Copyright Resources

For Teacher Use:

Common Sense Media Education

Offers multiple lessons on copyright and fair use for grades K-12. Under "Educators" click on "Digital Citizenship" and then  "Scope and Sequence", click on "Creative Credit and Copyright" to see lessons at all grades. To download the lessons you will need to create a free login. 

Library of Congress Professional Development - This link will lead you to an online module about copyright and fair use.  Topics covered are: Rights and responsibilities, Low-worry uses of primary source and Checking for Fair Use.  It will take approximately 1 hour to complete the module.  GREAT resource!

Media Education Lab at Temple University.  This site contains a wealth of resources, lessons and videos for teachers to use with students in their classrooms.    

Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians - A circular produced by the Copyright Office.

Social Websites are Latest Sources for Plagiarized Material: An article by Jenna Zwang for eSchool News.

Fair Use Teaching Tools - Created by the Center for Social Media.  This site has a wealth of lessons, videos, resources and activities that will help teachers to instruct students about the fair use of copyrighted materials. 

Citing Sources - This document provides guidelines in citing electronic resources using MLA format.

Copyright Chart for Teachers  - Chart indicating Educational Guidelines for the use of copyrighted material. (rather dated, but still applies)

Creative Commons for the US - Great site which licenses original work.  They have 6 different types of licenses available.

For Use with Students:

Copyright Kids - An interactive website generated by The Copyright Society of the U.S.A geared to the middle school and high school.  Walks students through acceptable use of copyrighted materials including print, audio and video.

Copyright with CyberBee - This site is great for using with elementary students. It contains many resources, not just focused on copyright but on inclusion of the internet and resources into the curriculum.   

Public Domain Sherpa - This site contains a tool called a copyright term calculator.  It covers US law only. It is intended to help you assess the public domain status of copyrighted works in the US

Image Resources

K-5 Sources

Pics4Learning - This is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students.

flickr search and stamp - The amazing thing about this tool is that it will "stamp" your image with the Flickr attribution. This simple site was designed for the ipod but works well on all devices via the Internet. 

6-12 Sources

Morgue File - This fabulous site is full of high resolution photo images that require no attribution and are for public use. The term "morgue file" is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues. 

Compfight Creative Commons Image Search - A great image search resource. 

Wikimedia Commons - A fabulous database of free, creative common licensed images. Note, although images are "free and copyright-friendly" you must still give the required attribution stated in the licensing. 

More

Copyright Friendly Image Source Wiki - This is an extensive teacher/librarian wiki housing links to copyright-friendly Image repositories.

Google Advanced Image Search - You can now search for images and specify the creative common license, like "free to use and share" that fits your need. Note, fill in your keywords at the top and scroll to the bottom to specify the creative commons license. Attribution is still required with most images. 

Audio Resources

Freeplay - Freeplay Music Library, is a comprehensive collection of High End Broadcast production music spanning all the popular musical genres.

Incompetech  - Another website where students can download music to use in their projects.

Parents

Join the © Team - A website containing resource for parents introduces children in grades K-5 to the connection between creativity and copyright through hands-on projects.  Click on the Parent Resources tab.

Online-Safety Resources for the Home: File-sharing realities for families
This article from Netfamilynews helps parents understand the legal risks of kids file sharing on their home computers.

Young People, Music and the Internet
Accessing music online and via mobile phones has never been easier, but it does raise legal, security and ethical issues. This new guide for parents and teachers provides essential advice about how young people can get the best out of downloading and sharing music online and via mobile technology in a safe and legal way, as well as providing tips for discussion.