Look into It

What are the challenges you find with following copyright laws?

            In last night’s class, which by the way I have failed to mention is EDUC 932 Creative Teaching Techniques and Utilization of Multimedia taught by Steve Katz through Framingham State University, we discussed some general laws in regards to copyright materials. Practically speaking, I learned three things which I did not know:

·       Music- Students can use 10% or 30 seconds of a song, whichever is shorter.

·       Words- Students may use 10% or 1000 words of text, or whichever is shorter.

·       Illustrations/photos/graphics- Students may use no more than 5 images from one artist

or 10% or 15 works from a collection, whichever is smaller.

            Why I mention this is that in my 1^st post for this blog, I mentioned that in a composition course I teach, some of my students are either, unaware of how to give proper citation, or not realizing how important the issue was. It is similar to my neophyte attempts at making multi-media presentations. While aware of the importance of copyright law, it had not been an issue I have dealt with in the past because I just had not used things like PowerPoint or Prezi. However, in the class, I learned a few simple ways around this issue.

·       Create your own content or use content created by friends and/or collaborators.

·       Use a site like http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ which is rich with source material available to use (look into how available before you use it though).

·       Follow the three rules of respect:

·       Citation- give credit where credit is due.

·       Permission- ask for written permission (if you don’t hear back you don’t have it.

·       Compensation- determine how much you value what you want to use. You might join a licensed share site—(such as creative commons or www.shutterstock.com

When in doubt, be paranoid. Check http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html for more information.

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