There are many
controversial and ethical issues related to using internet in the classroom. I
however, believe that the main issue that coincides with using internet in the
classroom is the issue of Copyright. Copyright is appears to be a consistent
problem from open source material, electronic text books, and creative commons.
The question that everyone is asking is can I use this material without being
in violation of copyright?
Open content first started
in colleges with schools such as MIT making free open online courses. Now open
content has started to trickle its way down into the K-12 school systems. Free
and open online content is important in the K-12 world because it can help the
teachers so that they do not have to reinvent the wheel. Teachers can use open content
to add new materials to their courses and according to the Horizon report (2011)
stay current in their area of expertise. This raises the controversial question on if
K-12 schools should really be using textbooks. Textbooks can be very expensive
and with the material always changing perhaps it is more advantageous to use
online textbooks such as Wikibooks. According
to the Horizon Report (2011) there is one online school in Utah that is already
using all open content for their curriculum
and “ conduct one-on-one tutoring with every student” to focus on
personal responsibilities. Many schools are following this same model and blending
the online content with the in class content. The online free open books for students are
where the lines start to blur on ethics.
Open content and free
content is generally the same thing which according to Wikipedia is work that
does not have legal restrictions on people’s freedom. Copyrighted material must
be declared as free within the licensing agreements for the work. Copyrighted material protects the author or creator
of the work for a period of time after the work enters the public domain. The
material must only be copies or modified with the permission of the creator
unless it falls under the category of fair use. Fair use is used many of times
in educational settings. Fair use may pertain but is not limited to teaching, research,
news and criticism. According to the Library of Congress (2012), when looking
at copyright cases the government considers the following four factors.
1.
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use
is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2.
The nature of the copyrighted work
3.
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to
the copyrighted work as a whole
4.
The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value
of, the copyrighted work
The term fair use is also used a lot in
conjunction to the Chaffy Amendment or Section 121 of the Copyright Act. The Chaffy
Amendments specks specifically to the recreation of text in an accessible electronic
text format for students with disabilities. According to the Chaffy Amendment
the reproduction of work for the “exclusive” use of persons who are blind or have
a disability is not an infringement of copyright. However, the title use must
be requested from the publisher and must not be distributed to anyone beside
the person with the documented disability and must contain the copyright
information. The Chaffy Amendment originally was only written to encompass K-12
schools but now is having more movement toward the Higher Education sector with
the recent court case of the Author Guild
v. Hathi Trust. In October of 2012 the court ruled in favor of the Hathi
Trust for digitizing thousands of textbooks for 3 purposes full text search, preservation
and access to persons with disabilities. The ruling has been appealed by the
Authors Guild based on the decision t1o favor the Hathi Trust. The final ruling
for this court case will help shape the way universities provide electronic
text to students with disabilities. As of right now there is no ownership on
the publisher’s part to provide accessible electronic material. Not 1 textbook
provided from a publisher is 100% compliant with screen reader access. This becomes more interesting with the use of
3rd party content and material that cannot be changed because there
is no way to add a description to a picture on a website that you do not own. Copyright
aside there are programs that give creators of content the ability to choose
how they want their content recognized.
Creative commons allows the creator of their
work to choose the way that want to give permission to reuse their work. This
may mean the creator just tells the user that wants to reuse the work you can
use it with but just include that I created it. People can create new things or
reuse the material and share licenses. The use of creative commons can help
with teaching and learning because a lot of the content can be used or the
copyright is spelled out. I believe that the use of open online content for the
purposes of teaching makes it more cost efficient and more particles for the
schools. I think that many times especially in K-12 schools they cannot afford
new textbooks. The material changes so quickly that the textbooks and the money
needed to purchase them isn’t available. The ability to have open content gives
the student a better learning experience.
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