U.S. copyright law includes five exclusive rights, but educators can use copyrighted works under the fair use practice.

With headlines about tough copyright rulings fresh in their minds, educators across the nation might hesitate when it comes to using copyrighted material in their lessons or sharing copyrighted works with students.

But according to the American Library Association (ALA), educators should not worry about using such material to boost student knowledge if it falls under the scope of fair use.

The original and intended purpose of copyright law is to promote learning and the dissemination of knowledge, said Carrie Russell, director of the library association’s Program on Public Access to Information. “The copyright law was just as important to them as the post office,” she said, adding that the founding fathers wanted to ensure that the new democracy was well-functioning and that people had access to valuable information.

U.S. copyright law includes five exclusive rights: reproduction, distribution, derivative works, public performance, and public display. Creators of copyrighted works have a limited monopoly on those works, meaning they are the only ones able to profit from or sell their works, for a particular period of time under certain conditions. Currently, the “time limit” on copyright is defined as a lifetime plus 70 years.

One important part of copyright law is idea versus expression, Russell said. A person can’t obtain protection of an idea unless that idea is expressed in an original way.

(Next page: How to determine fair use)

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Here’s a list of the 12 most popular stories we’ve published in the last year.

Recently, we published a special “year in review” digital edition in which we recapped what we thought were the 10 biggest ed-tech stories of 2012, and analyzed what these stories might mean for K-12 education in 2013 and beyond.

(You can access this special digital publication by clicking here.)

Now, we’ve assembled a list of the dozen most popular stories we’ve published in the last year, as measured by the number of page views each received. If you missed any of them before, here’s your chance to read them now, simply by clicking on each headline.

It’s clear from this list that our readers love to learn about new educational apps for iOS and Android devices—and stories about flipped learning were extremely popular this year as well.

What was your favorite eSN story from the past year, or the story you found most valuable? Tell us what you think in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

12. Bill Gates: Why ‘game-based learning’ is the future of education

In Bill Gates’ vision of the classrooms of the future, students are grouped according to skill set. One cluster huddles around a computer terminal, playing an educational game or working on a simulator. Another works with a human teacher getting direct instruction, while another gets a digital lesson delivered from their teacher’s avatar…

11. Seven iPad alternatives for schools

With their interactive touch screens, easy portability, and quick boot-up time, tablets are increasingly becoming schools’ classroom computers of choice. And while many schools have invested in Apple’s revolutionary iPad, which started the whole tablet computing craze, a number of other suitable options have emerged to give school leaders more choices…

10. Free websites help boost student engagement, teacher productivity

Cash-strapped schools can’t stop giving students the resources they need to learn and develop 21st century skills simply because budgets are tight. Luckily, educators can turn to free online resources to help them find and organize lesson plans, give students extra help in various subjects, and more…

9. Five key roles for 21st-century school librarians

Presenters at Alan November’s Building Learning Communities conference described how librarians today must curate, foster citizenship, forge connections—and more…

8. Nine useful lists for educators

As part of Connected Educator Month (CEM), social media-savvy teachers and education professionals are using Twitter, blogs, and publications to get information out as quickly and easily as possible, and are using lists in many ways. Browsing CEM’s Twitter feed, #CE12, we’ve highlighted some of the most popular lists that were tweeted, as well as some lists that might be most helpful to our readers…

7. A first-hand look inside a flipped classroom

There have been many school reform trends over the past few years: student response systems, video games for math, mobile phones for learning—but none have completely transformed the notion of learning like the flipped classroom…

Many survey respondents said web filtering can curb learning’s social potential.

More and more students are bringing personal mobile devices to school, but a new survey from the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) finds that internet filtering often prevents students from taking advantage of learning’s social potential.

School librarians report that web filtering programs have had varied effects in their schools and on school library programs. Fifty-two percent said internet filters have impeded student research when topics or keyword searches are filtered. Half said web filtering has decreased the number of potential distractions, while 42 percent said it discounts social aspects of learning.

Roughly one-third said internet filtering has decreased the need for direct supervision, 25 percent said it has prevented continued collaboration outside of face-to-face opportunities, and 23 percent said web filtering allows research curriculum to yield more relevant results.

Many schools let students bring and use their mobile devices, and roughly half of survey respondents said their school has a filtering mechanism in place to control content that students view on their devices.

Of those that do have filtering in place for student devices, 48 percent implement an accompanying acceptable use policy and 47 percent make students log on through school networks. Twenty-nine percent do not allow internet connectivity on personal devices, and 28 percent limit their use to a classroom teacher’s discretion.

When asked what skills are essential for students in the future, teachers put judging the quality of information at the top of the list.

Teachers are concerned that students are a little too quick to turn to Google and other internet search engines for answers: That’s one finding of a Pew Research Center survey of more than 2,000 teachers nationwide queried about students’ digital research habits.

“Now, by default, they go online and they search,” said Lee Rainie, director of Pew’s Internet and American Life Project. “In some respects, that simplifies things.”

On the other hand, Rainie said, it means that students are prioritizing that information in a way that might not give them access to all the high-quality and relevant stuff that would be useful.

While 77 percent of the teachers said they believe technology provides an overall benefit—primarily access to more resources—the majority also said online research can be overwhelming, distracting, and make it difficult for students to find credible information.

One teacher said, “They don’t know how to filter out bad information, and they are so used to getting information quickly that when they can’t find what they are looking for immediately, they quit.”

When asked what skills are essential for students in the future, the teachers put judging the quality of information at the top of the list, ahead of writing effectively and behaving responsibly online.

Barbara Theirl, media center specialist at Boeckman Middle School in Farmington, Minn., said teachers talk frequently about how to improve students’ digital literacy.

“I even have some teachers who do not let the youngest students here at the middle school use Google,” Theirl said. “They have to use eBooks. They have to use databases.”

Class research projects include presentations about credible online resources, and demonstrations of the hazards of relying too much on search engines. For instance, a search for “Mankato” turns up a page claiming the temperature in the southern Minnesota city never dips below 70 degrees.

“It’s really important that we teach the kids to be able to find the best and most accurate information, no matter what they’re doing,” Theirl said.

For help in teaching students digital literacy and online research skills, see the following stories from eSchool Media:

Why more schools aren’t teaching web literacy—and how they can start

In 1998, a 15-year-old high school student used the personal website of a professor at Northwestern University, Arthur Butz, as justification for writing a history paper called “The Historic Myth of Concentration Camps.” That student, who we will call Zack, had been encouraged to use the internet for research, but he had not been taught to decode the meaning of the characters in a web address…

Web literacy: Where the Common Core meets common sense

Are you as worried as we are that the overall impact of technology on our children’s ability to solve complex research problems is negative? Have you heard a child near you say, “Just Google it,” when asked to describe the meaning of life?…

Ten steps for better media literacy skills

A new white paper from the founder of Temple University’s Media Education Lab gives policy makers and education leaders a detailed plan to boost media literacy skills in their communities…

(c) 2012, the Star Tribune (Minneapolis), with additional reporting from eSchool Media. Visit the Star Tribune online at www.startribune.com. Distributed by MCT Information Services.

Schools are rethinking the idea of the “traditional school library.”

As schools across the nation move from printed textbooks to digital materials and digital learning environments, school libraries are adapting to keep pace—and new advancements are changing the very definition of school libraries and library media specialists.

Many of today’s students do not know what a card catalog is, and challenges lie not in locating information about various topics, but in narrowing it down and determining whether resources are trustworthy or not.

Abilene Christian University (ACU) has transformed its learning spaces to encourage students to collaborate and create.

Billie McConnell, director of K-12 professional development at ACU, said university leaders wanted to create technology-rich environments that meet 21st century skills. ACU educators focused on ubiquitous technology and 24/7 access to information as they worked to create a learning environment that would cater to media-literate students who are innovators, problem-solvers, and lifelong learners.

“We’re not just one-to-one—I discovered that we’re three-to-one,” McConnell said during a Consortium for School Networking webinar. “It’s not your old library. It’s a very active place.”

One of the biggest parts of the library is the learning studio, which is a place where students can go to create different digital resources such as audio and video recordings, multimedia pieces, or link up to share ideas and brainstorm. The learning studio offers facilitators and tech specialists to help students when necessary.

“People often say that the library is going away,” McConnell said. “It’s really not—it’s a critical piece. It’s a place for community, collaboration, and it’s a place to find partners to help you in whatever literacy you’re trying to increase. That may be literacy in resources, media creation—those services are all there.”

And the stereotypical librarian is evolving into someone who knows how to locate reputable online resources and can help students learn how to use those resources in their research.

“I see librarians as media specialists,” McConnell said. “We still have literacy, whether it’s reading or research…the librarian is the perfect partner for the classroom. The role of the librarian has shifted” for the digital age, he said.

McConnell said thinking about physical learning space is critical even as school districts and higher education migrate to digital resources and virtual workspaces.

School librarians, with their specialized training in collecting, organizing, preserving, and disseminating information, now must teach their patrons to perform these tasks.

According to Joyce Valenza, teacher librarian at Springfield Township High School in Pennsylvania and author of School Library Journal’s “Never Ending Search” blog, this is the golden age of librarianship.

Co-presenting a session at educational technology leader Alan November’s 2012 Building Learning Communities (BLC) conference on July 19 with Shannon McClintock Miller, district librarian and technology integration specialist at Van Meter Schools in Iowa, Valenza outlined five areas in which K-12 schools should turn to their librarians to empower learners with valuable 21^st-century college and career readiness skills.

“Librarians are in the sweet spot of education,” Valenza said.

Given the unprecedented quantity of information learners are exposed to, the librarian’s role is more important than ever. Librarians help all students gain access to, evaluate, ethically use, create, share, and synthesize information. These skills are easily grouped into the following categories, she and Miller said.

Curation

Students have long documented their research in notebooks, bibliographies, and research papers, but the presenters described these containers as inadequate for the digital landscape. In the 20th century, content was king, but in this millennium, curation has emerged as the new monarch.

Valenza and Miller highlighted emerging technologies that help students showcase their progress as they acquire, organize, contextualize, and archive both existing content and new learning. Transparency is a critical component in growing what media scholar Pierre Levy calls knowledge citizens. The presenters stressed the value of teaching learners to purposefully contribute to society’s collective intelligence.

For more news from BLC 2012, see:

New project aims to transform the ‘first five days’ of school

How TED-Ed is helping to amplify instruction

BLC 2012 Conference Information Center

This concept is fleshed out in Steven Rosenbaum’s book, Curation Nation. School librarians, with their specialized training and background in collecting, organizing, preserving, and disseminating information, must now teach their patrons—students and educators alike—to perform these tasks.

The following curation tools were referenced during the presentation: Diigo, LiveBinders, Paper.Li, Pinterest, PearlTrees, Posterous, Scoop.It, Sqworl, Storify, Symbaloo.

Citizenship/Compassion

“With great power comes great responsibility,” said Valenza. Building society’s collective intelligence requires contributors to respect its infrastructure. This is the essence of digital citizenship.

Students must be taught how to publish their work for the real world, with their real identity (not anonymously), to build their digital footprint with purpose. This approach embeds authentic learning about the importance of intellectual property. If “public is the new default,” as Valenza prescribes, accountability is built in. When their own work is public, students better appreciate the cost of having published work repurposed without permission, particularly if they are taught to license their work under Creative Commons or other intellectual property licensing systems.

Google is hailing the Knowledge Graph as an important step in internet search.

Google is introducing a new tool designed to make its search engine smarter.

The new feature, debuting May 16, draws from a Google-built database of more than 500 million people, places, and commonly requested things to provide a summary of vital information alongside the main search results.

Google Inc. spent the past two years poring through online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the CIA Factbook, and other sources to expand a database of 12 million items that it picked up as part of its 2010 acquisition of Metaweb.

The information warehouse, which Google calls a “Knowledge Graph,” is an attempt by the internet’s dominant search engine to provide answers as quickly and concisely as possible, so users don’t have to sift through a hodgepodge of web links displayed on the main results page.

The nuggets of information will appear in boxes to the right of the main search results. Google gradually will roll out the feature to its logged-in users in the U.S. during the next few days before extending it to a wider audience.

The changes come as one of Google’s biggest rivals, internet social networking leader Facebook Inc., prepares to complete an initial public offering of stock that is dominating the technology spotlight. The Knowledge Graph’s unveiling comes a week after the second-largest search engine, Microsoft Corp.’s Bing, announced an overhaul that will highlight more information mined from Facebook—insights that typically don’t show up in Google’s results.

See also:

Help your students become better web searchers with these new Google resources

New web-search formulas have huge implications for students and society

The Knowledge Graph will work in different ways.

If a person enters a search request, such as “kings,” that can be interpreted in several ways, Google now will display a box on the right side of the page listing several other options, such as the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, the Sacramento Kings basketball team, and the Kings TV show. Clicking on any of these choices will deliver results exclusively devoted to that topic.

Queries on specific people or places will generate thumbnails that list key statistics about the topic. Google bases its assumption on what people are most likely to want to know on an analysis of past search requests.

Google is hailing the Knowledge Graph as an important step in internet search’s evolution. The company is trying to make the difficult transition from merely presenting a list of web links to delivering the kinds of responses that people expect when they pose a question to an expert.

“This used to be the stuff of dreams, because we didn’t really know how to accomplish it,” said Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who has been studying search for 22 years. “The dream has always been to understand things like you and I do, so this really feels like a sea change.”

The Knowledge Graph also will help address another problem vexing Google.

Students might not enrich their minds inside a classroom over summer break, but that doesn’t mean enrichment can’t be found in one of the original 24-7 tools for learning: books.

Be it on a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or the printed page, books keep students’ minds stimulated, encourage creativity and innovation, and allow for higher-order thinking.

The trick is to find books that not only provide educational value through themes such as self-discovery, culture, social mores, feminism, and political activism, but also to find books that inspire students to keep reading.

With the help of school library listings and literary awards, eSchool News compiled this list of 10 books (listed in alphabetical order) for high school summer reading.

1. Bluefish

Author: Pat Schmatz

Why it’s important: Focuses on the importantance of literacy, as well as having teachers as mentors and taking an interest in learning, all while overcoming personal obstacles.

Summary: Travis is missing his old home in the country, and he’s missing his old hound, Rosco. Now there’s just the cramped place he shares with his well-meaning but alcoholic grandpa, a new school, and the dreaded routine of passing when he’s called on to read out loud. But that’s before Travis meets Mr. McQueen, who doesn’t take “pass” for an answer–a rare teacher whose savvy persistence has Travis slowly unlocking a book on the natural world. And it’s before Travis is noticed by Velveeta, a girl whose wry banter and colorful scarves belie some hard secrets of her own.

Awards/Notes: 2012 Notable Children’s Book

“They are usually up on all the new technology, and not just that, they can also teach kids … about how to use that technology,” says Annie Kidder of People for Education. Kidder says librarians can be vital in helping students exercise “good judgment about what’s relevant, what’s credible information, what’s really part of the garbage that is out there.”

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