Copyright for District Curriculum Guide

[Genese Mikkelsen <genese@casstel.net>]

I hope that I can explain this clearly enough that some of you read the
whole message!  Help!

Time is running out on a project I have to check into, so I hope someone
out there can lend me a hand.  Our district has written some Performance
Based Items for assessment to be used to prepare students for the state
test which is also performance based.  The group of teachers who wrote
the items modeled some of the items from those submitted on the web and
other copyrighted materials.  In others they used part of the original
and wrote the questions to be more appropriate for our curricular needs.

 My job is to determine who has to be contacted for "permission" in
several different uses of the materials: 1. Use of items by our district
teachers 2. Printed as part of our district's curriculum for use within
the district. 3. Copyrighted by our district as sample items to use
while meeting the state's recommendations for curriculum.  In this case
it would be available in print as well as on the web.

If the item has the full text of a story being used as the prompt, I
know that the author or publisher must be contacted for permission. Must
we have permission in writing on file, or would it be sufficient to use
a bibliographic citation?   I'm not sure how to approach the
modification of someone's idea to meet the needs of the curriculum.  In
obtaining permission, do I send a copy of the "revised" material to the
original author and seek permission to borrow the "creative idea"?

I think the problem begins if my district wants to copyright these items
under our district name, correct?  Many of the items I have seen and
used from the web are there for the use of teachers.

Thanks to those of you who stuck with this and thanks in advance for any
assistance.

Genese Mikkelsen
Media Specialist
Raymore-Peculiar District
Peculiar and Stonegate Elementary Schools
Peculiar and Raymore, MO
genese@casstel.net

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