Pages

November 12, 2008

Fair Use: New Rules


Over at the American University's Center for Social Media, they have the new document for download that every teacher and media specialist has been needing.  The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy.

Here is a great post about it with many informative links from the NCTE Inbox Blog.

"Ever find yourself asking questions like these:
  • Can I play “The Telltale Head” episode of The Simpsonsin 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?"
The answers, by the way, are yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Joyce Valenza has more, including video.

And of course Doug Johnson weighs in, pointing out a great quote from the document that will make you want to read more: "We don’t know of any lawsuit actually brought by an American media company against an educator over the use of media in the educational process. (p.17)"