Recently Asked Questions

I am asking this on behalf of the Elementary School in my district. (I work in the library of our district's high school). The Elementary School participates every year in a program called PARP. (Parents As Reading Partners). The teachers and principal always make some sort of video to kick this off this event since pandemic times.

This year the entire school is reading the SAME book: The World According to Humphrey, by Betty G. Birny. (It's a story about a Hamster and how he deals with life issues). My district's teachers want to "borrow" liberally from this Animoto video: https://animoto.com/play/ICom40fpoTdMzDov931aDQ

This video contains four components: 1. Another School (We'll call it School X, an independent school in California essentially doing the same thing), 2. an interview with the author segment, Betty G. Birny, 3. an interview with a store clerk from PetCo and 4. a video of a hamster performing "cute antics" with a voice-over dubbed in called April's Animals. (This individual posts varied animal videos on YouTube)

What my teachers want to do is create their OWN video of teachers and the principal endorsing this book, interspersed with the hamster video from April's Animals. I did observe at the end of the Animoto video, there were credits provided. My school would not use the PetCo interview or the Author Interview or the School X video as those segments are directly related to that specific school. They want to do the same idea and only use the video provided by April's Animals. I didn't know if this would be problematic because we are a public school, this would not be posted on YouTube. It would be shown over our school network to our K-2 classrooms one time only.

I am struggling to find information on using popular music in public K-12 schools. I have the following areas I am trying to find information about:
1. Can a teacher use a Spotify account in their classroom?
2. Can a teacher use music with face-to-face instruction?
3. Can a service provider (counselor, therapist, social worker...) use music with students?
4. Can music be played during sporting events
5. Can music be used as part of the morning announcements

Thank you!

Does the TEACH Act allow a school to stream entire movies, if the movies could otherwise be shown in their entirety in class?

[The member provided a link to a story about an elementary school principal putting on her pajamas and using “Facebook Live” to read her scholars a weekly bedtime story.]

I always love ideas like this but am afraid to promote them because I have heard that this is a copyright violation. Is it? If it is, what are our options to do something like it in a legal and ethical way? Thank you!

The question relates to showing a performance video to a sanctioned college club. I understand that as long as the college's library owns the DVD or streaming rights, the movie can be shown in its entirety for educational purposes in a classroom to registered members of the institution. Does the same hold true for showing the same movie to clubs on campus as long as the event is restricted to college members? This second question is related to the movie presentation but is concerned with publicity. Can the cover image be copied and inserted into the event posters and on the college's website? The web announcement would be removed immediately after the event.