Fair Use Law

Fair Use is federal law that allows for people to use copyrighted material for purposes of criticism, teaching, news reporting, or parody without authorization of the copyright holder. In terms of the fair use law and the classroom, my interpretation of the law is that copyrighted material can be used without the permission of its holder as long as it is used for educational purpose. The article written by Elizabeth and Robert Lagran called "Copyright and Technology" states that, "to qualify for fair use, there are four factors that must be weighed in: 1)purpose of use, 2) nature of the work 3)amount of use and 4)effect on the market." In order for us teachers to be able to use copyrighted material without permission, these four factors must be put into practice. As future educators, we need to make sure that what we present to our students is allowed and its of fair use. Since students tend to model what one does, they might believe that they are allowed to do the same thing and might follow in our footsteps without realizing the legal complications that come along with the issue. We need to ensure that we teach students how to use the materials or resources that they find on the internet correctly by teaching them how to implement and consider the four factors of the fair use law prior to using the resources.

There are resources that one can use as teachers to find resources that we can use fairly in the classroom such as "Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians". That book allows for one to analyze how the law works and can be used by us to not only understand it but now how to use it properly as well. Although it is becoming a little tough and complicated around these times since both students and teachers are becoming more and more technology savvy, there are ways to be able to use these copyrighted materials. We just have to learn and teach our students how to do it correctly. 

Flipped Classroom

This flipped lesson focus on the family. The student learn the family members that compose immediate families. I used the cartoon family of the Jetsons and used each character to represent the members of the family. I also showed the relationship between the member, for example Jane and George Jetson are the parents of Elroy and Judy Jetson. I think that this is a great lesson for them to learn at home since I speak at a very slow pace which they can understand, they have images to help with the understanding and towards the end, they get the definitions of the vocabulary learned. In the end, I think this is a very effective lesson.

What they would do following this lesson is create their own family tree and explain the members of their immediate family members. As mentioned in the video, they will be creating this tree focused on their immediate family members and the relationships between the members. The extended family is a part of the unit that they will be learning later on to then extend their family trees a little bit more.

Screencasts

I found that creating an audio to go with the powerpoint was a great idea to use in the classroom. The first thing that came to mind was that teachers can create Power Points and add the audio to be used by substitutes when the teachers are absent as a way to get the students to still learn their lesson for the day.

Another way in which this could be used is on blogs or teacher websites so that both students and parents can go over any lessons, homework, or materials that they need for the next school day whether they didnt understand anything or they weren't originally present when the information was presented. Its a great way to maintain communications with students.

Also, you can make small presentations with audio like this and place it on your teacher webpage as kind of an introduction to what you will be learning in the next lesson. This way, students can go to your page for homework and take the time to watch the video so they know what to expect and you may have them answer questions about the video to test their knowledge on what they learned.

 I truly believe that there is so much that you can do with this tool to implement it in the classroom. It gives you different ways to present information as well as maintain communications with students as well as parents.