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Share the good news about Creative Commons

Mary Woodard — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:11:09 +0000

There is an excellent post about Creative Commons – what it is and how to use it in schools – on the Drape’s Takes blog.

With Creative Commons and the new guidelines for fair use, educators no longer have to be afraid of using other people’s work when using media to illustrate a concept for their students.

Share the good news with your teachers!

New guidelines for Fair Use

Mary Woodard — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:45:42 +0000

Dealing with copyright questions is my least favorite thing about the job I do.

As a middle school librarian, I used to put on a witch hat when I had to talk about copyright with my faculty. I would try to explain the complicated topic of fair use, then tell them that if they would follow these guidelines I wouldn’t have to wear the witch hat anymore (which I didn’t like anyway because it messed up my hair).

Then the Internet came along and made it so easy to “borrow” pictures, video, audio and other media. Teachers and librarians who are just trying to come up with something to engage and interest students don’t understand why they can’t use these things to teach their kids and are so afraid of doing something wrong, that they just eschew using media all together.

Now we don’t have to be afraid anymore.

Last week the Center for Social Media introduced their Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. These guidelines were written by educators for educators and meant to help teachers “using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use.”

From their website:

The guide outlines five principals, each with limitations.

Educators can, under some circumstances:

1. Make copies of newspaper articles, TV shows, and other copyrighted works. and use them and keep them for educational use.
2. Create curriculum materials and scholarship with copyrighted materials embedded.
3. Share, sell and distribute curriculum materials with copyrighted materials embedded.

Learners can, under some circumstances:

4. Use copyrighted works in creating new material
5. Distribute their works digitally if they meet the transformativeness standard.

This video gives a quick explanation:

This is something that we all need to study and understand. You can download the full document here.

Image citation: Copyright Symbols uploaded on Novmber 10, 2008 by MikeBlogs. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Copyright Made Easy!

Mary Woodard — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:19:37 +0000

Being seen as the campus or district “expert” on copyright has always been, quite frankly, the bane of my existence as a librarian. Those laws are so complicated! Unless a particular situation is outlined to the letter in Carol Simpson’s book, Copyright for Schools, I feel very uncomfortable advising anyone what to do.

Well, it seems ALA has felt my pain! They have created a digital sliderule to help people like me (and you) figure out when and if we need to seek permission to use that book, movie, song or other work.

Just slide the arrow to the date the work was published, read the information displayed and click to get clarifying information. Copyright made simple! (via Lifehacker blog)