Educators who want to involve their students in multimedia authoring and Internet sharing will need to consider topics that educators might avoid under more traditional circumstances. Authoring and distribution requires special attention to copyright and safety issues.
Some assistance may be available for those educators who would describe what their students are doing as creating documentary videos. The Center for Social Media has prepared a best practices document by interviewing documentary film makers and asking for their opinions. The document is brief and readable. Our son works as a video editor and he has described spending hours moving frame by frame through a video removing an unwanted commercial logo accidently included by the camera operator. The example from our son is among those situations discussed in the document.
Educators might even consider having students view the documentary video on fair use prepared as part of this effort.
I am assuming that the guidelines offered by those contributing to the guidelines and the video are offering only their professional opinions. Such was the case with the CONFU guidelines that offer advice on multimedia materials used in classrooms.
I first read of this effort in a blog entry offered by Andy Carvin. As always, Andy writes in depth about the project I have described briefly.
