Dealing with copyright and fair use

“Ever find yourself asking questions like these:

• Can I play “The Telltale Head” episode of The Simpsons in class as part of my unit on Poe?
• Is it okay to include a clip from The News Hour with Jim Lehrer in my ReadWriteThink lesson plan?
• I want to show a screen capture from a video game in my conference presentation. Is that okay?
• Can a student use the chorus from Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet” in a PowerPoint presentation on the play?
• The class made a video adaptation of a Dr. Seuss book. Can we post it online?”  asks Traci Gardner, of NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) in http://ncteinbox.blogspot.com/2008/11/fair-use-and-copyright-for-educators.html .   The answer to all the questions is “yes,” by the way.

    Recently, the National Council of Teachers of English participated in  a report of how copyright and fair use should play out in education.  (”Fair use” refers to using copyrighted materials without cost for eductional purposes.)  While originally developed for media educators, the report applies to all teachers.  This is so important to all of us, I’m including the complete blog entry here:

http://ncteinbox.blogspot.com/2008/11/fair-use-and-copyright-for-educators.html

with a link to the complete report: http://www.mediaeducationlab.com/pdf/CodeofBestPracticesinFairUse.pdf 

One surprising finding:  teachers self-censor more than necessary.  We really can use copyrighted materials more than we thought we could, and often are being overly cautious. 

Some key considerations:  are we using copyrighted materials for teaching and learning, are we causing the original copyright owner significant financial harm, are we providing credit where credit is due (citing our sources), are we (or our students) transforming original work in the creation of new work? 

The entire report is well worth the read.