Global Virtual Classroom: A Free Online Educational Program

Just What is Copyright?

Just the facts please
Go to - copyrightkids.org
Be sure to click on the Quiz and see if you receive a "certificate"!

What is Fair Use?
A doctrine in copyright law that allows the use of portions of printed copyrighted material for educational purposes. The current laws were established before the Internet existed, however, and assume the teacher is using only a small portion of the material in class and making only enough copies for his or her students. Just remember that the Internet lets you publish something to "a few million of your closest friends" - that's very different from a classroom!

We want students to create as much original material as possible. Students will be more creative and original than they anticipated. Don't forget, creativity/originality is an important criterion considered by Contest judges. Web sites with many copyright violations may be disqualified or will NOT receive high scores.

Plagiarism
It is never right to copy someone else's words and then paste them in a document as if they were your own! That is called plagiarism. It's stealing from someone else, then probably lying about having done it. In the end, puts you in a bad light. Plagiarism is not a crime, but it is not considered ethical. In most academic situations, you can even have consequences such as not receiving a grade if you have taken someone else's work as your own. In some higher educational institutions, such as Universities, you could even be expelled!

It is acceptable, however to link to someone else's site and give a comment on why you think this is a good example of what you are talking about. You can also "quote" and give reference to what someone else has said.

For example on http://www.plagiarism.org/
plag_article_what_is_plagiarism.html you can find this list of when plagiarism has occurred: "All of the following are considered plagiarism:

turning in someone else's work as your own
copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not."

Follow this link to read more about this topic and how it can be prevented.

We hope this proves to be a learning opportunity for teachers and students about copyright and the Internet.

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