What are the implications of copyright issues for educators?

I think that the biggest impact that copyright issues have on educators is the importance to make students aware of copyright violations. Teachers themselves, should have had enough experience through their own schooling to know better than to post or present some kind of information or media without giving proper credit and/or citation. Students on the other hand, just don't know. We can't get mad, or blame students violations that they do not know about. It is our responsibility to let them know what is and is not acceptable when it comes to copyrighting. The inherent problem there is of course that there is a lot of grey area, especially since we are dealing with educational settings. From the reading we have been provided, it is my understanding that if some piece is used for educational purposes, then it is not a violation to use copyrighted material. I think the easiest way for both teachers and students to get around this is to just give credit for everything. It really isn't that hard to just put a small footnote at the bottom of a picture noting where it came from. 


For me as a physical education teacher, this is and is not a very big issue. It isn't because as I have said earlier, we do not use technology and digital media much at all in the gymnasium. Therefore, the likelihood of coming across copyright problems is not high at all, certainly not nearly as high as an english or history class. It can be important though because for the few times when technology and digital media are used, we do have to make sure that we have everything right.