Case+62-Ms.+P's+Renaissance+Presentation


 * Scenario-**

Ms. P is a technology teacher that creates cross-curricular projects for her students. The project that she has created will ask each student to choose one renaissance artist and then complete an artist study of his life and works. She has created her own Powerpoint presentation as a way to introduce this sixth grade project on the Renaissance to her students. Within this presentation she has a embedded a short video that she downloaded from United Streaming explaining the changes in history, culture and art from the middle ages through the renaissance period. She has also embedded a couple of twenty second looped segments of classical music to enhance the artist / works slides in her presentation that she purchased from iTunes. Finally, this Powerpoint presentation also includes images of works of art from various renaissance artists that have been found on various museum websites on the Internet. Each artist / work slide has two works of art from each featured renaissance artist.

Ms. P is concerned that she may be breaking copyright law by using this presentation in her classroom and that the student project she has created might be asking her students to break copyright law too.

Ms. P's Powerpoint Renaissance presentation falls within the guidelines for "Fair Use" in the following ways:
 * Commentary-**

1. The purpose of this teacher created Powerpoint presentation is for use in an educational, non-profit setting with a limited audience of sixth grade students. The presentation has not been reproduced nor is it distributed to the students. It is only viewed in her classroom, using a computer, projector and speakers as a introduction to a new period of history and the project related to it.

2 & 3. The images that were downloaded from the Internet came from a wide variety of websites that included various museums. Ms. P was careful to choose no more than few images from a single museum website and she cited all sources used to create each slide. The video used as a historical reference at the beginning of her Powerpoint presentation was downloaded from United Streaming. Her school district provided accounts for each teacher in her building and she has permission from the site to download and edit the video footage. Even if she did not have direct permission to use this video from United Streaming, videos can be used as a part of an educator's curriculum for instructional purposes. The music used within the Powerpoint presentation is also covered under "fair use". The music clips were legally purchased by Ms. P and she is using a segment of the each song. By using a segment of each song and repeatedly looping it along with text and images, she has transformed the music and it falls under the guidelines of "fair use".

4. The Powerpoint presentation was created specifically for use in her classroom and materials collected and used to create it were taken from a variety of multimedia resources. Due to these factors, their would be no loss of income from any one copyright holder. If anything, the interest generated as a result of this project could result in students purchasing additional music or books about the renaissance for their own personal use. This interest may also be motivation for students to ask their parents to visit local museums to see some of these works in person.

NCATE Guidelines- The Powerpoint presentation that she is asking her students to create will be covered under "fair use" because the finished project will transform and repurpose the research materials that each student has found. The artist study that each student will create will combine music, text and images to create a new and unique presentation. The project online also clearly states a specific number of works of art and other resources needed for completion. The limited number of slides and the other guidelines that are stated in the project will make sure that students stay within the guidelines of "fair use".