It is important to create a learning environment that is safe and effective for students to understand and develop different skills. Teachers are there to promote safety in all that they do and that includes teaching safety on the Internet. It can be difficult to know what kind of information must be copyrighted and what does not need it. So teachers must familiarize themselves with the copyright laws and inform students of these rules. To promote the safe use of technology and the information found teachers can give a lesson to students about the rules and regulations of copyright laws. They can provide different websites and make the students define if the information in a particular website is copyrighted or not. Teachers can also display in the classroom the specific copy rights and wrongs given on the Copyright and Fair Use website. (Starr,2010) If the rules and regulations are clearly provided for students there is no reason for copyright laws to be broken and students can practice safe and legal use of information they find on the World Wide Web.
Teachers can create a positive example for students by following the copyright and fair use laws provided by Educational World website. There are specific guidelines that teachers must use such as only using " a single chapter from a book, poem of 250 words or less, an article of 2500 words or less, a single chart, graph diagram from a newspaper, periodical or magazine." (Starr, 2010) These rules are needed to create order and safety in the classroom. Teachers can give examples of fair use during specific lessons to show the students what fair use means and how it applies to the classroom. So when a teacher is discussing a poem to the students she can describe that it is okay to copy this material because it is under the fair use rules and regulations. Not only can teachers show positive use of technology by following copyright and fair use laws but they can teach students about plagiarism and its effect on the students educational skills. Teachers must "address the larger issue of how students can learn to share their ideas with pride and confidence and with the understanding that mutual knowledge construction is a good thing."(The 2learn.ca Education Society, 1997-2010) Teachers need to address the fact that plagiarism is wrong because it is cheating but also that it is lazy and teachers want to hear students opinions because there voices are important. By teaching students the laws and consequences of plagiarism through a fun and entertaining activity students will learn the rules and dangers of this topic. This can be done by "providing them with pre-culled resource that support their exploration of a topic," as well as "providing students with resources that are ethnically sound such as local newspapers, that are deemed appropriate by our local community."(The 2learn.ca Education Society, 1997-2010)
Starr,Linda. (2010, May 25). Copyrights and copying wrongs. retrieved from http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr280a.shtml
Starr, Linda. (2010, May 25). Is fair use a license to steal?. retreived from http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr280b.shtml
2Learn.ca Education Society.The plagiarism landscape (1997-2010). retrieved from http://www.netknowhow.ca/NKHPLlandscape.html
Excellent work!
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