example letters

Examples of Letters

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We thought you might like to see examples of letters written by other ThinkQuest teams to ask for permission to use text and images. We e-mailed some of the teams from the 1999 contest and here are a few of their letters. We discovered that many of the teams chose topics that they could illustrate themselves. Many kids avoid looking for things that require permission because you have to wait and hope that other people are willing to take a chance and let you use their work. The teams that used artwork for other people had different ways of acknowledgments. One team included the letters of permission as linked pages on their website. That's a new way of proving you can use art work. We really appreciate the help and cooperation of these Thinkquest participants for our website. We hope you will write to the guestbook about your own ways of doing this.

Kim from the "Modern Miracles: Organ Transplants" TQ1999 site answered our e-mail this way:
/28000/

Hi Madeline, Kim, and Katie:

Thanks for visiting our website and congratulations on the success of your 1999 site!

It sounds like you've got a great topic for ThinkQuest Junior again this year, and my team would be glad to help you and your team out.

All of the images used in our web site were created by myself or my teammate, or were public domain images and therefore could be freely used without permission. However, we did send out emails to ask permission to include other people's transplant stories within our site. I've attached a copy of this letter for you to use. I hope this is close enough to what you guys were looking for.

If you have any questions for us, or if there's anything else we can do to help you out, please feel free to ask! You can contact us at <28000@advanced.org>

Best of luck with your ThinkQuest Junior entry! We look forward to seeing it in the spring!

Kim
ThinkQuest Team 28000
"Modern Miracles: Organ Transplants"
/28000/

***** Kim's Example Letter *****

Dear __________,

My name is Kim Krueger and I am a high school student in Alberta, Canada. My teammate, Lars Holm Nielsen, and I are creating an educational Website aimed at increasing the awareness of organ transplantation.

We are creating this Website in conjunction with ThinkQuest (http://www.thinkquest.org), the largest and fastest-growing Internet-based education program in the world. Structured as an international scholarship contest, ThinkQuest challenges students to create high quality, innovative, and content-rich educational Websites.

Our Website, "Modern Miracles: Organ Transplants" will include detailed information about each organ and the history of organ transplantation, in addition to addressing specific concerns such as ethics, tissue typing, and rejection. We will also be including information about recent medical developments regarding transplantation, such as xenotransplants, artificial organs, and gene therapy. We also plan on including features for user-interaction, such as message boards and interactive surveys.

As part of this project we are inviting transplant recipients to share their stories. We hope that sharing these stories of courage and determination within our Website will help us convey the importance of organ donation to our visitors, while providing valuable insight that they might not otherwise obtain.

So with your permission, we would like to post your story within our Website. If you have any questions regarding our project, preferred confidentiality, ThinkQuest, or anything else, please feel free to contact us. We hope to hear from you!

Sincerely,
ThinkQuest Team 28000,
Kim Krueger & Lars Holm Nielsen.

Maudie of TQ1999 site "Electricity Online" </28032> answered our email this way:

Dear Madeline, Kim, and Katie-

I'm so glad that you've found electricity online helpful as you prepare your 2000 TQ project! Your site from last year is very well-done, and I wish you the best of luck in next year's competition. Be sure to send team 28032 a link to your completed site.

I've enclosed some of the e-mails that we used during the formation of EO to obtain image permissions. I hope you will find them useful. If there is anything else I can help you with, please drop me a line.

Sincerely,
Maudie
Electricity Online </28032>

------Maudie's Example Letter 1-------

To whom it may concern-

My name is Maudie Hampden. I am a high-school student working collaboratively with two students in India and the Netherlands on an internet project about electromagnetism. The project is part of the ThinkQuest project (see www.thinkquest.org) and may be entered in competition later on in the year. The aim of our site is to offer an educational resource on the physics and applications of electromagnetic science to students ages 12 and up. I have written to ask permission to use some of the images found in the Lycos gallery for our site. If we receive permission to use the images, proper credit to Lycos and documentation will of course be included in our site.

Please e-mail me if it is permissible for us to use Lycos images on our educational web site.

Thank you very much, Maudie Hampden

------Maudie's Response------

Dear Maudie:

Thank you for your email. I am pleased to hear you are enjoying the PicturesNOW! images on our http://www.PicturesNow.com site or affiliate sites.

We appreciate your checking with us regarding the permitted usage of our images. We are happy to give permission to use any images under the following license.

Wood River Media
License Agreement for Personal or Educational Use

GRANT OF LICENSE. Wood River Media grants you, for twelve months, the non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use and modify the images from the http://www.PicturesNow.com site or our affiliate sites, with the exception of any photographs of personalities. You may not rent, transfer, or grant any right to the images, or any compilation, derivative or collective work containing such images, to any other person or organization.

This license agreement DOES permit the following uses of the image(s) at the following rates: Personal or Educational Use on a computer screen, personal or educational homepage, projection or print output for personal or classroom use that does not advertise or provide information about a
service or business, credit line to read "www.PictureNet.com": NO FEE.

This license agreement DOES NOT permit the following use of the images:
Printed use of the images or other reproduction not indicated above.

Your download of the image(s) constitutes your acceptance of this Agreement.

Best wishes and much enjoyment with PicturesNOW!

Cindy Marks

------Maudie's Example Letter 2------

Dear Prof. Koehler,

My name is Maudie Hampden. I am a 15-year-old student planning to attend Simon's Rock College (Great Barrington, MA) in the fall, and I am working collaboratively with two students in India and the Netherlands on an internet project about electromagnetism. The project is part of the ThinkQuest project (see www.thinkquest.org) and may be entered in a scholarship competition later on in the year. The aim of our site is to offer an educational resource on the physics and applications of electromagnetic science to students ages 12 and up. I am the researcher and content writer for our site, and I have found the College Physics for Students of Chemistry and Biology to be extremely helpful in the development of my lesson plan. Thank you so much for making this resource freely available to students through the internet.

I am writing to ask permission to use some of the animations included in your hypertextbook. We will of course include a copyright notice for the animations if you allow us to use them as visual aids for our Lessons Section. It would be a great boost for our site to use these animations.

Please e-mail me at malficeli@aol.com with your answer. If you are interested in receiving periodic updates on our developing site, please note that in the e-mail. The site, entitled "Electricity Online," will not be open for public viewing until after the competition has commenced in August, but we would love to have you visit and/or contribute to the discussion forum that will be included in the site.

Sincerely,
Maudie Hampden
Graphic designer, researcher, and writer for ThinkQuest Team 28032

------Maudie's Response------

Hello Maudie,

Thank you for your comments on my work. You are welcome to use anything you'd like from it so long as you include my copyright notice. I would like to take at your work when it becomes available. Also, please let me know which particular animations you are interested in; it may be that I have a new version planned for one or more of them. Too, if there is an animation or visual you would like but have not yet found, let me know; I am working on some revisions this summer and may include your wishes as work progresses.

Regards,
Ken

------Maudie's Teammate, Alok's Example Letter3------

Sir,

We are a group of teenagers participating in an international educational web-site building contest. (www.thinkquest.org) Our site topic is electricity. Could we please use the material at your web-site
explaining how to make a simple motor? This would be totally non-commercial use.

Thanking you in anticipation,
Best Regards,
Alok Ladsariya

------Alok's Response------

Alok:

Yes, that would be fine.

Christopher M Palmer
mailto:palmer@hiwaay.net
http://home.hiwaay.net/~palmer
(256) 730-4042 (work)

Melissa Sconyers, 15 Austin, Texas, USA,Team Leader, eBiz4Teens (eB4T)ThinkQuest 1999 Team # 28188 answered our e-mail this way:

(Copyright (c) 1999 Melissa Sconyers ( Melissa976@aol.com )Melissa Sconyers is the Team Leader of eBiz4Teens (eB4T), a ThinkQuest 1999 FINALIST (/28188/).
Used with Permission - Email Message - November 10th, 1999)

Hello Madeline, Kim and Katie!

            My name is Melissa Sconyers, and I am the Team Leader for eBiz4Teens (Team 28188). I checked out Madeline's TQ Junior site, "Yo, It's Time For Braces", and I liked it a lot. Very well done! Your team definitely deserved the First Place in TQ Junior.

            I had braces when I was about your age, and I would have really appreciated your website at the time when I was getting them done! I liked Madeline's journal a lot -- And your friends are right, you do look cute with braces. :o) In fact, I think I'll be heading back to your website in the near future, if I have to get my braces back on. I signed your guestbook also, but for some reason I couldn't view the guestbook afterwards. If for some reason my entry didn't go through, please tell me and I'll sign it again.
Here is what I signed with:

"Great job Madeline & Team! I was VERY impressed with your website. Congrats on winning First Place in ThinkQuest Junior. You are three VERY talented young people! If you have any
interest in starting your own eBusiness, possibly designing web sites, check out my ThinkQuest 1999 entry, eBiz4Teens (/28188/). I wish this website was around five years ago when I was getting my braces on! :o) I'll definitely be back here in the near future, because I'm supposed to get getting braces -- again! Until next time, keep smiling, and
good luck on your future endeavors."

            Like you asked, I have attached a copy of one of the letters that my team sent out to obtain permission to use copyrighted images or text. You will find it below my signature. Please note that this letter wasn't originally taken from another source -- I wrote it myself. If you wish to use my letter on your website, please give me proper credit. :o) This credit line will due:
Copyright (c) 1999 Melissa Sconyers ( Melissa976@aol.com )
Melissa Sconyers is the Team Leader of eBiz4Teens (eB4T), a
ThinkQuest 1999 FINALIST (/28188/).
Used with Permission - Email Message - November 10th, 1999

            Thanks for writing. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.... Don't forget to sign our guestbook!   :o)

Sincerely,
Melissa Sconyers, 15
Melissa976@aol.com
Austin, Texas, USA
Team Leader, eBiz4Teens (eB4T)
ThinkQuest 1999 FINALIST Team
/28188/

------Melissa's Example Letter------

            Hello, my name is Melissa Sconyers. I am 15 years old, and I live in Austin, Texas. I am developing a site called eBiz4Teens that contains data and text resources from your site. Because I do not wish to infringe on any copyrights or cite the content incorrectly, I would appreciate if you would please verify the link below and my citation of it.

            The article is currently located on our site at: /28188/makonnen3.htm

            After August 16 it will be located at: /28188/makonnen3.htm

            The original article is located at: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,24592,00.html?pfv

            The citation appears at the end of article on our site: /28188/makonnen3.htm

            As well as on the "Thanx" page: /28188/thanx.htm

The citation appears as follows:
Makonnen Blake-Hannah
News.com: Jamaican teen to advise on tech
Quoted From: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,24592,00.html?pfv

If you are interested in the exact nature of eBiz4Teens I encourage you to visit the eBiz4Teens web site (/28188/). eBiz4Teens is an entry for ThinkQuest, an international award-winning non-profit educational competition for students aged 12-18 around the world in which they create educational websites which will appeal to other students. TQ entrants compete for an opportunity to win scholarship money to attend a college of their choice.

Vi