I came across this video via John (I’m not sure why some people’s delicious entries end up in my ‘google reader’ - but I’m glad they do!). It’s a pity I won’t be able to show it in school because youtube is blocked.
I’ve never fully understood copyright but I was a bit concerned that some children were getting pictures from google images for their blogs. I tried to explain about copyright, but the children were indignant that if it was on the internet anyway, then anyone could freely use it.
Since then, however, little ‘copyright’ messages have been appearing on some of their stories on their wikis. For an example, click on this icon 
If someone writes a story at home on their wiki, they’re usually keen for it to be shared in school. We often find some time to do this on the whiteboard (it’s also a great way to instigate discussions about what makes a great piece of writing ….. sometimes we’ll use ‘2 stars and a wish’ to peer assess the writing. The children will often voluntarily go back and edit their stories as a result of these conversations).
The story in the link above is an imaginary tale involving lots of people in the class. This inspired some more children to write imaginatively about their friends, too. One particular story, however, was very similar in content to the original. This led to discussions about just how much of someone else’s work you should be allowed to ‘borrow’ from.
One of the useful things about a wiki is that it’s possible to look at the history of edits made. I receive emails whenever a wiki is edited, and it made me smile when I saw the changes made to the original story above. As she went on to finish and edit her story, she made some changes to her ‘copyright’ message.
You can follow how the story progresses here 
After we had explained yet again sophie said that she was dreaming of what it would be like to draw pictures of famous people and so she ended up drawing the queen. We spent a little more time with the queen and then ran to the final picture which was the one i drew.
Copyright!
The story was continued at a later date:
I checked my watch to find it was almost midnight yet none of us felt tired at all!
“Guys,” I said, ” Its almost midnight!”
“Wow!” they all replied including our new-found, famous friends. Just then one of the city clocks struck midnight and the castle from DisneyWorld appeared with Cinderella ,and Johnny Depp with the balloon, at the front of it looking for her glass slipper. At the other side of us Nina’s elephant and African sunst appeared. Everywhere around us was covered with the pictures we drew
copyright!
……. And Finally:
Nina wailed for the second time, “Oh no! This time we really are locked in and we don’t know who will help us!” Just then Miss Law came running to the door with a key to let us all out.
“I am back and with the key!” she shouted as she turned the key in the lock.
We all smiled as the door opened and we walked out of the art room. “That was some adventure!” Anna commented.
“What was?” Miss Law asked, “You can’t have had a big adventure when you have only been in there for 10 minutes!” We were all absolutley speachless once we found out time had hardly changed but i managed to say with a wink, “You’d be surprised Miss Law. You’d be surprised!”
THE END!
COPYRIGHT!
She should be really proud of her great story. I think she’s learned lots about the importance of copyright …… and she’s sending a very clear message out to others, too :)
4 responses so far ↓
Great stuff - I know many of our kids & school struggle with this issue.
If you want to use a You Tube (or other) video in your school but they’re filtered the new version of Real Player 11 allows you to download the video (I do mine at home) then show them in school.
However - is this against copyright?? I’d better check.
Thanks for this, Alan!
My feed included del.icio.us links because my feed is provided by feedburner which allows me to splice in amy del.icio.us links.
I find copyright is one that children struggle with. I us pics4learning.com as a copyright safe source of photos for my class (flickr is blocked) and they children struggle with attribution, some just put ‘I got this picture from pics4learning.com). Using wikipedia images is worse as they often cannot recognise the license when they see it, and there are a variety of licenses.
Some alos seem to have picked me up wrong, ‘I got this picture from google’. Perhaps we need a ‘I am a wee kid’ fair use attribution;-)
Thanks, John … I’ve signed up to feedburner now (although I won’t add my delicious entries. That space is extremely disorganised!)
I did put my delicious button on the class blog so that the children could more easily find some images from copyright safe sites (well, I think they are? - might have got them from either your delicious or ewan’s — or both)
It’s still too much bother for them, though. Like your class, they’ve started adding ‘I got this pic from google’ messages.
It’s difficult, because I don’t want them to lose the motivation factor by placing a total ban - and I’m not totally clear about all the creative commons thing myself.
I love your idea of the ‘I’m a wee kid’ fair use attribution idea
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