There’s little doubt that technology has become central to K-12 education. In less than a quarter of a century, the burgeoning U.S. education technology industry has equipped the nation’s schools and homes with a vast array of tools, services and programs to support learning. In doing so, the ed tech industry has forever changed how teachers teach and how students learn.
However, one thing that has not changed is the need for high-quality instructional content. High-quality content (e.g., standards-aligned, DEI, hands-on, interactive) is needed to develop curriculum and add value to technology applications. This is certainly true with today’s personalized education programs with local content, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at their core.
The development of new, personalized digital curriculum has significantly increased the demand for substantial quantities of copyrighted material from a wide variety of sources. Unfortunately, with that demand comes a number of licensing challenges.
Ed tech developers often encounter a variety of difficulties and delays in securing copyright permissions to reuse authentic content such as chapters, excerpts and passages.
Common challenges include:
- Obtaining copyright permissions on an individual basis at scale and in time for in-class and remote learning is administratively difficult and time-consuming. With some publishers, it can take six to eight weeks or longer to secure rights for one text passage.
- Small and even mid-sized companies and organizations often lack dedicated staff with specialized knowledge to seek and obtain rights.
- There is too much variation from one rights holder agreement to another resulting in an inconsistent set of rights across instructional materials.
- Developers need flexible rights to adapt to changing circumstances and changing client requirements such as the shift to remote and hybrid learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Schools seek more timely, local and diverse content for personalized learning. To fulfill this need, expanded access to content is needed.
To address these challenges, CCC has developed the Annual Copyright License for Curriculum & Instruction. The license offers an efficient way for ed tech companies to incorporate high-quality supplementary materials to personalize and adapt curriculum to meet each student’s diverse needs and interests.
The license provides a broad set of print and digital reuse rights from leading publishers to incorporate excerpts of high-quality fiction and non-fiction books, magazines, scholarly journals, newspapers, and web content in curriculum and platforms such as learning management systems.
Similar to licenses CCC has offered for years in the higher education sector and the K-12 assessment market, the Annual Copyright License for Curriculum & Instruction eliminates the need to obtain individual licenses for each piece of content in the license repertory. The license allows the use of copyrighted passages and excerpts across a wide range of educational and news publishers, including ABDO, Boyds Mills & Kane, The Associated Press, and Smithsonian Books.
The license allows for the creation of highly personalized materials, as well as general-purpose, highly used lessons for a single annual fee. It solves many of the challenges ed tech companies encounter while also adding great value to their applications and increasing customer satisfaction.
You can find more information about the CCC Annual Copyright License for Curriculum & Instruction here.