To copy, or not to copy? That is the question.

This weeks information on copyright and fair use really helped me to understand what I should and should not do as a teacher. Before reading about this, I kind of just assumed that as long as you give the person credit, then it is okay to use their work. However, I have found that a lot things are copyrighted and not legal for you to use. Also, I was able to learn a lot about the different conditions of creative commons such as attribution, no derivative works, non-commercial, and share alike. I found the videos and links provided for this week very helpful. They aided me in understanding the issues of copyright and creative commons.

I think that it is important that everyone is informed about information regarding copyright laws. Personally, it helped me to see things that I have done wrong in the past, and now, for the future I know what I can/cannot copy and when I need to give credit to someone. I think that it is also important that we inform our students about the different laws, so they will be able to distinguish what items they can/cannot use when creating projects, doing homework, writing papers, etc.

Flickr is a great source to find items that you are allowed to reuse. I feel like Flickr makes it easy to use creative commons works, and it even gives you the option of refining your searches to only creative commons items. They make it so easy for you. I found that I will probably use Flickr when using video, audio, or images in my future classroom because I know I am allowed to use the resources provided under the creative commons search. What a relief!