Copyright Lesson Plans?
I'm wondering if we shouldn't be copyrighting some of our lesson plans. I know this may sound strange but I just found out that a school site is using a curriculum that I create several years ago when I was piloting a P.E. program for them. They made copies of the lesson plans when I turned them in to the school site administration for approval. The current P.E. team is still using them. While I believe in sharing ideas, I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with not getting credit for all of my hard work. I know that it sounds shallow but I put a lot of effort into creating a body of work that I've actually considered publishing in the future. With that being said, how do we protect ourselves from someone claiming our own work as their own?
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Comments
That is crummy, Rosette!
Good topic. As author of a work like that, you have copyrights already. That is the simple answer in what is otherwise a more complex issue in this case. First of all, are they plagiarizing your work or are they reprinting your work with your name on it? If the former, then that is more severe an obviously a moral issue that they should be called on. Second, issues are further complicated because this is an education environment and "fair use" comes into play in education. In a classroom a teacher may reprint and use copyrighted material provided it is for education, used exclusively for the class, and not used on an ongoing basis. I doubt this applies to a lesson plan though, since it is not material being shared with the students. A court would have to make a judgement on if this is a "fair use" issue. Third, as a teacher you should have control over your "intellectual property." You are able to take your own property with you wherever you want and the school should not be able to take your property from you. Even if you have submitted a lesson plan as required by the district, you still have the right to it. Many schools also have policies on intellectual property. I know it is a controversial issue in universities. You can see why it is an important issue from an organization's standpoint, because they feel that if you created something on their dime, they should own it. All research and development companies have strict policies on things you invent for them. Education is a little different. To have clearer answers on these issues, we would have to look up the court cases that have set legal precedents in this regard.
See the Wikipedia entry for more information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
Im glad Dr. Sather clarify this issue to you and to all of us. I had no idea this would be such a complex issue concerning copyrights. Rosette, what are you going to do concerning this issue?
Thank you for the clarifying the issue Prof. Sather.
When I originally created the curriculum for the site (which was very extensive.) I made sure that each grade level was aligned with our state standards and created a curriculum that incorporated various resources (i.e. SPARK, Pangrazi, and online resources). Basically, I wrote a curriculum for each grade level. I had my name placed on all the lesson plans and block plans and I still have the originals. Upon leaving the school site it didn't occur to me that my curriculum would still be utilized, which doesn't really bother me.
But two things concern me: 1. The issue of protecting my work from being stolen by someone else. 2. Protecting my credibility as the author of the curriculum. The first issue has to do with the fact that the person running the P.E. program has access to all of my work and could possibly take credit for it. The second issue has to do with the fact that I have learned that a quality P.E. program is always evolving. The original curriculum should and would have been revised and edited on a yearly basis. Which means that by now there would have been a 4th edition of the original curriculum. I am concerned that if my name is still on those plans, then my credibility as a curriculum writer may be an issue.
I especially like your second point. If there is no date associated with your work, you may have some outdated practice you are "recommending" that has no context for when you recommended it. One solution I can think of is to proactively control your own information publicly. For example, you can have your own website where you publish content and have dates clearly indicated. You can keep it updated and archive information as you wish. When someone tries to plagiarize, it is evident that you already have it published, which could be accomplished with some type of database timestamp when you posted it. Or, you can publish in some other venue like the work you are doing here or in a lesson plan database like at PEcentral.com, which provides a third-party retainer of the data in a professional audience setting.
The flip side of freely sharing your information online is that it is more easily available for people to copy--easier to take than the "private" curriculum that was stolen anyway. We can look at the music and movie industries as an example of how freely people disregard author's work, and copy files. Perhaps the musician analogy is a good one for the teacher, as my understanding is that many musicians make their money now mainly through live concerts. You can copy the music, but you can't copy the person. As a teacher, you also are the show. Your work can be copied, but you are the unique quality that needs to be present to implement the plan.
My recommendation to make work available online is mainly to provide a professional contribution to the world knowledge base on teaching effective physical education. I always advocate contributing to this rather than hiding work. You have much more to gain by giving away work as opposed to trying to keep it secure from others. From a business standpoint, several companies are now worth billions simply because they away their work (e.g. Google, Facebook). From your professional standpoint, you are the real asset, not your lesson plans. So, freely give because this will allow for control of your own information and also provide a valuable professional contribution. Unfortunately, your lesson plans won't earn you billions, but it certainly has potential to provide influence for hundreds of kids and might help you get a job that earns you a lot of extra money in the long run.
Another thought is to use Google Docs to house your information since there is a revision history associated with your work. If you want to take the private approach to keeping and tracking your work (i.e. virtual paper trail) then Google would essentially work as a 3rd party keeper of your data with full time-stamp history of your information. Of course, you would have to be trusting Google to keep your data private. I do.