Creative Commons unplugged/Permission to teach

Set the educational context ....



In teaching, learning and research it is common practice to build on existing knowledge, ideas and concepts -- it's part of the DNA of being an educator. Consider for example:


 * In the sciences, pre-knowledge constitutes the conceptual building blocks for understanding new concepts. For example, the order of operations is prerequisite knowledge for basic arithmetic operations. Learners need to know that solving terms inside brackets must be done before addition and subtraction.
 * The literature review is an important step in the research process to review the critical points of current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic.
 * Educator's regularly rely on copyrighted materials in their teaching. For example, in advertising and marketing studies it would not be possible to teach effectively without access to published media and advertising.

While the general copyright exceptions and limitations provide some relief for educators to use copyrighted materials which is all rights reserved in their teaching under fair usage or fair dealing, very often this is not enough.