[Year 12 IT Apps] IT Lecture Notes

[Charmaine Taylor]

I agree with Kevork. Everyone seems to have their red hat on. We need to 
stop now and put our white hats on. What are the facts?
Placing any VCAA material on a school website breaches the Copyright law.
Quoting from VCAA exams is a breach of the law.
Users can download VCAA files for personal use.
Schools can copy files for use by teachers and students.
We must request permission if we wish to provide a link on a school 
website to the VCAA site.

It seems to me that Mark's comments are not breaching copyright, they 
are his intellectual property. However, where his post mortems quote 
from the exam paper they breach copyright.

Now, Green hat time ie ideas
Mark, or other commentators, could refer to the question numbers then 
make the commentary. The fair dealings clause of the Copyright Act 
should allow reproduction of the question numbers. Perhaps VCAA could 
clarify this. All IT teachers can legally download the exam paper from 
the VCAA site for their personal use so it would be pretty easy to match 
the question comment with the question on the exam paper.

Finally, Yellow hat ie benefits. I always prefer to refer to the source 
documents to verify what the commentator has written as quotes can be 
selected or out of context (I'm not suggesting you do this Mark) so it 
is good practice to always check the sources.

My two cents worth,
Charmaine Taylor
Sunbury Downs College

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