The two tools below were developed by the American Library Association's Office for Technology Policy to help simplify copyright issues for educators. Any tool like this has limitations but they can be a good way of organizing your thinking around thorny copyright issues.
The U.S. Copyright Code provides for the educational use of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder under certain conditions. Use this free online tool developed by the American Library Association to find out if your intended use meets the requirements set out in the law. This tool can also help you collect information detailing your educational use and provide you with a summary in PDF format.
This tool was designed by the American Library Association to help you better understand how to determine the "fairness" of a use under the U.S. Copyright Code. The tool will help you collect, organize & archive the information you might need to support a fair use evaluation by providing you with a time-stamped, PDF document for your records, which could prove valuable, should you ever be asked by a copyright holder to provide your fair use evaluation and the data you used to support it.