Dear Fellows,
The recent discussion about linking to or citing our lessons leads me
to further clarify Betty's excellent response. Betty is right about
"ownership" your lesson. It now belongs to The Library of Congress.
It is published on the Library's Web site, and is thus in the public
domain. Others are free to point to it, or otherwise use it and you
may not "sell" it, though you can certainly cite and share your
accomplishment in resumes, portfolios, etc.
An interesting experience with the America Dreams lesson that
Kathleen Ferenz and I created in 1997 serves as illustration.
Someone had actually taken the whole lesson (coding almost completely
intact and very identifiable), renamed it, then claimed it as their
own original work. The Library's legal division acknowledged that
this wasn't ethical or "nice" but that they couldn't really do
anything about use of public domain content. Since this "someone"
wanted to keep their reputation as leaders in educational technology
(they had recently received an award for their exemplary work!), they
were willing to "see it my way" and take the lesson off their site. I
could not have forced this action had they not been willing.
We get many queries and requests from more ethical parties about use
of all our material. Our general answer is to use it and enjoy it,
but to please cite and/or link to the original source. We WANT to
share our resources...that's the point of publishing them here.
One last bit of clarification. The AAM project (An Adventure of the
American Mind) is affiliated with The Library of Congress. Susan
Veccia was involved in the original planning and implementation and
still works with this project which has spread well beyond NC. You
can read more about the project here: http://aam.wcu.edu/newaam/ It
should look somewhat familiar to you:-)
Patricia was contacted by the home schooling arm of the project. In
the foreseeable future, we hope that some of the lessons they
publish can be "pointed to" from the Learning Page...and we will
certainly encourage them to continue to point to our Fellows' lessons.
As the school year winds down, remember and enjoy your successes!
Please continue to let us know of your honors, awards and future
plans. Being affiliated with extraordinary educators like all of you,
will always be one of the high points of my educational career.
Please stay in touch...you are family to us!
Warm wishes for a stress free end of your school year and a relaxing
summer break.
Leni
Class of '97
--
Leni Donlan
The Learning Page
Library of Congress
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http://learning.loc.gov/learn
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