4.1
Development and use of educational resources need to meet several legal requirements and responsibilities. The current copyright law available in UK is ‘Copyright Act 1998 – The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988’. The owners of materials will be given the rights to decide in which ways their resources and be used and controlled by others. Areas use as public performance, broadcast, adapting, photocopying, renting out copies and issuing are all covered by this act. The owners will be given the right to call themselves, Author. When a work is created by an individual and it would be considered as original and a level of skill will need to be demonstrated before the person will get the rights to acquire copyrights to his or her work. For example, the creator of the book cannot get their rights to protect the book itself, but only the content of the book will be protected by the ‘Copyright Act’. Another individual will be given the rights to get some idea of some particular book to create his own work, but the content of the book cannot be directly copied or adapted.
However, if an individual creates of a resource in their role, they will not be able to acquire the copyright, meaning the company or the employer who hired them to acquire the rights themselves. For example, if an individual created a resource while working for a high school they would not be able to acquire copyright for that piece of work, the high school as an institution would need to do this. An individual can still have the copyrights for their work when it is created under commissioned or freelance work if there is no agreement existing between the individual and a company. The areas such as patents, trademark, copyrights, some trade secrets and industrial design rights are included in the ‘Intellectual Property Rights Act’ which can be used by individuals and companies in order to protect their own work. Regarding any infringement proceeding can only be brought by the owner of the work or his exclusive license intangible assets such as literary can be obtained with certain right using their ‘Intellectual Property Act’. As well as the previously two mention acts, the ‘Data Protection Act 1998’, protects personal data and must be respected. An individual can have the rights to decide to which extend his or her personal data can be used and processed. Thus, individuals and companies have to comply when this law and keep the personal information confidential when required.
Disabled people are also protected by an act, called ‘Disability Discrimination Act 1995’. This protects them against any discrimination related to employment, provisions and disposal of good and services and management of premises.
All of the above regulations and acts must be followed when creating or publishing resources and educational purposes. Regardless of them learning difficulties faced by learners, the resources have to be created in a fair manner. Education providers are now being tasked with teaching, emphasising and putting in place British values. The government what these British values to be taught and displayed in all education institutions to make clear how important it is to follow the Rules of Law, as well as promoting Mutual Respect and Tolerance for Those with Other Beliefs that highlights equality for all within any given workplace. With this in mind, policies, procedures, acts and regulations are all in place to make sure teaches and learners abide by the law now and in the future.
4.2
It is both teachers’ and learners’ responsibility to enforce ‘Copyright Act 1998’ and ‘Intellectual Property Right’s in the learning and teaching environment. The original authors of each resource have to be mentioned and cited in work when using information from research materials such as books, e-books, websites, articles or journals. Learners I clearly allowed to research in search of answers, however must reference where they found the information. Teachers must do the same when creating resources as well as making sure learners reference correctly when completing work. Not only does this comply with the law, but the source of the information has to be mentioned briefly in either my own or my learners work so other users will be able to refer to that information if/when needed. The companies and organisations also have two comply with these laws. Some educational institutions will have the copyright to their own materials and work where they employees created the work and must comply with existing law. If somebody is claiming work is their own when it isn’t, this is plagiarism and is totally not accepted. For example, when completing these assignments, I must reference where I find information. As well as this and, when creating resources, if I use various books, journals, websites for this, I always make sure I reference in text and in the bibliography where information was found to set the correct example to my learners and allow them to know where to find extra information, if needed.I always stress to my learners the importance of mentioning originality of the resource by citing proper referencing. The method most commonly used within educational institutions is the Harvard Reference technique and I feel, exampling this to my learners will only get them into good habit, if they progress on to university. My own work will be indicated with my name and my organisations name when needed in order to show that this resource is created by myself all on behalf of my company. The original source of information must be mentioned even though there are some adaptations made in relation to the learning needs of my students. Furthermore, it is not excepted to share the work with others when it is not prohibited. When reading through materials and articles to use them in my work it is important to make sure that it is acceptable to use them in my work, as some books and resources do not give permission to use them in others work. The permission from the owner of the work has to be obtained before using the resource or another source of information must be found.Overall, I see it as vital that policies, procedures, acts and legislations are all followed correctly by myself and learners. This will limit and reduce plagiarism as well as setting high standards as for my learners’ future development and educational pathway.
Word Count – 1062
Bibliography
Gravells, A. and Simpson, S. (2012). Equality and Diversity in the Lifelong Learning Sector. 1st ed. Exeter: SAGE Publications.
Gravells, A. (2012). Preparing to teach in the lifelong learning sector. 1st ed. London: SAGE/Learning Matters.
Legislation.gov.uk. (2017). Disability Discrimination Act 1995. (online) Available at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/50/introduction (Accessed 10 Dec. 2017).
Copyright.gov. (2017). (online) Available at: https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf (Accessed 10 Dec. 2017).
En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Intellectual property. (online) Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property (Accessed 11 Dec. 2017).
Cite This For Me. (2017). Harvard Referencing Guide. (online) Available at: http://www.citethisforme.com/harvard-referencing (Accessed 11 Dec. 2017).
