Fair use scenario - Kathy and the IWB

In a continuing series of scenarios that explore educational fair use issues. You comments are most welcome.

Third grade teacher Kathy was one of the lucky ones in the school who has an interactive white board installed in her classroom. As she experiments with the equipment and software, she is finding that many of the activities in her reading series work well as interactive lessons. Kathy has been scanning parts of the series' student workbook for use with with IWB software.

1. What is the copyrighted material? Who owns it?
2. Does the use of the work fall under fair use guidelines? Is the use transformational in nature? Can this be considered "educational" use?
3. What is your level of comfort in helping create such a product? Are there any changes or limits you might like to see that would make you more comfortable with this project?

Your level of comfort with this use of copyrighted materials: High 5 4 3 2 1 Low

You comments are most welcome.

Two online appearances

This will be the first week in about two months that I won't be getting on an airplane. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to be spreading my little bits of wisdom here and there. (Somewhat analogous to a bird planting new mulberry trees, I believe.)

Tomorrow, Tuesday, Novemember 18th, I'll be doing a webinar for Linworth called, "A Professional Fitness Plan: Web 2.0 Tools to Develop a Personal Learning Network." Here's the description:

Continuing education prior to Web 2.0 consisted of reading professional journals, attending library conferences, and taking college classes. These activities are still available and important. But given the pace and amount of change, they alone are insufficient to keep most of us current with the happenings in librarianship and information technology. This workshop explores online continuing education options, both formal and informal, and strategies for developing one’s own Personal Learning Network.

Information on getting registered and technical details are here.

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For the insanely dedicated and insomniacs (at least in the western U.S.), BlueSkunk Johnson will be appearing with Chris (Shambles) Smith and Dianne McKenzie in Second Life at 4 AM SLT (Pacific Time) Wednesday, November 19 to have a casual conversation about library issues. Details here.

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Oh, I'll be doing a live session for the Minnesota Library Asssociation in Minneapolis this Friday at 8AM on "Policies for Web 2.0", some workshops and sessions for TIES in Minneapolis in Decemeber, and even driving over to Madison, Wisconsin in January for their New Promise conference.

But no flights for work until January 27, 2009. Sort of nice...

Provocative statements from Remix

I am happily reading Lawrence Lessig's newest book, Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. I'm about a quarter of the way through it (Location 1271 on my Kindle to be exact), generously "clipping" as I go along. Here are a few of Lessig's many statements that challenged me:

Now I worry about the effect this war [on copyright piracy] is having upon our kids. What is this war doing to them? Whom is it making them? How is it changing how they think about normal, right-thinking behavior?

What does it mean to a society when a whole generation is raised as criminals?

Even the good become pirates in a world where the rules seem absurd.

The freedom to quote, and to build upon, the words of others is taken for granted by everyone who writes.

Whether justified or not, the norms governing these forms of expression [music and video] are far more restrictive than the norms governing text.

But what happens when writing with film (or music, or images, or every other form of “professional speech” from the twentieth century) becomes as democratic as writing with text?

Text is today’s Latin. It is through text that we elites communicate (look at you, reading this book). For the masses, however, most information is gathered through other forms of media: TV, film, music, and music video. These forms of “writing” are the vernacular of today. They are the kinds of "writing" that matters most to most.

This last comment looks like pretty good ammo for my "post-literate society" observations!

As always, these sorts of statements are best read in context. Pirate it, steal it, buy it, borrow it, or check it out from your library. What options!