Are Screen Captures Copyrighted?

Image via Wikipedia

One of my students asked me a copyright question about screen captures recently that I couldn't answer.

After teaching them about how to make a screen capture and suggesting that this would be a great thing to use when creating tutorials. An educator could take screen shots of software while progressing through the software and then write accompanying instructions.

Here's the question "Aren't those screen captures copyrighted?" I didn't know the answer.

I would imagine that under fair-use guidelines, an educator could include screen captures that are used in the classroom.

The question lies in whether or not such a tutorial could be posted on the web for free distribution. At another level, what about selling the tutorial to others? Do you need to pay a copyright royalty to Microsoft if you use screen captures of Microsoft Word in a tutorial book?

What do you think?

How Twitter's spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses - Evan Willams at TED Talks

Just listened to Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, on TED Talks. In his 8-minute talk, he explained how Twitter was molded by how users used it instead of how the company designed it. Here are some highlights from the lecture:

• Defined Twitter as "Say what you are doing in 140 characters or less. People who are interested in you get those updates. If they are REALLY interested in you, they will get those updates on their cell phones."
• Twitter lets people share their lives - both the spectacular and mundane.
• He didn't anticipate how important Twitter could be in real time events.
• Information was shared during the San Diego fires.
• There are currently over 2000 apps for twitter including one that allows an unborn baby to twitter when it kicks or a plant to twitter when it needs water.
• Summize was a company that built a Twitter search engine. Williams liked the search engine so much that they bought the company.
• Some people in Atlanta used Twitter to find gas when it was scarce.
• People have raised tens of thousands of dollars for people in crisis over Twitter in a matter of days.
• Don't know what will happen next with Twitter, but when you give people easier ways to share information - more good things will happen.

Would you believe that at the end of his talk, the MC of TED searched Twitter to find about 50 tweets about Evans' talk.

Here is a man who is changing the world with his imagination. He invented Blogger as well.

BTW, if you aren't watching/listening to TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks, you are missing an opportunity to listen to the greatest minds in the world.

Follow Dr. Z on Twitter at http://twitter.com/zeitz

Google Notes is No More - Enter Zotero

Did you hear? Google has announced that they will not be spending any more time developing Google Notes. Google says that they will continue to support Google Notes but not improve upon it.

Although I have used Google notes some, I have not been an avid user. I am teaching a Seminar in Writing Graduate Papers now at the University of Northern Iowa and I was going to introduce Google Notes next week. Now we will go with Zotero.

Zotero is an add-in for Firefox that helps you collect, manage and cite your research sources. The latest version is 1.0.9 but there is a beta 1.5 version. I don't know the differences, but here are some notes about it.

Here is a pretty good video overview of Zotero 1.5 from Zoteron on YouTube.




Zotero also has a series of screencasts about Version 1.09. They give you an overview, finding items, managing your library, and other features. They even show how to connect Zotero with MS Word, Google Tools, and Flock.

Do you use Zotero or Google Notebook or Zoho or ????

7 Things that You Don't Need to Know About Me (Dr. Z)

I was tagged by Kathy Schrock. She wrote a posting entitled 7 Things You Don't Really Need to Know About Me on her KaffeeKlatsch blog. Apparently, this was the result of her being mentioned in a similar posting from one of her friends. (Sorry this took so long, Kathy, but your use of media encouraged me to have "just the right photos.") I have been tagged by Vinnie Vrotney as well.

This adds a new meaning to the term "Tag You're It." She included a number of factoids about herself that were quite interesting. So, I have been given the personal disclosure baton and it is my duty to carry it to the next stop. I have been reading Steve Dembo's series of blog postings entitled 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger and he says that I should share personal content so that you will get to know me better, so here it goes: These are 7 Things You Don't Really Need to Know About Me.

1. I have been a magician since I was 14 years old (Member of the Hollywood Magic Castle since 1974). I performed under the stage name of Zeon. Seems that I have traded technological magic with stage magic in recent years.

2. I spent a year (1998-1999) in Malaysia at the Institute of Technology Tun Hussein Onn (now known as Universiti tun Hussein Onn Malysia) as a visiting professor for Purdue University. Taught Educational Media there. My whole family was with me during that year and it was a life-changing experience for all of us.

3. I am an avid West Wing fan. (This is not a cardboard cutout.)

4. I have a large collection of unique ties and wear them trying to fit the theme of what I do (i.e., I wear my Lone Ranger tie on the first day of my Technology Coordinator course at UNI) I must admit that my favorites in my collection are from famous artists (Da Vinci, Dali, Renoir, Munch, Van Gogh, Cezanne, etc.) Here's selection of some of my ties.

5. I run the Keyboarding Research and Resources website. I even wrote a book and a whitepaper

6. I was the first education computing editor for any magazine dedicated to the IBM PC, Personal Computer Age. about keyboarding. This was in 1981.

The tradition is for me to tag 6 more of my friends. Here you go:
Robin Galloway
Steve Hargadon
Clif Mims
Scott McLeod
Vickie Davis
Lois Lindell

Dr. Z Turns into a Potato

Well, it finally happened.

Dr. Z has turned into a potato. (This photo used to be a live, interactive animation, but I got tired of him saying "Hey, Cheer up! Why the long, gnobbly face?" everytime I returned to this page, so I screen captured it. You can see the animation of you use the links in the next paragraph.)

Thanks to the twitter referral from Gina Hartman, I have spudded myself. This Spud Yourself website is run by Walkers Crisps (I believe they are similar to Frito-Lay in the States.)

It allows me to write my own script (text-to-speech) or I can use their pre-recorded pieces. The only problem is that the computer voices that red the text are pretty bad. It would be great if they allowed us to upload our own voice files.

Spud Yourself - It will be fun!

Dr. Z Runs for President

What if Dr. Z really DID run the world?

Contact Dr. Z

Here's how you can contact Dr. Z (Leigh Zeitz):

email: zeitz@uni.edu
Twitter: zeitz
Skype: leighzeitz
Second Life: Leigh Writer