AUSSIE

Blog entry posted December 1st, 2008 by Daniel Storchan

Let's say Jim is putting together a lesson on "conformity" for his AP English class. It's Sunday night and he is exhausted from a weekend of grading. But somewhere between boiling water for his pasta and taking out the dog he remembers a powerful clip from Dead Poet's Society that will exemplify a crucial point about conformity for his students. A minute later, Jim is sitting at his computer running a YouTube search for the clip. Two minutes later he has downloaded the clip and inserted it into his SmartBoard lesson. At any point during this process has Jim considered the numerous copyright violations he might have committed? Probably not.

The Center for Social Media in the School of Communication at American University in conjunction with the Program on Information, Justice and Intellectual Property, and the Media Education Lab, recently released The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. This is a powerful document that is designed with the intent to help educators make sense of how they use copyrighted material in the classroom. From a teachers' perspective, navigating the laws that govern copyright can be a daunting task, especially if you are an educator working to transform teaching and learning by moving beyond the 4-walls of the classroom. According to the Center for Social Media's website, The Code of Best Practices "helps educators using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances—especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant."

Some of our AUSSIE consultants have first-hand experience working with fair use, especially Rhys Daunic, who produced a fair use elementary school case study that is being featured on the Media Education Lab's website.  "The way I've always intuitively approached copyright in the classroom is to openly use the copyrighted works whenever they can help make a project or lesson successful," Daunic said.

Daunic, who is a graduate of the New School's Media Studies program and an experienced educational technology consultant, works with teachers across NYC to collaborate on 21st century learning experiences. According to Daunic , the issue of using copyrighted material comes up often. "During video production projects I have routinely allowed students to experiment with copyrighted music to encourage them to think critically about the effects different songs will have on the message they are constructing for their audience. I've always felt OK about this use, because it creates powerful teaching moments, and searching for options in the public domain can be very time consuming -- but I never knew for sure if I was breaking the law or not."

The Code of Best Practices is designed with the intent to help educators across the country make sense of fair use so they can feel confident that the copyrighted material they use for educational purposes is legal and fair.  "The decision-making process students go through in analyzing different songs in the video production process transforms the copyrighted works into teaching resources that inspire critical thinking," says Daunic, "that 'transformativeness' is often how the legality is measured, according to the Code." 

For educators looking to become more informed about this topic an excellent starting point is to read through the Code of Best Practices in order to gain a better understanding of what fair use is. Also, make sure to take advantage of all the curriculum resources on the Media Education Lab's site. "If there are specific educational outcomes in the classroom that the use of copyrighted works can help you achieve, you can feel pretty confident that the use is fair, and the Code was created to spread that confidence to all educators," said Daunic.

What are your thoughts on the doctrine of fair use? How do you tackle the issue of using copyrighted material in your learning community?