It’s incredible that a month has already flown by! Apurva and I are looking forward to touching base with you all on Tuesday at our first monthly check-in. Please see your calendar invite for time and Zoom information.
These check-ins are an opportunity to do a deep dive into project updates, unpack challenges you may be having, share out your successes, and set goals. With that in mind, please arrived prepared to share project updates. This is an opportunity to celebrate progress (big and small) so screensharing is welcome. You are also encouraged to bring any questions or concerns you might want to problem-solve with the group.
In the meantime, take care and have a lovely weekend.
Hi, @feb21-cohort! I’m traveling tomorrow and concerned about WiFi, so while I’ll be on our call, I thought I’d leave my project update and questions here just in case I have issues. Hope everyone is doing well! I’m excited to say that I received a good number of excellent proposals for my project, and I’m in the process of mapping proposed contributions on to my content map. I’m on track to be able to accept authors and send them the author guide, MOU, and sample chapter by my July 15 deadline.
One question I’m having is related to screenshots. In the chapter I’m writing about SEO, I want to take a screenshot of a Google search I conduct so that I can label different sections of the screenshot, such as the meta tag, page title, and meta description on the SERP. Will this pose a copyright issue?
Another question from one of the faculty I’m working with for the grant. She is collecting student projects on a website, and those student projects are related to chapters in their textbook (the textbook is not OER). So, we’re curious about is there are issues related to copyright. Students aren’t plagiarizing from the textbook per se, but, for example, they might do a review of “chapter 5” by turning it into an activity. Would citing the textbook suffice? Or should she reach out to the textbook authors?
We are at the funding cycle point that I’ll be sending a report to CUNY Central on what we did this past year and developing the CFP for next year’s funding.
My plan before our July meeting is to have experimented much more with platforms and be ready to schedule a meeting in late July with faculty who have expressed interested in the project to this point.
Thanks, Jenna! What a fantastic set of updates — I’m so pleased to hear that your call for proposals was well-received. It sounds like you’re on track for the next phase around content creation. I’ll encourage you to think about engaging authors over a call during the writing stage, so they can see who else is on the team and make connections across their chapters.
Those are good questions. I’ll answer them briefly now, but will be happy to do a deeper dive on the call:
I don’t think this will pose too much of an issue — you are covered under fair use protections for elements like screenshots. In this case, it sounds like you are crafting an educational activity to teach/illustrate sections of a search engine and in so doing are transforming the copyrighted material in question (eg: the Google search page). You’re also not substituting the engine’s tools/features/functionality via this exercise, and are likely only inserting selective and appropriate screenshots in the chapter. This would all strengthen your fair use argument.
In my understanding, reviews would also be something you could make a case for via fair use as these are commentary/criticism/analysis of content rather than a duplication of the chapter content itself. It’s understandable that the review may contain excerpts of the chapter, as you may see in other types of work like essays, etc.
Hope this answers your questions! Others in the cohort please feel free to chime in with your thoughts.
I know we missed the opportunity to hear from you today, Jenna, but I’ll follow-up soon with the transcript and other details so we can continue the conversation here in the forum.
Hi @feb21-cohort - it was truly a joy to see all of you on Tuesday! I’ve missed our weekly conversations and felt that our 1.5 hours passed by very quickly as you all shared the remarkable progress you’ve made on your projects. It was fantastic to see everyone cheering each other on and highlighting contributions from the team.
Thanks to everyone who has posted their goals for next month. If you haven’t done so yet, please:
Reply to this topic with some goals for yourself and/or your project for the next 4 weeks
We’ll revisit these goals at next month’s check-in on July 13 and try to keep ourselves accountable. Goals can be related to very specific tasks on the project or more broad in the sprit of self-care — so don’t feel pressured as you put together your list.
As usual, I’ve saved our chat transcript for anyone to review. Here’s a compilation of the resources shared:
