Monday, April 30, 2007

Tech Fiesta 2007 & Copyright/Fair Use Info

We had a great time at Tech Fiesta 2007 in San Antonio, TX. The folks at Region 20 Educational Service Center were so hospitable. Special thanks to Harriet Jackson for helping us with exhibit questions, and welcome to all new TeacherTube community members from the Region 20 area. Also, thanks to Don Hawkins of ESC 20 for taking an interest in our TeacherTube vision, and to Miguel Guhlin for inviting us to be a part of a podcast on his blog Around the Corner.

While at the conference, I had the opportunity to talk with Luann Tomkinson, a sales representative and consultant with SoundzAbound. We discussed teachers using music in their video production. She reminded me about copyright issues and fair use and how educators should be aware of copyright regulations when making their videos. There is much mis-information out there regarding educational use of copyrighted material and what is known as “fair use” of such material. The US Copyright office informs us that “fair use” is not a law but a “doctrine.” There are, however, guidelines, which have been developed by the Conference on Fair Use (available on the University of Texas website). “Fair Use” has implications for instructional materials produced by students and teachers for classroom use, and web 2.0 technologies have created implications for “broadcasting” of such materials. At TeacherTube, we encourage members to follow copyright laws and fair use guidelines. (See our Copyright Tips page.) When using music, look for royalty free music for educators’ use – but be careful to check the licensing of any purchased product as some royalty free music still requires documentation in any material produced.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

ok - this is the wrong place - but I've a couple of teachertube questions:
1) Is there a forum - I mean a discussion board to discuss teachertube issues and questions

2) It seems very K-12 oriented. Would you mind some college thru degree material? Some may be useful PD for teachers (but some may be a bit higher than K-12)

Jodie said...

That's okay daveb. Communication is always appreciated.

I've created a Topic in the group named TeacherTube (http://www.teachertube.com/groups_home.php?urlkey=teachertube) where members can share questions, issues, ideas. I invite you to join the group and post any questions/hints/tips there.

Also, we definitely appreciate higher ed material. We will soon be adding a channel for members to also designate videos for college/university audiences.

Anonymous said...

Just off the top of your head - anybody have any comment on the following proposition:

I teach Elem. music, & I'm hoping this year to create picture show/amimated/maybe even live action videos w/ some of my classes, using folk songs (tell the story of the song in pictures, etc.). I thought what I'd do for the music is instead of using a CD track from my textbook series (which is definitely copyrighted), we would just do our own recording, maybe w/ me just playing guitar &/or piano, or we might create a Midi background track w/ Band-In-the-Box to sing along w/ - if I choose a folk song that's at least 75-100 years old, anybody have any opinions on whether there would there be any copyright problems w/ the music if we eventually posted the video to TeacherTube? Thanks