Citing Sources

I'm sweating about choosing information from my sources for my research paper for my 504 class. I want to make sure I do it correctly and yet don't have a paper full of listed sources and quotation marks. So, I have to come up with my own words. That's the hard part for me since we got into this copyright issue. If I don't quote word for word, if I use my own ideas and words and then give a source that the idea came from, I should be okay. But somewhere in there is a grey area about my ideas. At what point are my ideas purely my own and not a combination of what I have read of someone else's ideas? I think for my own purposes, I get the difference. But how do you teach that to students?

Teaching our students...

I was thinking that there are excellent reasons to teach our students about copyright laws. I'm sure most students have heard about copyright because of copying music. And, I know that most teachers discuss plargairism on papers. But, have we taught them the skill of writing a paper with their own ideas so they're not plagarizing? I had a student take the DRA assessment and copy, word for word, their summary. I'm thinking that there was a child that needed to be taught "HOW". It's not an easy thing. I think we need to give students more time in learning what to quote, what to say in their own words, and how to do both. That could be so many lessons! I realize part of the problem is squeezing that into the curriculum. However, I think it's an important idea to squeeze in!

Ah, an answer

I've just found out that the teacher I worked with couldn't have legally copyrighted the worksheets he did. In our text, Copyright for Schools: A Practical Guide, the author states that if a teacher is doing worksheets for a grade they are teaching, those worksheets are the property of the school district they work for, even if they are done at home! (p. 23) Amazing! It doesn't sound quite fair! I did copy a picture off google images, to the right. If I added: www.thefeltsource.com Image may be scaled down and subject to copyright, would that be enough? If you want to do things legally, how much do you need to notate? How much permission do you need?

Copyright-what does it mean?

I've been assigned the task of writing about copyrighting. I really don't know much about the definition of copyright except that it protects the rights of those who have original writings, be it poetry, songs, legal documents, or what have you. I don't know how easy it is to get one or how much protection it gives. I know when I was a student teacher, a teacher I worked with added the copyright symbol to anything he designed, be it assignment sheet, worksheet, or test. He didn't mind if people used his work, he just wanted credit for it. I don't know how that would stand up legally but I guess I'll do some searching! The first visit will be to my dictionary. Let's see, Webster's New World Dictionary, 4th edition says that copyright means, "the exclusive right to the publication, production, or sale of the rights to a literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work, or to the use of a commercial print or label, granted by law for a specified period of time to an author, composer, artist, distributor, etc." Okay! I did have the general idea. I'll add more as I discover more!