciated the article entitled, Secure Social Networking.  It went into detail as to how students should stay safe while they are online.  Educators must realize that as we allow our students to have more access to social networking sites, we have to put safety parameters in place to help protect our children.  I have seen more books in the media center that provide tips on staying safe while on the internet, but it may be more appropriate to provide training and classes on this type of subject as well.   When students are in a school setting and they are allowed to visit Facebook, they are being exposed to anybody and everybody who is hiding behind a username.  My school does allow access to social networking sites, as opposed to filtering them out and they use them to provide information to parents, for example, spelling bee information, report card dates and information like that.   I think a more appropriate use of the social media networks is for students to provide feedback on coursework, blogging about books they have read and providing an alternative for how they can submit homework.  I think with the rapidly changing pace of the face of the social networking sites, we will see more schools using them in a positive manner and not filtering them out but finding ways to embrace the use of the tools that the social networking sites offer.

Webpages. Webpages. Everywhere.

Do you ever wonder what people used to do before the world wide web?  Did we actually have to visit a place in order to know what it was like?  Did we really rely on only word of mouth?  My seven year asked me last week, “Mom? What was it like in the 1900s?  You know, when you were a kid?”  She made it sound so very long ago.  After I said, “Huh?” and turned up my hearing aid (jk), I thought, “What was it like?”  I remember not having a computer at my fingertips (by the way, I should note that I’m typing this blog on my smartphone)…actually, I remember rarely using a computer at all until about 1996.  Boy, was it a doozie.  Do you remember the heavy desktop computers with the printers that only printed in black and white on a continuous sheet of paper?  The paper with the perforated edges that you had to tear off?  I recall wasting a lot of it to make banners.  LOL!  It also had this weird smell that I’ll never forget.  Remember?  (I guess if you’re old enough!)  Well, I digress.  Back to my original topic…  There was no Google when I was in high school, and the search engines I remember were not that great.  You really had to “search” to find anything useful.  And, webpages?  What were those like?

Today, however, all of that has changed dramatically.  There are webpages for even the most “ma and pop” restaurants (or at least a Facebook page), and it seems everywhere you look you see an advertisement for a business webpage.  Are we really utilizing them effectively, though?  And, are we keeping them up-to-date?

After scrutinizing multiple media center webpages (mostly for schools I can name off the top of my head), I found myself rather displeased with the majority of them.  Each listed basic media center information (e.g., hours of service, overdue fines, staff names, etc.), but they were mostly mundane and boring.  Oh gosh, especially the high school webpages.  They were, for lack of a better term, horrific!  So plain and nearly useless.  If this is my first impression, I am not impressed.  Of course, there were links that took me to useful sites, but the school pages were not up to par with today’s expansive technology.

What I’m saying is this, “Make it meaningful, purposeful, useful, and attractful.” (haha…I ran out of ful words)  No, seriously, leave an impression.  People should want to come into your media center because of what they see and read on the webpage.  Engage them and force them to want more. 

MC Web Pages

 I asked my second grader today what she had for homework.  When she said nothing, I asked her again, thinking she was being less than honest with me.  Her response was “I already did my spelling words on www.spellingcity.com  and practiced my math on www.firstinmath.com , so I’m all done.”  Students today are not only internet savvy they have truly integrated technology into their day to day lives; making them on some level, more comfortable with technology many adults.  Providing them with access to these tools is in part, the job of the MS.  When dealing with access from home this can and should start with a media center web page. 

If we want our media centers to be perceived as the hub of the school, then we need to be providing the information our clients are looking for.  As Warlick states in his article Building Web Sites that work for your Media Center, “At the heart of this article and your school library media Web site is communication—delivering messages across a digital and networked information environment that add value to the services that we provide.” While this generally means things like book talks, links to external research sites and other literature based information it can also include other links, like homework help and school used educational sites that make the media center web site the go to location for students and parents alike. By offering our clients ‘one stop shopping’ we are ensuring that the media center is the hub, both at school and at home. 

Consider the idea that a media center Web site is really no different than a business.  You need to attract visitors and offer compelling information that draws them back for repeat business and meets their needs. (Warlick, 2005)  Assessing the needs of your community and student population is an important factor in this process.

Maintaining a Web site once you have decided on the content, in my opinion, is more difficult than choosing what to include.  Despite the constraints on our time and resources, keeping our web site up to date is crucial. “The ability to update the website and provide a place to locate resources as soon as they change is more important than ever” (Jurkowski, 2010).  Sadly, I think that the answer to this is to limit the amount of information that requires weekly updates and focusing on information that can updated monthly instead. This doesn’t mean that some information shouldn’t be included that is time sensitive.  However, by offering the information early, you have the ability to keep it posted for several weeks before it becomes outdated.  Selecting links that are consistent and not likely to change decrease the maintained issue as well.

Creating and maintaining an easy to use, inclusive Web site designed with the needs of our students and community is no longer an option.  In order to become a resource our school can’t do without, we need to be providing needed information not only in school, but out of school as well.

References

Jurkowski, O. (2010). Library 2.0 and beyond:  Innovative technologies and tomorrow’s user.    Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

Warlick, D. “Building web sites that work for your media center.” Knowledge Quest. 13-15 http://medt7477spring2013.weebly.com/uploads/7/5/8/9/7589068/warlick_lmc_websites.pdf

Social Networking and School Library Media Centers

Vickie Holmes

As stated by Brian Matthews, “Social networks represent the collective body of the people we know.  The term “social networking” was coined by J.A. Barnes in 1954.  The more interaction you have within your circles, the stronger your network is. The concept of interpersonal networking was first developed in 1929 by Karinthy Frigyes” (Courtney, 2007). When I read this, I have to admit I was taken back a little because of my assumption that these concepts were newly developed. 

Using social networking allows the media specialist to bring the library to the students.  As stated by Dickson and Holley, “One of the goals of libraries branching into social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ is the ability for the library to conduct outreach to more users while they are not inside the library.  The type of information that exists on the library social media site can be divided into two main categories:  static information and active social media content.  Static information is a one-way information exchange that tells the user a piece of information such as the library hours, location, and website information.  Static information can exist on Facebook as a complement to the library’s traditional website” (Gelfand & Lin, 2012).

That was a new concept to me; using a social networking site as your media website!  If you have read the news though, you are aware of the legal ramifications of teachers interacting with students on these social networks.  My school district has required teachers to read the policies and put a signature that it has been read when dealing with social networking sites.  We are not permitted to contact students on any social networks.  But they have created a district social network called “My Big Campus”.  The format is exactly like Facebook and it allows students to interact with each other on this network.  The district conducts staff development on this site for teachers.  I have to check into My Big Campus for information on workshops that I have signed up for.  The district monitors the activity on My Big Campus and each school has one person in charge of reporting any suspicious activities that have been flagged to the district. This social network is mainly used at the middle and high school levels; although we do have some students using it at the elementary level.  All students are given an account that can be accessed.  Parents were made aware, but not involved in the process. 

A social network could be used to promote new books, advertise special events that are coming, and allow students to connect with the media center from any location.  Teachers are required, due to CIPA, to teach internet safety and how to use social networks safely.  I think this is a great idea.  I might not agree with a concept; but if it’s here we might as well teach the best way to use it!

Courtney, N. (2007). Library and Beyond (p.75-76). Libraries Unlimited: Westport, CT

Gelfand, J., & Lin, A (2012). Social Networking: Product or Process and What Shade of Grey? 

        Grey Journal (TGJ). 8(1), 14-26.