This guest blog from Young Minds Inspired highlights three educational program on copyright and their uses in classrooms around the country.

Young Minds Inspired (YMI) is an award-winning specialist in the creation of educational outreach programs. Dr. Dominic Kinsley, Senior Vice President of Creative Development at YMI, has produced more than 2,000 educational programs for all grade levels, from pre-school through college.
  
Young Minds Inspired has worked with several copyright industries to develop educational programs. Tell us a little about the program and their goals.

YMI has developed three educational programs on copyright: Join the ©Team! for the Entertainment Software Association, Music Rules! for the Recording Industry Association of America, and B4UCopy for the Business Software Alliance. All three programs are designed to raise copyright awareness, but they differ considerably in the way they complement the classroom curriculum.

• Join the ©Team! is designed for students in grades K-5, with separate lesson sets for grades K-1, grades 2-3, and grades 4-5.  At all grade levels, the program focuses on the connection between copyright and creativity. Students learn basic lessons in respect for intellectual property, including the rules for avoiding plagiarism, by engaging in creative projects that reinforce artistic, language arts, and computer skills. In this way, the program aims to help students discover the intrinsic value of copyright by becoming copyrighted creators themselves. The program also includes a special brochure for parents and a detailed "Educator's Guide to Intellectual Property" for teachers.
• Music Rules! is designed for students in grades 3-8, with corresponding lesson sets for grades 3-5 and grades 6-8. Building on students' special enthusiasm for music, the program includes classroom activities on the consequences of "songlifting" that lay a foundation for respecting all forms of intellectual property, while at the same time reinforcing academic skills in math, language arts, citizenship, music, and the responsible use of technology. The program concludes with students creating, and even recording, their own rap on "songlifting," to gain a firsthand appreciation of the value of intellectual property. This program also includes a special brochure for parents, which features an "Internet Safety Checklist" mini-poster to display near the home computer.
• B4UCopy is designed for students in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college, with separate curricula for each age group. At the elementary through high school grade levels, the program focuses on responsible use of computer technology, combining lessons on Internet safety with activities that raise awareness of copyright and the risks associated with software piracy. There are also take-home brochures for parents and a separate brochure for teens. At the college level, the program consists of a website through which students can investigate the risks of software piracy in depth and learn the rules for respecting intellectual property. For college educators, the website provides a resource they can use during freshman orientation, in the library, and as a supplement to courses in business.

What kind of feedback have you gotten from teachers and parents about the programs?

Feedback for all three programs has been extremely positive. We've learned that teachers today recognize the importance of copyright education, and that they appreciate having curricular options that accommodate this topic to their grade level with lessons designed to complement their class plans.

How do these curricula help teachers fulfill national subject requirements?

Each program is designed to reinforce specific academic skills, enabling teachers to integrate copyright education into their existing curriculum. For example, Join the ©Team! reinforces communication skills in art, language arts, and computer technology, and includes "Curriculum Connection" charts that offer ideas for using the program's activities to meet standards requirements in math, science, and social studies as well. Similarly, the activities in Music Rules! are designed to meet standards requirements across the curriculum, in math, reading, writing, civics, music, and technology education, while those in B4UCopy focus on standards in the technology education curriculum for grades 3-12.

How many classrooms have used these curricula to date?

In combination, these three programs have been distributed to more than 100,000 teachers across the country and, based on follow-up research, have been used with more than 10 million students over the past four years. In addition, hundreds of teachers continue to download the programs each month.

Why is instruction on the concept of copyright worthy of classroom discussion?

According to teachers, it is the presence of computer technology in the classroom that has made copyright an important topic for classroom discussion. Students today routinely copy and paste content, beginning as early as kindergarten. They need to be aware that, in most cases, this content is copyrighted, and need to learn the basic rules for respecting copyright, just as they learn the rules for respecting the intellectual property of their classmates.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 9:02 am by admin and is filed under education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.