Case+48+-+Mr.+D's+dilemma

Mr. D. works in a sixth grade general education classroom with over 30 students. Many of his students are academically performing below a sixth grade level. He often struggles to find ways for his students to truly connect to the material. Mr. D’s district gives the teachers a list of mandatory published pieces for the year, one of them being a persuasive essay. After thinking of all the different forms of persuasion, Mr. D decides to use a commercial for the attention grabber. Due to his school’s strict controls of accessible website, he cannot find a website that will play any commercials on his computer. At home he records numerous commercials on multiple genres. Instead of introducing the lesson with informing the students about what they will be writing about, he shows a commercial. He asks the class what was this commercial trying to get the viewer to do. Then he proceeds to ask them the techniques they used to draw in the audience. After a few more examples, he relates this to their soon to be persuasive research paper. In addition to writing Mr. D wanted to extend the project by integrating technology. He taught them how to create a PowerPoint presentation, and in addition to writing an essay they will also create a PowerPoint to present to the class. The PowerPoint will coordinate with the essay, however also integrating content appropriate pictures from the internet. Extraordinary performances from the top three students whom present powerful morals the school is proud of will have the honor of presenting their presentations at the next faculty meeting. Mr. D is worried that the content being shown in the class will infringe on the copyright laws from the television provider. In addition to that, Mr. D is also concerned that the content used on the internet will prevent a problem when it is presented at a faculty meeting that normally hosts paid presenters.

//**Commentary** // // According to the code of best practices in Fair Use for media literacy education, the content that Mr. D and his students are using is legal. The copying and using of material is for a non-commercial use, education. The use of this material will not financially affect the copyright owner. In addition, the presentation of the material will be done on school grounds in an educational format that is not being paid for. //