Copy Righ

If an image is posted on the Internet, it is automatically in the public domain and can be used by teachers and students for any educational purpose.

Educators are allowed to use entire versions of copyrighted works for instruction as long as they do not make any money.

A teacher rents a legal DVD of the cartoon version of "Green Eggs and Ham" by Dr. Seuss and shows only small portions of it in class to reinforce reading and spelling concepts related to rhyming words. This is allowed under fair use.

A teacher found some amazing images on the www.freefoto.com site and wants to use them for instruction. She downloads fifty images to her home directory and then places them on her teacher website so students can access and use them in PowerPoint presentations. This is allowed because there is a statement on the www.freefoto.com page that reads: "Non-commercial users may download our web site images to use off-line in school projects, church services, leaflets, etc."

A teacher uses her document camera to capture all pages of a graphic novel to SMART Notebook. She plans to use this file with her students in her class by displaying the graphic novel on the SMART Board and having students take turns reading out loud. She never contacts the author or publisher for permission. This is acceptable under fair use guidelines.

Individual educators can be sued for copyright violations only if they neglect to cite the source of the material they copied and used with their students.

A teacher downloads a SMART Notebook file from http://exchange.smarttech.com (a free forum where educators can share and download SMART Notebook files) and modifies it for use in their classroom and continues to use the file for years. This is acceptable under copyright and/or fair use guidelines.

A teacher wants the media coordinator to place the "Super Why" app on the MacBook associated with the iPad cart and sync it to all twenty of the school iPads so she can use it with her 1st grade students. She even offers to pay the $2.99 fee to purchase a single copy of the app with her own money so it can be downloaded and synced immediately. The media coordinator denies the request on the grounds that the app needs to be purchased through Apple's Volume Licensing Agreement so it can be installed on all twenty iPads, explaining that you cannot buy a single copy and put it on that may devices. The media coordinator is correct in denying the teacher's request.

A teacher buys a single license computer program on DVD and finds that it helps ESL students greatly improve their ability to read and speak English. She asks her Principal to direct the technology supervisor to make the program available to all students on the school application server so she can use it with more than one student at a time. The technology supervisor denies the request. This was a correct decision based on copyright and fair use guidelines.

Students are directed by their teacher to find images for their group PowerPoint presentations by using Google's image search feature. The students copy and paste whatever images they find into their presentation and never provide citations or references to the source. The presentations are shown in the teacher's classroom and also posted on the teacher's website. This is allowed under fair use guidelines