It is always nice to see educators learning from and adopting our materials.

It makes us feel like what we're doing is making the difference we know it can.

What is a lot less nice is to see forms, handouts, and course packets that consist of  materials that have been photocopied or reprinted from our books (and handbooks) without explicit permission. It is particularly surprising to see this happen in courses where the instructor is, himself or herself, working to teach students about plagiarism and the concept of intellectual property.

We appreciate that no one (ok, very few people) intentionally set out to break the law by violating copyright and stealing intellectual property. We know that the motivation for sharing and distributing things like our Reading Log is based upon instructor commitment to creating a high-quality educational environment. We also know that in tough economic times, the prices that students must pay for textbooks often translates into real pain and that educators must be sensitive to this.

Pacific Crest only exists because we are also committed to supporting high-quality educational environments. And as a "small business," economic pressures weigh heavily upon us (and our families) too. Because we truly do understand the pressures to teach well with high-quality yet affordable materials, we spend a lot of time and energy looking for ways to make our materials legally available and affordable. If we are to stay in business, we cannot afford to give our content away and cannot afford to allow our legal copyright to be violated. But what we can do, we do:

In closing, we'd simply like to share that there is an often-overlooked process and skill cluster in the Social Domain of the Classification of Learning Skills: Relating Culturally