Copyright Confusion

Copyright and fair use issues are definitely things that I think about often and have written about in the past. I work with teachers both within my building and through state run programs and I have always taught people that in order for use of media to be considered appropriate and fair one must consider the following

1. What is the purpose for which you are using (commercial or nonprofit)
2. What is the nature of the use
3. What amount of the work being used
4. What is the effect of your use on copyright holder
   

In order to be "clear" in these "rules" I have also been steering teachers and students to use copyright friendly materials which follow fair use guidelines in the creation of their own original projects. If it didn't "fit the guidelines" we would not consider publishing the student work. HOWEVER a recent webinar on copyright and fair use has REALLY started to challenge the way I think about digital media project creation. (link at post end). The webinar was hosted by..Renee Hobbs Professor at Temple's Media Education Lab and Peter Jaszi who is a professor of Law at American University who specializes in Copyright Law. Using a model started by the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use they are working to create a statement to assist media educators in making better use of their fair use rights under copyright law. The project has been written about in many newspapers, magazines and blogs, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, School Library Journal, and Youth Media Reporter and they shared with us some of the "survival strategies that they encountered in developing their own ideas and guidelines.

During the webinar, Peter told us that one of the ways that the courts have begin to think about whether or not a given use is fair or not is through the concept of transformativeness. The idea is that when the user of copyright material has added value to existing material and has re purposed the material for an audience that is different from the one it was originally intended then the creator can go forward. Most educational uses are inherently transformative. As Peter said it is good news for educators, but it is good news that needs to be translated into more specific guidelines in order to be effective. NOT the circulating guidelines which are often given more weight or the the wrong kind of weight in practice. They were well meaning, but misunderstood as the law rather than someone's attempt to interpret the law and outerlimits vs safe harbors...floors rather than ceilings they are certain to be fair use but by no means are the limits. We also need to understand that not everything educational falls within the domain of fair use. Trying to develop guidance not from OUTSIDE the community but within a best practices in fair use for education. That the rules we learned are not really rules at all, but negotiated agreements to provide guidance but that actually limit our ability to take advantage of the full legal power of fair use.

I had some SERIOUS QUESTIONS during the webinar about what I have been asking kids to do and also how we have been limited the quality...the transformativeness of their work by holding them to these strict "guidelines" so afterwards and I contacted one of the research assistants in the project, with my questions. I shared a project in which the kids as a part of a video comparing the genocide in Darfur to the Holocaust, used an entire licensed song. Although the video was AMAZINGLY powerful, we did not publish the video. Katie & Renee seemed to feel based on their work that it would constitute fair use of the material...WOW, this changes EVERYTHING

I was really excited to be invited to join them in a discussion this past Friday night, one of several to be held around the country designed to develop a common understanding of how copyright and fair use applies to what is happening in schools. Among the folks in the room were Joyce Valenza who wrote in her Neverending Search Blog for School Library Journal... Fair use and transformativeness: It may shake your world:

"I am no longer sure that anything I learned, or anything I regularly share relating to fair use, is either helpful or relevant....

Ok, good, I wasn't the ONLY ONE who was feeling like my world was rocked...

Renee Hobbs director of the project shared with this group: copyright is designed not only to protect the rights of owners, but also to preserve the ability of users to promote creativity and innovation. Teachers are often afraid to share their innovative practices, to post materials online or distribute samples of their students’ work because of misinformation and fear. Another POWERFUL concept for me to mull around.....After introducing the project and much of the information shared at the webinar, we were asked to examine and discuss a variety of scenarios to determine what did and did not constitute fair use under the definition. I am not going to review each one and my notes were quite random, but here were some of the big talking points or questions that arose.

Is there a difference between a paper copy and a digital copy? Is it different if you make 20 copies of an article or offer 1 copy online? What about sharing 60 min video…does time make a difference. There was lots of conversation about repurposing and how once you commit to putting something online, it is out there

• Sharing in classroom
• Sharing in conference
• Sharing in an email
• Sharing on the web
• All have different risks / ethical and moral
  

Can you "publish" someone's lesson plan in a book of model examples if you share it with the same purpose? What about sharing as a critical example? We shared several student examples. And what about student use of copyrighted material? If we continue to steer to creative commons and say you can ONLY have this, this or this type of content (creative commons) aren’t you doing both the kids and the creative process a disservice

I brought up an example where a teacher asked her kids to take a section of Beowolf and retell in comic form. The fun part of the project was that they were asked to think of modern day people to represent the characters in the story...The kids immediately went to google, and I cringed... The folks in the room seemed to think that this was clearly a transformative use of any images the kids found. In addition, the fact that kids needed to think through and reason WHO in the modern world make a good Beowolf is clearly a higher level skill. The conversation turned to the idea that if we send them to copyright friendly sites: then copyright becomes a wall we can’t go past and those guidelines become less of guidelines and more of rules.

Ok so why do places like the Library of Congress then offer clearly animated directions that follow these guidelines....

Peter brought up that the Library of Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the copyright industry…When you stop to critically analyze…WHO PAID FOR IT…isn’t that a model of higher level thinking skills? The copyright industry is a fee dependent organization that is funded by movie making, music industries..they know who is paying their bills...they are going to protect the rights of these copyright holders-and who is protecting OUR rights as educators?

One of the reasons that I was so excited about this project is that in order to maintain our own creative rights, we need to articulate our OWN positions and reclaim our legal rights under the fair use doctrine and it CAN'T be just the media educators who are involve in this process.

The pedagogy of practice modeled during this experience is worth analyzing as well. Renee used an instructional method that is reasoning of principals it made us think “Fair use is an application of reason and I have to do that as an educator…” This whole process is moving us TOWARD the critical thinking goals, it is a new paradigm they are bringing to the table.
One of the stated final goals is to produce something that will make it possible for media educators to be effective, successful and model the full range for students…so when they feel challenged they have something to fall back on. I think it is essential that this information gets out to ALL teachers who are integrating technology. After all, isn't our purpose in assigning projects where kids are creating content to get them to think deeply about the material?

As Joyce wrote... Transformativeness gives us new freedoms in a mix-up, mash-up world of broadly shared media and ended her post with some pretty powerful questions I highly encourage everyone reading to check out the resources at the Media Education Lab. Watch the video Download the PDF: The Cost of Copyright Confusion
Think about the definition of transformativeness and encourage your students to do the same. And follow the work coming out of Temple Media Education Lab . It is sure to transform our practice.
THOUGHTS? What have you been teaching about fair use? Does this change the way you think?

Link to the full webinar recording

Technorati Tags: joycevalenza, medialiteracy, fairuse, copyright, copyright_confusion

Building School 2.0

I was lucky to get to have more conversation with the folks from SLA. Not only are they tackling the tough questions they are taking it on the road...modeling best practice by having CONVERSATIONS about change, rather than just giving a prescription to follow.
Marcie Hull who wears many hats at SLA reflected on the session but here are the notes from the day that we took during their presentation.



Zac Chase made an interesting point...

Aside from blocking the server, these are 20th Century problems. Replace server with "texts," "discoveries," "evolution," etc. and you've jumped in the Way-back Machine.

He made a challenge to his readers and I am going to make the same to mine...read through the list of challenges in our live notes and pick ONE...the one that would really make a difference in your school....start to draft a solution....and post it here.
Perhaps together we could draft a vision that would make change happen.
Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: pete08 peteandc PETE&C08 PETE&C2008 peteandc08 sla change mrchase ecram3

"If we teach today's students....

the way we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow." John Dewey.

My small group unanimously felt as if they had the opportunity to not rob the students they teach of their tomorrows because they were able to attend this summit--make connections and feel the support to begin to force change in their districts. The Daggett quote that continues to resonate with me is that we cannot and will not be able to change until there is more pressure for change than resistance to change I wanted to share the project that my group created as their vision. I believe that pressure to change is there....from the teachers and students and slow as it may be coming, it is coming...

Connect, Innovate, Explore, Lead...which comes first?

I REALLY need to get things out of my "draft" and out there so this evening I am live blogging our small group discussion. Last night, each group member was given 4 bricks. Each one had one of the following words on it...Connect, Innovate, Explore, Lead.

Each attendee was asked to think about envisioning a school that would meet the needs of students in 5 years. To build this school would require all of the ideas listed on the bricks. They were asked to "build the school" stack the bricks so to say in order of importance.
Here are the notes I took and some of their visions

1. Not linear...You need to connect to lead so that you can innovate to explore new things

2. Most important thing is to lead the way in order to innovate you need to provide opportunities to explore and connect to sources & each other.

3. Connect most important--once you have connected you can explore--look at new things and become comfortable. Once you are comfortable with things you have explored you can lead other and then once you lead you start to become more innovative.

4. Mine was similar...but I BUILT FROM GROUND UP--need a foundation so most important should be at the bottom--connect to explore--you need to get connected in order to explore
innovate and then you can become a leader

5. I built from the ground up too..first you have to explore--go out of your comfort zone and be open--Once you have exposure you can make connections to curriculum and colleagues
Once you have that in a comfortable place, collaboratively you can become innovative
THEN you can be a leader

6. At first I thought of straightline design--then I realized you start by exploring, connect to others so you can innovate and lead which brings you back to exploring new things or teaching others to explore.

7 . Don't think leading can come first--need to explore new opportunities and then become innovative that will create leaders that can help others connect to students

***We got into a little discussion about connection--are we connecting to resources or people...?

9. Explore first and then become innovative connect with others and then lead the way--BOTTOM UP

9. Fingers between because really don't build on others:
Please note this is more of a prediction vs prioritization
As world more competitive--only thing that can be sold is innovation--as the world doesn't let go--education drives economy have to innovate to sell product--no competing country will be content with being second. Innovation is the greatest commodity--as a result there has ot be exploration--explore new markets Connect--people are aways going to have the desire to connect to one another--reaching out to others and are People have been reaching for leadership and not finding it.

What an interesting conversation..
What an AMAZING group of educators...
and I am leading THEM.... wonder if they realize how much the "staffers" learn from them this week...
Please add your thoughts...if you had these bricks to build with, what would your vision include?

What KIDS want to see in schools

The other day Will Richardson wrote about a town in the UK whose solution to HS Reform was to close the high schools and open learning centers instead. This provoked a lively discussion as David Warlick reflected on what would become of his daughter who is seeking to become a history teacher.

I have very strong feelings about this...I didn't go into education because of the summers off. As a matter of fact, the amount of time I spend reflecting on practice, professional personal development, creating workshops....I have very little time off at all. I am in education because I am a lifelong learner. Marcie Hull has a great reaction as well...we need to focus on the kids and not the bottom line. I value the learning PROCESS... not the learning CONTENT. I want my own kids to learn by doing not by my telling them. And so I replied to David's post...

... As an elementary teacher and technology integrator I have had student teachers for as long as I can remember and it infuriates me that they step into my classroom, take one look at the smartboard and say "cool, I have never seen anything like that..." Even in Elementary schools when we are supposed to be differentiating preservice teachers are not taught to use tech tools to collect data, and use data to differentiate. They all use myspace and facebook (and most of them have seen kids use webkinz and club penguin) and don't see the tremendous power these tools can have in engaging the kids they are teaching. If anything they take a technology elective and learn to make powerpoints for their Open House presentation. Edutopia had an interesting article recently about what kids want to see in schools..laptops, bluetooth, cell phones, video cameras...I don't doubt that given the opportunity to create relevant learning experiences for themselves, they would. Think of the inquiry in elementary kids when they have the opportunity to really explore something hands on. Curt, I think many teachers teach as they have been taught because they were the kids that were good at "playing school" when they were in school. However, I don't think we can look at this and say until...until the Universities begin to have the discussions, until the teachers learn the skills themselves, until their is a tech literacy curriculum in place, until....this is a systemic problem and at somepoint in time it has to change. I think the thing that would impact the success is the amount of collaboration time, professional development that is given to the teachers. Would your daughter get a job in a learning center...would she keep the job...? If she was willing to be a lifelong learner herself, no doubt she would. As a lifelong learner myself, I LOVE the idea of learning centers and will surely be keeping close tabs. Thanks for another thought provoking discussion.

Gregg Farr had probably one of the most thought provoking call out to educational leaders on LeaderTalk today. So I can't help but think...what will it take for use to give kids what they want...what they NEED to be successful learners in the 21st Century? I ask not just out of curiosity for the future of my career....but for the future of my own 3 children....what will it take?

Putting a square peg in a round hole...

Or square wheels on a wagon as the case may be...

http://www.squarewheels.com/mainpage/swsmain.html

Right before NECC, I attended a 21st Century Learning Workshop in Harrisburg when I first saw this image, and I have been thinking about it ever since...

And when Steve Dembo in twitter wondered if "After reading a ton of blog posts from NECC and EduBloggerCon, I'm starting to wonder if We (Edubloggers) are getting a little egotistical" Marcie Hull asks a similar question "are we REALLY congratulating ourselves too much & too early?" I must admit, I have been challenged by administrators who when forced to see the big picture....from a district/system perspective ask...do edubloggers REALLY see the big picture? hmmm good question...
The picture I think is the one above...the one where the men keep the square wheels on the wagon when there are round wheels inside. Where there are LOTS of resources that people don't know how to use appropriately. The one where there is there only 1 person pulling and little effort from behind. There are not enough folks to move a really big wagon. The one where there is a REALLY sturdy LOOKING wagon, that is going nowhere.

I think David Warlick hit the nail on the head when he said It Isn't Easy, and Julie Lindsay reminds us there is NECC and there is the Real World.
The thing is Edubloggers can't keep talking to the echo chamber...What do we start with and how do we move (or continue to move) forward? From Marcie's blog I was directed to a new blog that asks this question and says that she is going to try to create a target that her teachers can see...yes, we do get it, we ALL GET IT...but until we work together to change the whole system, I am afraid we may end up like the guys and their wagon. So I ask you all...adminstrators and edubloggers alike, what is your plan to prevent the system, the wagon, from getting STUCK