Our Broadcast Extended Learning Time class meets each morning and is made up of 14 students from 7th and 8th grade. We take applications and 7 new students are selected each quarter to allow more students the opportunity to be a part of this class. This class is co-taught by me, our media specialist, and another CMS teacher Kasi Carvell.
Our class addresses many of the AASL 21st Century, TMLS, Social Studies, and English Language Arts standards. One standard we have focused heavily on this quarter is avoiding plaigarism and using digital content in a responsible manner. So, we had a guest visitor after our discussion on using music and photographs responsibly making sure to follow fair use guidelines taking advantage of items in the public domain and Creative Commons.
Bertis Downs manager and attorney for REM and professor of Copyright Law at UGA visited our class last week and disussed his take on copyright and music as well as the importance of following copyright law. He also brought copies of Bound by Law a graphic novel published by Duke Law School on the topic of using items from the public domain for each student.
He shared with us REM's Headquarters website where he has a link to their Remix Project. This is super cool! Read this article from USA Today on the Pop Candy Blog to find out more. Check it out and share it with your students!
After spending time with Mr. Downs our production crew memebers are now working on projects using CCMixter.org to find music in the public domain to incorporate in their comercials and other productions.
