Case+39+-+Dr.+W's+Humanities+Class

Dr. W. taught a humanities class each summer to incoming freshmen. In order to save the students money he would not make them buy any books. Instead he would request copies of certain sections of different books each year by his department for the student to read. Since Dr. W. was making copies for classroom use this was within the fair use laws.

This summer to integrate technology into his classroom Dr. W. created a class wiki and had the students create ids and passwords to access the wiki. To encourage the visual learners Dr. W. had the students create collages about the stories and post them on the wiki. The students used images from the internet and pieced them together using PhotoShop. In order not to run into copyright issues with photographs and illustrations that the students were using Dr. W. limited the students to only using images with a creative commons copyright. This way in case laws were changed, challenged, or limited in the amount of time an image can be used for educational use, Dr. W. and his student’s wouldn’t be breaking any laws now or in the near future.

//The copying of sections of books for educational purposes is considered fair use. Dr. W. was only copying a chapter or less and making the students aware of the copyright as well as only making one copy per pupil. This followed the fair use law and the faculty guidelines at the college.//

//Since Dr. W. created a classroom wiki and limited access to it he was able to post all of the students work. This enabled the students to comment and critique each other making the class more interactive with technology and each other. // //Being aware of the confusion of copyrights and electronic media Dr. W. decided to encourage his students to use creative commons copyrighted images for their collages. This was especially educational since as college students they were all over 18 and could be sued if they used copyright material outside of educational use. Exceptions for fair use in educational pursuits and personal pursuits are limited. He wanted the students to know this before they started posting copyrighted material online.

Dr. W directed the students to use images specifically from creative common websites which are non-profit websites that allows the information and images on the page to be shared. Dr. W is covered because he specially asked the students to cite the photos from their Wikis. Even if the students did not ciute the images, they are still covered if they used images from Creative Common websites.//