Thursday, January 23, 2014

Sunday, January 19, 2014

What Can I Copy from the Internet???


A Few Words About Copyright

"Question Copyright"
CC licensed (BY-SA) 2006 Stephan Baum
According to Canadian Copyright laws, the first person to author/ create a piece of work has right to reproduce, publish and sell their work. This applies to writing, performances, art, recordings and communication signals. That means any original work you or your students create is copyrighted by you regardless of whether or not a copyright symbol is actually on it or not.*

Copyright extends throughout the creator's life, the rest of the year calendar year in which they die plus an additional 50 years. After that period, the work enters the Public Domain and can be used by anyone. You are always welcome to used copyrighted work IF you get permission from the copyright-holder. Without that permission, you cannot normally use their work.

The Canadian Copyright Act DOES NOT protect ideas, concepts or themes - but it does protect the language and words used to express them... Thus, you and your students are welcome to build on the ideas of others but not copy their work. As teachers, we ask students to do this all the time and to cite their sources of inspiration. However, citing your source does not give you permission to break copyright laws and copy someone's original work. This applies pictures, music and writing.

Educational Exceptions

"Copyright Intro" CC Licensed (BY-NC-SA) 2011
via the Center for Computer-Assisted legal Instruction's (CALI)
flickr photostream
 
In 2012, Canada modernized it's copyright laws to include some Fair Deal Exceptions.
Bill C-11 stated that copyrighted materials could be used for research, private study, education, satire, parody, criticism, review or news reporting without the creator's permission IF responses to the following questions could be deemed fair:

  1. Purpose: Is the copying really for its intended purpose or have you created a new purpose for the work?
  2. Character: Can my copy be destroyed immediately after usage or will multiple copies continue to exist that could be confused with the original or somehow impact the original?
  3. Amount: How much of the original work is being used? Is it a reasonable amount that you think the creator would agree to?
  4. Alternatives: Is there any other alternative? Is a non-copyrighted equivalent available? Was taking this work the only possible option?
  5. Nature: Is the work publicly available (e.g. not confidential or unpublished)? Did someone share it who shouldn't have?
  6. Effect: What effect will copying this work have on the earning potential of the original - will I take a share of the market?
If you feel like you could confidently argue your answers to these questions in court if challenged by the creator then go ahead and use the work. If not, then it's probably best to find an alternate source...

More information about copyright can be found using these links:


"Copyright Checkmark" CC licensed (BY-SA) 2011
by Hammersoft

Where to Find Images that are Free to Use and Share

Many photographers allow others to use their work. Students are being encouraged to use these simple sites to find pictures where usage has been granted:


  • Pics4Learning
    • http://pics4learning.com is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. ThePics4Learning collection consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers. Unlike many Internet sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection. Citations are provided.
  • Veezzle
    • http://www.veezzle.com is a free stock photo search engine that searches other image sites. Citation information differs depending on the source. (it had some hiccups recently which seem to have been fixed)
  • Google Advanced Search
    • Do your search. In Images go to the gear and click on Advanced Search. You can change all kinds of things - in this, case scroll to the bottom and filter the images that are free to use or share. It’s hard to find the citation information.
  • HaikuDeck
    • Available online or as an iPad app that lets you create simple slideshows and has a plethora of images available for use without having to cite any sources



A few more options are available on Mount Royal’s LibGuide about Copyright Information




Citing Your Sources

Websites often use images without the creator’s permission and the Copyright Act does not specifically say how images that are free to use or share should be cited. However, other guidelines do exist:
  1. What to include in MLA Website Citations
  2. What to include in APA Website Citations
  3. What to include in Chicago/ Turabian Website Citations

Pam and Lara have created a draft document that describes how to cite sources. But remember: this just proves that you are not plagiarizing and gives credit to the creators, citing your source does not give you permission to copy anyone’s work.




* There are some exceptions to automatic personal copyright:

  • works prepared for or under the direction of the Government of Canada are owned by the Crown
  • works created by employees as part of that employment are owned by the employer
  • sound recordings are owned by the person who made the arrangements necessary for the sounds to be recorded
  • actors, singers, dancers and musicians own their performances
  • signals emitted by broadcasters belong to the broadcaster




Friday, January 10, 2014

Using Google Forms to Simplify Marking with Rubrics


By taking a few minutes to set up a Google form, you can drop your highlighter and pen and click away to get your marking done. All your results are saved in a spreadsheet for easy reference later.

Once you're comfortable with that, add on a script and have students receive their results by email once you've marked their work!

This will be covered in our Tuesday Tech-in-20 session on January 21st (12:10-12:30) if you are interested.

Step 1: Set Up the Form


This strategy is very effective when you re-use the same rubric over and over throughout the year. We developed this example rubric for assessing problem solving in math - the problems change throughout the year, but the rubric does not. A similar rubric has been created for evaluating oral presentations in French.




If you need help with creating a Google form, just let me know. 

Once the basic form has been created, you will want to:
    • replace email addresses with students you will be marking repeatedly using this rubric (suggestion: put yourself in this list too so that you can use yourself for testing that it all works)
    • set response destination (click the button to set the spreadsheet where the results will be saved)


Step 2: Try it out!


Go to the live form and enter some data. What assignment is it? Choose yourself as the student, and then assess your work.


Now check the response spreadsheet - you will see the summary of all the results you have recorded. As you use the form to record assessments over time, these results can be sorted to examine trends.


Step 3: Email students their results (entirely optional)

Your next step is to communicate the results to the students. If you want to conference with each of them, you have your marks handy in the spreadsheet, but it is even easier to click a few buttons and have the boys receive a copy of their assessment in their Gmail inbox!

Chad Kafka has a very thorough explanation on how to add the Form Emailer script to the spreadsheet and then configure it so that your students receive an email each time you hit submit on the form. I have also compiled a video tutorial showing you how to walk through this process. For example, a student might receive this message:


If you're interested in making this work for you, let me know.

Here's a 12-minute video tutorial showing you how it all works:





- Sarah