The Challenge of 2009.
Posted by shanetechteach on February 12, 2009
Copyright.
I have an educational goal this year, and that is to improve knowledge and practice across the school with digital material that addresses copyright. This means extending beyond my classes and educating students and teachers in general. I plan to do this by influencing those I have considerable access to, and encouraging them to “spread the word.”
I have blogged previously about the set up of portable Firefox for my students so they can install research tools that will enable them to work more effectively. Once I instruct them further on copyright, and expose them to creative commons, they can add a creative commons search to the inbuilt search bar options within Firefox. Also, the use of Zotero and the notebooks within will encourage storage of attribution information.
I am also mentoring a group of dedicated teachers through a certification entitled the ICT Pedagogical License. I will encourage this group to explore the issues of copyright and creative commons through easy to understand resources, such as Wikipedia, the Creative Commons Site, the Australian Copyright Council and podcasts by Rodd Lucier of The Clever Sheep. There is a site specifically established for copyright issues in schools, Smartcopying. Thanks to @gkat for poiding me with this link.
The most significant action I can take, is to model correct use of copyrighted material, and following creative commons guidelines. This will mean more work and more time in preparation initially, but is a worthy educational cause.
February 13th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Shane,
This is something I want to promote with my staff and students through out 2009 too. I find there’s a lot of resistance to the idea of having to take the time to be more ethical around the issue of copyright. Creative Commons is easy though, and my awareness of it is having an impact on my practices – I’m working more and more towards walking the talk so to speak. Something that struck me today as I worked with a cross section of classes was the need for teachers to model what we’re getting the kids to do. The classes where the teachers took notes/played with the wikis the students were far happier and more willing to interact. CC and copyright awareness is the same, our teachers need to take the time to rethink their approach to this, especially if we want our students to become ethical and responsible connected adults.
Thanks for the link to the Smartcopying site – definitely a great resource I’ll use with my groups this year
Nic