Copyright In The Classroom

Fact #1- The "Fair Use" part of the US Copyright Law says that in most cases you can allow your students to use copyrighted material such as songs, photos, and other media as long as the finished product is not going to be reproduced and distributed.

Fact #2- In real life (outside the classroom) doing the same thing is illegal and a violation of copyright law punishable by fines and/or jail time.

Because of the latter I always recommend that teachers give their students the tools and information to complete projects using free, public domain alternatives. Say for example you assign your students to create a Power Point presentation on a specific topic. In the assignment you mandate that the presentation must include at least one graphic on each slide relevant to this topic. Rather than allowing the students to go out on the web and