Violating Copyright and High School Students

Because of the accessibility of Limewire and other free downloading music sites, student think they are untouchable in regards to dealing with Copyright. I presented them with these copyright issues from the readings this week. It definitely helped them to not use copyrighted music in their still frame animations, a project we are currently doing. Many of the students were bummed they couldn't use the entire song and could only use 30 seconds of a popular song. When directing them to open source sites like jamendo.com,the students had mixed feelings. Some kids embraced the idea of using different music, while others did not. I run into copyright issues every project in which a student brings in their work. I always wonder if the student actually took this photo or if they took it from a flickr site and played it off as their own. Even after going over these copyright issues with students, the tend to want to forget that those laws are intact. We, as teachers, need to spend more time instilling copyright issues in schools so that students are aware of what they can and cannot use. Otherwise, then we are allowing our students to think its okay to beg, borrow, and steal information, photos, and music without any consequences.

How I Ran: Personal Story

Here is my digital story :) It was nice to reflect back and tell a story of my running experiences and see what kind of path my life has taken. Almost all of the images were taken by me, family member, or friend. The toughest part I found was making music that was directly related and didn't want a song with words that would sing while I would be talking as to confuse the viewer. I used part of the song at the beginning and the end of the story. I used www.jamendo.com a creative commons music site to find my music and used one creative commons photo from Flickr. Enjoy!