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The Ins and Outs of Free Writing Contests (free writing contests) Free writing contests are available by the thousands. They are virtually a dime a dozen on the Internet. No matter what your niche is in the writing community there is a free writing contests out there for you. How do you know which ones to enter and which ones are legitimate? That’s simple. You do what you do best-- research. While providing the story for the free writing contest will probably be the easy part, researching the thousands of available contests will be a daunting task. If this is un-chartered water for you, you have the start at the beginning. Finding what free writing contests are available. Grab a notebook or start a word document and list the contests that are available. Beside each contest name you will want to put what kind of writing they are looking for and when it needs to be done by. By doing this first you will be able to eliminate any that do not coincide with your writing niche or with your schedule. Now the free writing contest research begins. Finding out if a contest is worthwhile and legitimate is comparable to running a background check on a person. First check the contest website. Do they have all contact information available? Do they tell you what company is hosting the contest? If they are not, you will have likely found warning number one that it is a scam. So scratch those off your list or at least move them to the bottom until you can find out more information on them. Start asking around to colleagues and writers groups. Search the writing forums and the Internet scam sites. The Better Business Bureau is also a good place to look. Once you narrowed the free writing contests down to the legitimate ones, read the contest rules and regulations. Some contests require you signing over all rights to a story even if you don’t win. Are you willing to do this? Giving up rights to you writing is a lot easier to do when you are getting something in return. After you enter there is no going back, so make sure this is what you want to do. The final thing you need to look for is if the contest is just a cover up to get you to buy services or products. This does not necessarily mean they are a scam or don’t actually award winners. It simply means that they will try to entice you to use their critiquing services or offer you a book at a reduced fee that your work will be published in. Being published sounds like a great deal but is it a book that carries prestige that people are going to see? Many authors think that writing contests will launch their career into a successful endeavor. This is not the case, especially for free writing contests. Even winning the grand prize of a smaller known contest is not going to affect your literary journey. Even though they may not springboard your career, there are good reasons to join writing contests. You will get unbiased opinions and valuable feedback from the judges. If you make it into the higher rounds, editors could also see your writing. Ultimately whether you enter a free writing contest the choice is yours. Just ask you self if the time spent writing and researching the piece you choose to enter is worth writing for free in most cases. The critique and feedback may be the most worthwhile thing you receive from the contest. But then again the judges opinions are a dime a dozen just like the contests.

Education Copyright Law The Nuts and Bolts of Education Copyright Law It is a wonderful thing that Education Copyright Law is available for educators. It isn’t only teachers that can take advantage of education copyright law. Students are also covered under education copyright law -- to a degree. Teachers are able to use copyrighted materials in their classroom and make copies of them. Students are also able to use copyrighted materials in school projects. The key to education copyright law is how often a teacher or student uses copyrighted material, in what way they are using it and how many copies they have of it. It is important that teachers and students do not cross the line of education copyright law or they could be in for some stiff penalties. It helps many students and teachers to learn what exactly is not copyrighted. Any work that is in the public domain is not copyrighted and can be used in school and for school projects. Work that is not in the public domain is copyrighted and if you use it you should make sure you fall within the fair use or education copyright law regulations. Many people do not know what exactly fair use copyright regulations are. When you are trying to see if you can use another’s words, you should keep a few things in mind. The answer to the following questions will help you gage whether you would be violating a copyright. First, are you transforming someone else’s work or are you copying it directly? If you are using another person’s work directly, for what purpose and how much of the original author’s work are you using? Many publishing companies have set rules on how much material they will allow to be quoted in other sources. Some of these ranges start at 100 words or less. However, there are truly no standards to go by, so be careful. You can not assume that keeping your copying fewer than 50 words will allow you to pass under the radar – especially if the original piece is hovering around 125 words itself! There is a greater amount of room to maneuver when it comes to technical writing. For instance, if you are writing a report on something that involves a lot of reporting from an expert, you would probably need to quote more of their work than you would a fiction novelist’s work. The fair use copyright law enables people to use portions of material that is copyrighted for the purposes of criticism or as commentary. Individuals who are involved in the distance education field should take a look at the TEACH Act that was made into law in 2002. This Act clearly outlines the requirements that a university or school must be in compliance with when it comes to transmitting copyrighted works via the Internet. The TEACH Act allows students and teachers to transmit copyrighted works, but they must be within certain guidelines. If the school or university cannot meet these guidelines, the material that is being transmitted via the Internet needs to fall within the fair use copyright act – or the individuals involved need to have permission from the copyright owner. If you are an educator and you are using copyrighted material make sure it falls within the education copyright law.

Dove Beauty Product Lover? Get Free Products! The Internet is a great resource for many things in everyday live. Whether someone loves food, toys or health care products, it is available on the Internet. Many companies even offer free samples of their new or changed products to customers. One of these companies is Dove. The Dove web page offers anyone free samples, trial sizes and sometimes even full size promotion offers to anyone interested. On the companies web page a whole page is dedicated to their current offers and free samples. The free samples of Dove are available to anyone over 18 years of age living in the United States. The promotions and trial sample products change frequently and therefore there is not guarantee that one can get the product seen on the page a few days or weeks ago. The trials are shipped directly to the customer’s home and area true product of Dove. Anything from lotions to hair care and other company products might be offered for trial on this page. Sometimes the company also offers coupons, discounts and rebates for certain products on this web page. Getting free products for dove beauty products lovers is actually very easy. All the dove lover has to do is visiting the Dove Special offers page and fill out a form to request the sample or samples. From there the company takes care of the rest and ships the products to the customer while supplies last. The forms that the customer has to fill generally ask for the name, address, e-mail address and birth date. As with so many things on the Internet, one should move carefully giving away certain information. While name and address are necessary for delivery of the product and this information does not bare such a great risk, it is okay to give away this information. When it comes to the birth date and e-mail, one should be more careful. The birth date of a person can be used in identity theft, and even though this is a big company and the company itself will not steel the identity, the Internet is the medium the user uses to enter the information and therefore it is necessary to be cautious. It is always better to not have ones birth date float in cyberspace available for anyone seeking to do wrong. Many dove lovers have commented that they did not have any problems or increased mail after entering their e-mail address, but if one worries about this kind of thing, there is always the possibility to use a free e-mail account, that is used as a dummy in such cases. Sometimes, some of the Dove offers are not listed on the free samples page at Dove right away, since they are part of another promotion and therefore it is also essential to check some of the other freebie pages for Dove sample offers. The various freebie online pages offer a collection of all links that currently lead onto free Dove products and are therefore very useful in the search for samples. Since the Internet is not always the answer, dove lovers also should make sure to check stores for any promotions. Often time’s companies sent stores free samples to distribute to their customers to get them trying something new, and to spread their product to a wider variety of customers. This is the harder way to get to free samples, since these promotions are not generally on a calendar as such and therefore one has to either know when through store employees or has to be a t the right time at the right place. The best bet for Dove lovers is still the free sample page that the company offers.