Thing 6: Copywrite

Sorry! I created this post long ago, but must not have hit 'Publish.' I was surprised when I looked at my record of posts on my blog that Thing 6 was missing! Some of the copywright information wasn't new to me, but all of the fair use info. definately was and was interesting. The only area of copywrite that stresses me out in my teaching is the use of music. Students in our gifted program create mini "movies" on a certain research topic using Photo Story 3 and they also create mini time capsules of their lives using Moviemaker. For both projects, the students add background tracks of music. My teaching partner and I have both stressed out when we have students add the music because of copywrite issues. We've gone to sites like www.freeplaymusic.com as well as purchased public domain music CDs at Best Buy, but sometimes, students want a specific track of music for their background. For example, I recently had students create a claymation project on the life of Babe Ruth. They wanted "Take me out to the Ball Game" running in the background. I told them that they couldn't because of copywrite, but now that I read the guidelines, I'm thinking that they could have. The project was created for educational purposes, we were only using a small portion of the song and the project was only for those three students who created it. It wasn't going to be distributed or posted on the web. Unless I'm misinterpreting the guidelines, I think I've been way too strict and paranoid about using music. Let's hopy I'm accurate in my interpretation, because I am planning on not being as strict with students on future projects. I can totally see why my boys thought that a baseball song would be perfect for their project and I'm kind of sad that I didn't let them use it now.