Generation YES Blog

“Fair use” is the doctrine that allows some use of copyrighted material for education purposes without requiring the permission of the copyright holders.

However, confusion about what exactly is allowed has caused many educators and students to either avoid ALL copyrighted materials just to be safe, or to use ANYTHING without regard to copyright laws. According to a report last year from this same organization, teachers’ lack of copyright understanding impairs the teaching of critical thinking and communication skills.

To help everyone understand fair use, The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education was released today by the Center for Social Media in the School of Communication at American University.

The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education outlines five principles, each with limitations:

Educators can, under some circumstances:

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

Learners can, under some circumstances:

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

The limitations and circumstances are explained more fully in the report.

Along with reports like this one, the Center website contains some really useful resources for classroom use. Classroom and discussion guides, videos that are perfect to start class discussions and projects, and more.

Thanks to Doug Johnson of the Blue Skunk Blog for the heads-up on this valuable resource!

Sylvia

And now, to illustrate this point, is Mick Jagger singing, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want - But You Get What You Need” (YouTube).

Be a Video All-Star Contest

Sponsored by: Technology & Learning magazine and 21st Century Connections
Prizes: 12 prizes - laptops and video production software
Who: K-12 students (seems to be U.S. only - see note below)
Deadline: February 29, 2008

To enter, students create a public service announcement—a short video that showcases why digital learning tools are critical to your school or curriculum. The contest, sponsored by 21st Century Connections, is open to all K-12 students. Enter the contest or learn more at the website.

Note on eligibility: The contest website says the contest is open “to all K-12 students”. However, the online contest entry form only allows you to select the 50 US states or the District of Columbia, and there is no country asked for on the form. It seems a bit of a throwback that anyone would assume that a webpage wouldn’t be seen outside of the U.S. in this day and age! For a contest called “21st Century Connections” sponsored by a marketing cooperative of multi-national companies (Lenovo, Intel, Adobe, and Futurekids,) it seems a lazy oversight.