Copyright & Fair Use In Remote Teaching
What is the risk?
The modern classroom relies on technology resources to promote cognitive growth. However, it can be complicated to build on copyright materials found on the web. The use of multimedia such as videos, documents, and images found on the internet can often lead to unethical, unprofessional practices, or even law sought.
Using resources found on Google or Bing may require the user to give credit to the author either through a link or by name something that it’s rarely taking place within the classroom. Therefore, not giving credit to the author is considered plagiarism, or copyright infringement and can lead to severe consequences.
Educators rely on multimedia to teach, as well as media literacy in the classroom. One of the most critical questions to answer may be: How can educators build on Google results, without breaking any copyright laws? “Media literacy is the capacity to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms (CMSI, 2015)”.
Copyright & Fair Use Awareness
It is essential to promote awareness to abide by copyright laws and to refrain from unethical behavior. Other concerns relate to copyright laws and fair use in the classroom. The employment of digital technologies in the school should be boundless.
However, while educators stress the importance of research to their students, they have to avoid copyright issues consistently. The modern classroom relies heavily on technology resources to promote cognitive growth.
However, it is arguably complicated to build on copyright materials found on the web. Educators rely on multimedia to promote technology as well as media literacy in the classroom. One of the most critical questions to answer is: How can educators build on Google results, without breaking any copyright laws?
For instance, “Media literacy is the capacity to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms (CMSI, 2015)”. Therefore, it is essential to promote awareness to abide by copyright laws and to refrain from unethical behavior. Other concerns relate to copyright laws and fair use in the classroom.
The employment of digital technologies in the school should be boundless. However, while educators stress the importance of research to their students, they have to avoid copyright issues consistently. For example, “Copyright law does not exactly specify how to apply fair use, and that is to the creators’ advantage.
Creative needs and practices differ with the field, with technology, and with time. Rather than following a specific formula, lawyers and judges decide whether an unli44censed use of copyrighted material is ‘fair’ according to a ‘rule of reason’ (Jaszi, 2015)”.
Hence, as educators try to focus on the cognitive process as the area of importance, teachers must avoid plagiarizing or breaking any laws, as part of everyday technology integration. With that said, how can art teachers develop collaborative assignments relying on web content, like retrieved from Google or Bing? The answer again rests on the ‘rule of reason’ (Jaszi, 2015)”
Example Case Study Case Study Video, High School
Using online images such as those found on Google, or Instagram to mention a few, may create a copyright issue, even for educational purposes. Educators frequently rely on online images to illustrate an idea, or to bring a class web page to life, although rare, a circumstance such as the one on the video may arise.
What is fair use
Therefore, in such cases, many questions come to life such as; what is fair use? “In its most general sense, fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and ‘transformative purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work (Stim, 2010)”.
In that case, the integration of online materials in a transformative way has no legal copyright obligations, especially in an educational setting for a nonprofit institution.
The images were taken from a social media site, Flickr by Yahoo, and transformed as part of a class website. Additionally, integrating online images into a website for a clear education purpose epitomizes fair use and adding value and meaning to an image that otherwise would serve no educational purpose whatsoever.
In other words, the images attached to the students’ work did not serve the same purpose as they did for the author. As part of the lesson and the project on creating a virtual zoo, educators were trying to enlighten students on fair use. Therefore, the student works were open to each other and open to expansion.
Additionally, the images used from Flickr were utilized under fair use guidelines, but also in 45the process of transforming the original work, the virtual zoo offered the links back to the image source, successfully giving credit to the author. As part of developing an active virtual zoo, and stressing the importance of fair use, the instructor developed an effective plan.
They relied on the standard search within Flickr to avoid any direct copyright infringement, something common in Google images. For example, “Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license (Flickr, 2016)”,
Thus, most online media, including videos, can be used, as long as it is integrated in a transformative way. The images used in the video were integrated in a transformative way. An easy way to use media found on Google is to use Google’s “Tools”, then click on “Usage Rights” to display free to use and share files without any repercussion, or breaking any copyright laws. 
These types of licenses are established as follows; Attribution License Attribution Attribution-Noncommercial- License Attribution-Noncommercial License Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License Attribution-Share-Alike License Public Domain Dedication (CC0) Public Domain Mark (Flickr, 2016).
Conclusion
Although Google is very helpful and offers millions of images if not Billions, it would not provide the students such as deep insight into copyright licenses, considering Google images displays any image searched with the ability to download, without the need to go to the source.
Considering the type of copyright licenses previously mentioned; the students were able to select an image from the vast library and add it to their virtual zoo while avoiding any unethical behavior. Ultimately, the images were used for an educational, nonoffensive setting that did not produce any income, but now, and in a purposeful and transformative way.
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