Interactivity 5--Copyright and Fair Use

To start this activity, I did have to make a few changes to my original spreadsheet before I began the actual 5th interactivity which included actually explaining how the technologies would be used to facilitate learning in the class (as opposed to just having the technologies listed like I did before). Specifying these uses of technology actually made it easier and a smoother transition to start the ideas on fair use because once the intent of the use of technology is laid out in front of you, it's pretty easy to find out if fair use applies. For example, instead of just saying that a "recording of a piece using question and answer form will be played." under the technologies section, I specified that it would be played BECAUSE the students need to hear an example of the task they are being asked to complete. Now that the intent is clear, it's also clear to see that Fair Use applies to the task. As I continued to incorporate my new ideas into the spreadsheet, I realized that it's nice to know that there are still some things in place, like Fair Use, that are meant to help teachers teach. There are so many restrictions put on education that we should really appreciate every little thing in favor of us and our purpose. For the lesson plan I picked however, Fair Use would not protect a teacher to use most of the copyrighted technologies listed. For example, MIDI software and notation software (like Sibelius) is generally made to be used in schools and would thus not fall under fair use. Each computer in this lesson plan would have to have a legitimate subscription to these softwares. However, many manufacturers of these softwares will cut a teacher or a school a deal when purchasing in bulk, so it's not all bad news. There are free programs that exist that would serve these purposes but there may be a catch to them and must be watched closely. For example, Garage Band is a "free" software....sometimes. Garage Band is only free with a subscription of iLife, which happens to be free on most newer Apple computers. However, on an Apple computer without iLife (mostly older generations) Garage Band is not so free. It would not be acceptable to try to obtain a copy of Garage Band for free to put on an older Mac computer so that your students can use it. If a teacher did so desire to use Garage Band for free on a computer without iLife, they would have to contact Apple for permission. The same concept applies when a new version of Garage Band is created. As mentioned before, the only copyrighted technology that was completely protected in the plan was the portion of the recording that should be played for the students. I did not specify which piece to use because that part should be up to the individual teacher, but it would not matter. Fair Use protects a teacher so that he or she can use a portion of a piece for educational purposes, and since composing such a phrase is the point of the lesson, it falls well within the fair use guidelines, as does the time length needed since question and answer phrases are rarely longer than 30 seconds or 10% of an entire piece. I still think this lesson plan was a good one to pick, even though Fair Use didn't protect much of it. 

SpreadSheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Akf4uVeNWvtrdG0tcjQtQktfYTdSdEx2c0ZMQTVlUVE&hl=en_US&pli=1#gid=0