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Tag: creative

  • Disobedient Thinking: Welby Ings – TEDx Auckland

    Welby Ings is an award winning designer, filmmaker and playwright, with his short film ‘Boy’ short listed for the 2006 Academy Awards. An elected Fellow of the British Royal Society of Arts and consultant to many international organisations on issues of creativity and learning, Welby is now a Professor in Design at Auckland University of Technology. Having taught at all levels of the New Zealand education system, he has remained an outspoken critic of dehumanised systems of learning. In 2001 he was awarded the Prime Minister’s inaugural Supreme Award for Tertiary Teaching Excellence.

  • Copyright for New Zealand Teachers – The Creative Commons solution.

    Back in June I was made aware of an issue surrounding Copyright and teaching. Essentially, any resources created for teaching, by teachers, are actually the rightful property of the Board of Trustees of that school. For any teacher to share or use those resources outside of that school is breach of the copyright, and permission needs to be sought.

    You can read the whole article here:
    Copyright for New Zealand Teachers > Unleash Education

    The Creative Commons solution

    Now; being a creative with my own views on copyright, and my own works that hold copyrights, I am very interested in the whole process. To me, as I move through my teaching career, I often see ideas, or think of ideas, and then go about doing my best to make my own resources that are better; whether through advancing functionality or simply putting my own aesthetic improvements on existing ideas.

    I also would want to be able to share these, and use these in any future teacher positions I might hold at other schools.

    So I quickly went about searching for solutions. In the process, it also surprised me how many teachers have no idea that this was the law.

    The solution as it turns out is actually relatively simple, but requires the board to make a deliberate policy change or addition. Creative Commons have made a ‘in schools’ page which outlines the issues quite well, but on top of that, they have developed a policy template for schools to use. I recommend using the ‘annotated’ version first, to get your head around the language of copyright, which can be relatively technical if you’re not used to it.

    Our board is currently in the process of adopting this policy for our school. I hope that this makes the situation around copyright for teachers clear for you, and that you can encourage your school to check its policy around this.

     

     

    The Policy

    This is a copy of the policy template that Creative Commons has provided. It includes the annotations, which I have tried to make a little clearer using fuller sentences than those provided by Creative Commons.

    Preamble

    SCHOOL wishes to encourage the open and free exchange of information, knowledge and resources, and support the collaborative production of copyright works that are freely available to all. SCHOOL encourages both staff and students to support free and open access to copyright works.

    The preamble gives the general purpose for the policy.  It also states the school’s position that it will be using Creative Commons licences to share copyright works.

    Policy

    The Board of Trustees of SCHOOL:

    1. Recognises that the Board of Trustees holds first ownership of copyright of works produced by the Board’s employees in the course of their employment.

    This states that the default ownership settings for copyright works produced by teachers and employees of the school under section 21(2) of the Copyright Act 1994 (NZ) belongs to the school/Board of Trustees.

    2. Applies by default a Creative Commons Attribution Licence to all teaching materials and policies in which the Board of Trustees of the school owns copyright.

    This is the key part of the policy, as it is referred to throughout the rest of the document below.
    It limits the default application of Creative Commons licensing to teaching materials and policies. While these are broad categories, the clause is intended to refer to those teaching or policy resources that would be of use to other schools, and is not intended to apply to every copyright work produced in the school.
    Note also that ‘default’ means that the school can make exceptions to the policy at its discretion.

    3. May apply a Creative Commons Attribution licence to other copyright works, aside from those described in (2), with the express agreement of the Principal. 

    This gives the school flexibility, should it decide to openly release works other than those outlined in the second (2) clause.

    4. May make exceptions to 2) at the discretion of the Principal. Any such exceptions should be limited by a specific time period and should consider the application of other, more restrictive Creative Commons licences, as opposed to simply reserving all rights in a copyright work.

    This will give the school some more flexibility, should it decide to be more restrictive than as outlined in the second (2) clause.

    5. Will transfer to the original creator the copyright in created works licensed by the school under a Creative Commons Attribution or Creative Commons Share-Alike .licence

    The Board of Trustees recognises the benefits of using the most open Creative Commons licences, and provides an incentive to employees to embrace the use of such licences.

    6. Does not make any claim over the ownership of copyright works produced by students. The copyright to these works remains with the creator.

    This simply clarifies that the school has no rights over copyright works produced by students, since they are not employed by the school.

    7. Recognises that this policy only applies to copyright works, and not to any other forms of intellectual property.

    This simply clarifies that Creative Commons licensing only applies to copyright works.

    8. Recognises that the copyright in works produced by an employee other than in the course of their employment by the Board of Trustees of the school remains the property of that employee. Where this is unclear, the process for dispute resolution, outlined below, shall apply.

    This is key for me and other creative type people. It recognises that there may be some uncertainty as to what constitutes a work produced in the course of one’s employment. It is intended to assure teachers that the policy only applies to works that are owned by the school, and to point to the dispute resolution process, below.
    For example; a teacher who creates a drawing or artwork at school, but hasn’t been “employed” or asked to do this by the school, the teacher owns the copyright. This applies to creative works outside of school; such as works created at home as a hobby or secondary employment, such as musical pieces or photography works.
    This also applies to written articles, such as those found on this website; which while are inspired and influenced by my teaching position, are not part of my employment, and so I retain the copyright.

    Definitions

    Creative Commons: An international non-profit that provides free open licences that copyright holders can use to share their work.

    Teaching Materials: Copyright works produced by employees of the school for the purposes of teaching.

    Policies and Procedures: Copyright works that determine, and provide guidance around, a course of action adopted by the school.

    The definitions around what is and is not covered by the policy should be adjusted by the school, as required.

    Disputes

    Where the first ownership of copyright in a given work is disputed or unclear, the following process will apply:

    1. In the first instance the dispute should be documented and presented to the school Principal. 
    2. If the dispute is still not resolved then the documentation should be presented to the chairman of the Board of Trustees. 
    3. If the dispute is still not resolved following 1) and 2), mediation with an appropriate authority will be undertaken.

    This should be replaced with the school’s dispute resolution process, where appropriate.

  • Copyright for New Zealand Teachers

    So this week I was introduced to a concept that I was completely unaware of as a teacher.

    And by concept, I mean law.

    As a creative, I have different fingers in different creative exploits including art, photography, web design, and music. Needless to say I thought I was rather familiar with the rules around copyright. Especially in it’s purpose to protect the creator of the work in question. I’m very familiar with the understanding that anything created for a company or corporate, being paid for by the company or corporate, then the company or corporate hold the copyright for that work, unless otherwise agreed upon. However as a teacher, I feel it’s slightly different, especially since so much “personal” time is invested in creating resources, planning lessons, or creating avenues of learning.

    However, I was completely unaware that under the 1994 New Zealand Copyright Act, schools fall into the same sort of category as a company or corporate; meaning that the copyright to works that teachers create is owned by the Board of Trustees. This means that, when teachers share, collaborate, and take resources they’ve made from one job to another without the Board’s express permission, they’re breaking the law.

    This is slightly concerning. I know of many teachers who have moved around to different teaching positions. It happens all the time. I know of at least 7 teachers who have moved in and/or out of at my current school during my 6 years there. It is also concerning given the nature of teaching, and teacher willingness to share, collaborate, and work together to have a greater impact on the world around them, by influencing and helping other colleagues, whether they be at the same school, the school down the road, or the school at the other end of the country.

    In different conversations around this, I received an email from Carolyn Stewart, who has been a principal for many years, and is now involved with Network 4 Learning. In it she explains the law very clearly and concisely in a way that if most laws were written like, the majority of us would have some chance of actually understanding them!

    She says:

    “The copyright for any teaching and learning resources, that is clearly linked to the daily employment of the resource creator, whether in school time or not belongs to the Board of Trustees who are their employer…  A teacher should only share resources outside their school boundary with the permission of their Board of Trustees – this includes taking resources when they move from school to school. Practically this is quite difficult to manage as we all know that deep within NZ teachers’ DNA is the propensity to share with others to improve learning for all NZ children.”

    Many schools and teachers do not realise this. I was one of them.

    TKI outlines it very clearly for teachers – but obviously we are incredibly busy and don’t like to use our time trawling through every webpage on TKI. In the page about Teachers and contractors copyright, it says

    As I did a little more investigating, it raised more and more questions.

    • How does this work for the Registered Teacher Criteria, that requires teachers to gather evidence of meeting the requirements of an effective teacher? Am I able to take this portfolio of my work with me and use it in another teacher role?
    • How does this work with templates or reports we have developed and shared with other schools, and vice versa?
    I do find it all very interesting and I believe many teachers will need to know this, especially when they come to the job or leave the job. Essentially the BOT could ask for all materials, resources, templates, planning from a teacher when they leave.
    I’m not saying they would.
    But I am saying they could, by law.
    I guess as a teacher, I don’t want to leave my current school and have to start from complete scratch again because I developed my own planning templates, lessons, resources, printables and others under my current school’s banner.
    As I see it, the school pays for my time as a teacher; not necessarily for the things I make for myself to help me teach.
    Beyond this, we already know the lines between being paid as a teacher and personal time are blurred beyond anything Robin Thicke can come up with. So where does the Board of Trustees ownership begin and end? Is a lesson I create at home automatically property of the school? What about something else, say, an artwork? Obviously we would say it has to be teaching related.
    Okay – so what about this article? Or any of the countless other articles I’ve written about teaching? Are they owned by the school, even though I’ve written them all in my own time? There seems to be more questions than answers!
    This is different to things resources like equipment that the school buys. The topic of resources leads to another interesting conundrum.
    If I purchase equipment, resources, or even software personally, I’m allowed to take those with me. They belong to me.
    If the school purchases equipment and resources etc., obviously they stay with the school.
    If I created a resource (because I’ve seen something and reckon I could do a better job making it instead of buying it) surely that’s me saving my own and/or the schools money. Because let’s face it, if the case is any resources I need I can’t take with me, then I’m going to be charging the school for. Why would I bother making it myself? If it’s staying at the school because of copyright, then I may as well purchase an existing (albeit inferior) one.

    The Solution?

    To me there is a very obvious solution to this conundrum the copyright law have left teachers in. Rather than having to ask permission of each and every Board of Trustees I work with in my career as a teacher, my suggestion would be for each school Board of Trustees to make permission to take ‘Teacher made’ resources a policy of the school. This would be a relatively simple statement waiving the right to withhold teachers taking their own resources, materials, planning, units, with them. As copyright holders, they can make the rules of who is allowed to use the copyrighted material or not. By making it open and allowing teachers to do so would be a very welcome policy in most schools, I would suggest.

    What others are saying

    So, the usual process when something like this comes up, is I hit Google and do a bit of a search to see what others are saying about this issue I previously knew nothing about.

    Most interestingly, only a year ago, this article slipped through the news. In it, Matt McGreggor of Creative Commons in New Zealand says

    “There’s a real absurdity in most schools at the moment where teachers don’t hold the copyright to their resources,” he said. “What that means is that teachers who share all the time are breaching the copyright of their board of trustees.

    “Every school in New Zealand should fix that problem by passing a Creative Commons policy.”

    So even those who work in the copyright industry say that the rule is stupid, but there is a very simple solution, similar – if not better – to the one I suggested earlier.

    Covering all the aspects of this is a webpage created by Creative Commons that outlines all that I discovered in the course of this article. It outlines the issues, as well as advocates on behalf of teachers for all boards to make a policy change so that Teachers are able to legally share their resources or take them with them as they move to another school. They have even created a template, making it easy for boards to implement a new policy.

    With it, they have made a couple of videos as well.

    I know for me, I will have to add another item to the next Board of Trustees meeting agenda.

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