Warm-Up (Optional) (15 min)

The following writing exercises are designed to create context, help students engage with the topic, and prepare them for the lesson discussion.

Watch: Have students watch the one-minute Digital Sharing Ethics (Video) - Video. You may need to play it two or three times.

Write a Character Sketch

Ask students to write a character sketch about one or both of the characters in the video. Be as creative as you can. There are no wrong answers. Give these characters a life of their own, whatever you want it to be.

Prompt with questions:

• Who is your character?
• What is his/her name?
• Who are his/her friends?
• How long have they known each other?
• Who are the people in his/her family? What are they like?
• What’s his/her backstory?
• Where does he/she live?
• Where did he/she used to live?
• What exciting thing might have happened to them back in kindergarten, first grade, etc.?
• What is he/she looking forward to?
• What is he/she afraid of?

NOTE: These exercises may also be done orally as a class discussion before the copyright lesson. Write the story or character sketch on the board as students contribute ideas.

Ethical Sharing (30 min)

Activity: Have all of your students stand up. Begin reading the list of ways to create content below. Instruct students to sit down as soon as they can answer “Yes” to one of the prompts.

• Have you ever made a video (on a camera, phone, iPad, or computer) and sent it to a family member or posted it online?
• Have you taken a photo and sent to a family member or posted it online?
• Have you created a piece of art to share with your family and friends?
• Have you made up a song to make your friends laugh? Or a sad song to make them cry?
• Have you written a poem for your mom or dad on their birthday?

Keep asking similar questions until the entire class is seated.

Discuss:

• How did it feel to produce something creative?
• How did you feel when you were able to share your creation with others?
• How do you feel when you view or listen to other people’s creations?

Encourage all responses.

Help students feel the joy of creating something. Creating can be a lot of hard work, but it is one of the most rewarding things we do. Sharing what we create is fun, and it can encourage more creativity and art. As we get older, we have more and more opportunities to share our work and explore media and art that other people have created. We want to make sure we are always fair when using others’ art and creative work.

Say: Remember, copyright protects all kinds of creative work so that artists/creators can get paid for their effort. This includes, original writing (stories), art, photographs, audio, images, music, song lyrics, even the doodle you drew on your napkin at lunch. It doesn't matter if it was created by a famous artist or by you. When you make an original work, you get to decide who can:

• make copies
• distribute copies
• display or perform the work in public
• make spin‐offs; we call these derivatives (for example, like a book being made into a movie)

These rights are given to artists and creators to encourage them to make even more creative work.

Think: Have students think back to the art creation prompt where they first sat down. Inform them that they created an original work with legal protection. Congratulations!

Pair:

• How might you know if something is copyrighted?
• [The circle © indicates copyright, but copyright protection exists even without the symbol. Creators have ownership over their work, unless they sell it to someone else.]
• Where have you seen the copyright symbol?
• [At the front of books, in movies, on images, posters, etc.]

Share: Encourage students to share their answers with the class.

Demonstrate: Show students how to draw a copyright symbol and write the year next to it. When you make something creative like this, it’s automatically protected by copyright, even without the copyright symbol.

Discuss:

• How does it feel when you share your things with someone else?
• What does it feel like when someone takes your things and shares them without your permission?

The same principles of respect and fairness apply when we share our work or someone else’s work online.

To Share or Not to Share?

Demonstrate: Pull out the instructor’s creative work: picture, song, story, video, recipe.

Watch: Have students watch the one-minute Digital Sharing Ethics (Video) - Video. You may need to play it two or three times.

As we watch the video, decide if the music is OK to share or not.

Discuss: What did you think of that? How do you think you would feel if you wrote a song and people shared it without asking for your permission? When we share digital files by:

• sending pictures or songs through email
• copying songs from our MP3 player to our friend’s computer
• copying a movie from a DVD to all our friends’ computers

That's not just sharing, it's making new copies!

Discuss: If you were one of these characters in the video, what could you do to share fairly? What about other sharing situations? What other ethical considerations are there?

(Some acceptable responses:) - Send your friend a link to the artist’s YouTube channel where she can listen to the song. - Help your friend buy the song from an online store that you can trust because it’s used by a large online community, like iTunes or Amazon.

Ask yourself: Who owns this? Do I have permission to share? Do I have a right to make a copy? Am I being fair to everyone involved?]

Wrap-Up (10 min)

Remember, copyright is a protection given to writers and artists for a limited time to let them receive payment for their work. It’s intended to foster more creativity. As we share and use, we need to respect each other’s work and the laws of copyright. Just because we own a copy of something does not mean we have the right to make more copies to give or sell to other people. Copyright gives us some protection over how our art will be used and shared by others.

Journaling / Flash Chat

Having students write about what they learned, why it’s useful, and how they feel about it can help solidify any knowledge they obtained today and build a review sheet for them to look to in the future.

Journal Prompts:

• What was today’s lesson about?
• How did you feel during today’s lesson?
• Give an example of a way that you have seen other creators share or remix someone's work. Do you believe that was fair? Why or why not?

Extended Learning

Please be sure to visit Copyright & Creativity to find more lessons on digital sharing and creative rights.