Copyright Law and Technology at Romulus High School (Sept 14 class)

1. Liz's section on fair use of non-public materials in schools was very interesting. Having conducted economic research involving intellectual property, I thought I would be able to score well on her pre-quiz, but I was able to get only three out of the six questions correct. I was especially surprised that use of copyrighted music in schools is illegal if it extends beyond thirty seconds. I knew this to be true for public playings of music, but since the classroom is considered private space for use of printed materials, I thought that the same would hold true for streaming media such as music and video. I guess this means that all those lip syncing acts in elementary school talent shows and those cheerleading routines to the latest Beyonce song are illegal.

2. In Jeff's section we discussed technology availability and use in our various placements. I found that Romulus High School students and teachers have access to a relatively large amount technology, both hardware and software. For example, there is a computer, television, telephone, and projector in every classroom. In math classes all students are expected to own calculators...even if it's just a simple, dollar-store-purchased calculator. In addition, teachers may reserve computer lab time for their classes, borrow the schools' digital recorders, laptops, and smartboards. Teachers take attendance and record grades electronically.
During section, it became clear that the Romulus student teachers had differing opinions as to what degree of access students have to computers outside of school. On one hand we see them playing the latest hits on their iPod and discussing their MySpace pages. On the other hand, students turn in hand-written papers and don't know how to look up the news online.
I'm somewhat conflicted with respect to how much I want to prioritize integrating technology into my lessons, especially the math courses. I recognized immediately the value of using online news and other electronic resources for economic discussions in my economics classes. However, I wonder how much value technology would add to an already packed mathematics curriculum. Should I really sacrifice class and test-prep time to introduce online math lessons or math software? (And how would this reconcile with the fact that I already feel like students are too dependent on their calculators for basic arithmetic operations?)