I’m sure you’re probably thinking it is okay because as educators, we have a few more flexible rules, called “Fair Use”, to play by. Fair use, in some cases, if an image, text, video, etc. is being used for educational purposes, means you may have more flexible copyright rules.
The trouble is, most of the laws and rules that cover fair use and education were written well before the invention of the web. They don’t apply to use of copyright material on the Internet. Using copyright material leaves you open to copyright infringement.
So what does this mean?
You need to:
Learn what images you are and aren’t allowed to use, and why.
Learn how to attribute images you are allowed to use.
Educate your students that you can’t just use any images off the Internet in their blog posts, show them how to source and attribute images they are allowed to use.
Understanding digital copyright is an essential skill we need to understand and teach our students. This post focuses on use of images.
Tracy Watanabe on 24 Sep 12"You can use Google Images to search the web for images that have been licensed under Creative Commons or GNU Free Documentation licences (GFDL). Images licensed under Creative Commons or GFDL are still subject to copyright, but the creator or copyright owner has chosen to allow other people to use their material under certain conditions. These images can be freely used in teaching material, as part of research publications, on blogs, wikis and other websites, and in University publications. Not all images on Google images are available under Creative Commons or similar licences; this guide explains how to limit your search to Creative Commons and similar material." Then the rest goes into how to search Google Images, and how to give proper attribution. It's a tutorial walking you through step by step.
