Teaching with Digital Images (Ch 4)

This was a good chapter to support the book, Copyright Clarity, that we are reading and focusing on this week in class. The firs topic that was discussed was Fair Use in the classroom. It quotes section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act " the fair use of copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching...scholarship, or research, is not infringement of copyright". This supports the fact that teachers and students can legally use copyrighted material without an author's expressed permission as long as It falls under the aforementioned guidelines. In order to be eligible for this there are four factors that should be considered: purpose of use, nature of the work, amount used, and effect on the market. In order for teachers or students to be able to use copyrighted material they must first ensure that the meet the guidelines set up by those four factors. The next issue discussed was Creative Commons as a classroom resource. Creative Commons is something of a middle ground. While it protects the rights of creators, it also still allows for some educational uses. It can be used to search through images, music, and text that can be used in the classroom without permission. I believe this is a great resource for teachers! The final topic to be discussed is public domain. When copyright has expired it will automatically be made a liable for public use. I thought this chapter provided a variety of ways that teachers can find media material to use without breaking the law. This text was very informative, especially for educators that have not had formal training in the topic.