Friday, October 2, 2009

Week 1: Fair Use, Copyright Law and Collaborative Education

It's a fine line that students walk when incorporating copy-written works into their presentations, whether it be music, video or still images. As teachers, we need to make sure students understand what is important in using these materials and what is legal. I have located several different resources that you can use in your classroom to help get this message across:
Media Education Lab Lesson Plan on Copyright & Fair Use
Teacher Resources on Copyright & Fair Use
American University Center for Social Media
An extremely funny video on Teacher Tube helps demonstrate the point perfectly:

This video from Media Lab is also a useful primer for teachers to show their students their rights where fair use is concerned:

When I teach film and video production in my classes, I always reserve at least two class periods to go over fair use and copyright issues. The safest thing for students (especially in college) to do is to either not use copyrighted material or obtain permission from the copyright owner. In this age of instant litigation and bureaucracy, students and teachers have to be careful when using copyrighted material. I hope you guys find these materials useful. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

1 comment:

  1. The first video = A+
    The second video = not helpful

    We will actually use the first video in next week's discussion on fair use. The second video mentions the four conditions, but then goes to the contention that if we feel like we adding value than we can use copyrighted work and that actually makes things more confusing. it's very creative, but not specific enough to be much help if one really wants to follow the fair use guidelines.

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