Oct

9

Will she be sued?

October 9, 2007 |

A teacher in New York is using songs and iPods to teach students English. Fair use/educational use, or a potential lawsuit? Did she buy those songs? Did she buy them 60 times? 300 times? Once? Bittorrent?

[…] in 2006, Ms. Poli received 60 more iPods. Last May, the district decided to buy 300 iPods to expand the program to other schools this fall.

Ms. Poli scoured the music charts for songs that appealed to students, compiling an eclectic mix of tunes by Shania Twain, Barry White, U2 and the Black Eyed Peas. She downloaded their songs to the iPods and typed out the lyrics. Then she deleted all the nouns — and in turn, the verbs and adjectives — forcing the students to fill in the missing words and learn their meaning.

In class, they sing or recite the completed lyrics back to her.

“A lot of our bilingual kids are very shy, and they feel like outsiders,” said Ms. Poli, whose parents immigrated from Ecuador. “You have kids who never said a word in English, and now they’re singing Black Eyed Peas. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.”


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