Saturday, November 19, 2016

Who Owns What

You might wonder who owns your content as a teacher, student, or administrator. It's maybe a good question you don't really want to ask.

Let me give you an example of academic usage of someone else's content for gain. I had an education professor who used a different PowerPoint each lecture, and these presentations were VERY different, with several mistakes in each one. I began to wonder whether they were my professor's at all. And then when we were assigned our final project, I got my answer, as we were assigned to pick a topic and create a PowerPoint. No doubt, mine replaced whichever had been used for the topic. So, is that wrong?

Is it wrong if a teacher sells lessons created during prep time? Does the school own those lessons?

If you don't know, it's probably best to leave it that way. Technically, schools may own content created at school, but those schools will likely never pursue a claim, unless someone specifically asks about it.

I'm not saying you should run a curriculum writing business during your school day, but you're probably safe to sell whatever you create.

One thing I used to do is create grammar and reading tests using Wikipedia articles, and I found out that was perfectly legal to use and even to sell. Simply cite the article.

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