Author:  Cassandra Love for National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)

In this lesson, students sort images of technology advancements into chronological order and compare these advancements with changes in copyright law. Next, students research and report on several instances of how copyright laws have adapted to encompass new technologies and discuss the role of technology innovations in recent copyright disputes. They brainstorm emerging technologies or technologies that they think will be adapted or invented in the future. Finally, they write newspaper articles predicting the outcome of current copyright disputes related to technology and predicting copyright issues that may arise with new and future technologies.

This lesson plan was developed as part of a collaborative professional project with the American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy and the American Association of School Librarians (AASL).
Objectives:

Students will:

• research past and current copyright issues related to new technologies.
• report on their research.
• write newspaper articles predicting the future.

Lesson: Technology and Copyright Law: A “Futurespective” ^[1]