New copyright ruling affects educators

A new ruling from the U.S. Copyright Office will affect how higher education students and teachers can use digital material in the classroom, thanks to the proactive efforts of a university professor who says that increasing digital literacy and student skills is a responsibility educators can’t afford to brush off.

 

Thanks to a small but determined group’s efforts, higher ed students and teachers can now “rip” movie excerpts legally to make commentaries and compilations, as well as other works.

 

This change will help teachers who are using “remixing” (using excerpts from copyrighted materials, such as image, video, and sound to create something new) and other instructional uses of copyrighted materials to promote language and literacy skills that build critical thinking and communication skills.