Copyright explained for the Adult Educator: What is it, how does it work (for us)?
Session Abstract
Copyright is pervasive in adult and other education, yet practitioners know relatively little about what it is and how to effectively operate under its limitations. This session provides useful information to empower adult educators to make their own informed decisions regarding the fair and legal use copyrighted material.
Target Audience
The target audience for this session is, quite simply and adult educators of any kind. To elaborate, this session should be of interest to any adult educator, or adult education practitioner, who distributes and shares information produced by others, and who has his or her originally produced material distributed or shared by others. This group of potentially interested audience members might include, but would not be limited to, university instructors and administrators, community college instructors and administrators, GED instructors and administrators, ABE instructors and administrators, professional (e.g., nursing) instructors of all kinds, and community organizers and educators.
Session Description
Copyright is an issue that most adult educators must deal with routinely in terms of what can be used in classrooms and publications and shared with colleagues and students most freely, while still protecting their own rights and not violating the rights of others. Most adult educators get guidance on copyright questions and issues from administrators (or librarians) within the of their organizations, who, in turn, get copyright guidance from policies generated by their administrative superiors. Such guidelines are often designed with thick (but often unnecessary and inhibiting) buffers to ensure safe dealings through the gamut of foreseeable and unforeseeable copyright questions and situations, in a one-size-fits-all approach. This session is designed to provide information that will allow adult educators to take more control of their own situations regarding copyright. The first part of the session will present copyright background and process information in adult-education-specific terms. The second part will morph into a workshop as audience members are expected to share specific situations to work through. Although the entire session will remain informal (inviting audience questions and input at any time), the first part will be more structured and use PowerPoint slides to facilitate efficient dissemination of information.