Copyright

The article Copyright and Fair Use in the UMUC Online or Face-To-Face Classroom was beneficial for me as a teacher.  The article was informative in that it provided very specific guidelines for how to use different copyrighted materials.  It also explicitly defined what exactly copyright is – “copyright is a legal device that provides the creator of a work of art or literature, or a work that conveys information or ideas, the right to control how the work is used”.

As a teacher, I use many different forms of media.  The article clearly defined permissible amounts of material that may be copyrighted. With my area of teaching being Pre-K/K it is unlikely that I will be copying large quantities of text material to use with my students.  If I were to find it necessary to copy text over the limit of “fair use” the article explains when permission is required – “when you intend to use the material for commercial purposes, when you want to use the materials repeatedly, and when you want to use a work in its entirety, especially when it’s longer than 2,500 words."http://sites.umuc.edu/library/libhow/copyright.cfm

To obtain permission to use copyrighted material the article offers assistance if you are UMUC faculty as well as providing a sample letter as a guide if you are not faculty at UMUC.  I found the sample letter to be very simple however it is geared toward college/university level use.  Additionally, the article goes on to explain Open Educational Resources and T.E.A.C.H {Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization Act). OER’s are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others."  I found the information in this article to be useful in my career as a teacher.

To obtain permission to use copyrighted material the article offers assistance if you are UMUC faculty as well as providing a sample letter as a guide if you are not faculty at UMUC.  I found the sample letter to be very simple however it is geared toward college/university level use.  Additionally, the article goes on to explain Open Educational Resources and T.E.A.C.H {Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization Act). OER’s are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others” (Atkins, Brown, and Hammond, 2007, p.4).  I found the information in this article to be useful in my career as a teacher.