4.2: Safe, Healthy & Ethical Use:
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Artifacts
Blog post: Seriously, though: Let’s Keep the Kids Safe Prezi: Copyright Laws and YOU Reflection I created two artifacts that demonstrate my mastery of this standard: (1) the “Seriously, though: Let’s Keep the Kids Safe” blog post; and (2) the “Copyright Laws and YOU” Prezi presentation. In the blog post, I detail the potential threats children face by going online and what students, teachers, and parents can do about those threats when they occur. The Prezi is an overview of how copyright laws effect teachers in their classrooms. On it, I offer technological solution ideas for potential copyright infringement scenarios in which teachers could inadvertently find themselves. The blog post models and facilitates the safe and healthy use of technology for student learning. In it, I present data to explain that children’s safety is at risk. It is of utmost importance that parents, teachers, and students understand that the Internet has an ugly underbelly populated by sexual predators, financial predators, cyberbullies, and ignorant users who promote self-harming behavior such as sexting and texting while driving. My blog post speaks to each of those issues, arming teachers and parents with statistics to support awareness and emphasis during discussions with students and offering mobile application possibilities for parents to keep watch over their children’s Internet usage. It also emphasizes the need to educate our students about the dangers, how to avoid them, and what to do if they encounter them. Resources are provided to support parents, teachers, and students. The Prezi models and facilitates the legal and ethical uses of technology for student learning. Based on personal experience and research, I began the Prezi by focusing on the immunity we teachers’ closed classroom doors make us feel to copyright infringement laws. Followed is a warning about how the Internet makes it easier to identify copyright infringement even behind classroom doors, and the admonition that teachers should attend more carefully to what is and is not legal and ethical use. The rules regarding reprinting of materials are explained, and several scenarios for how to use technology to head off possible infringement of those rules follow. For example, teachers are not allowed to photocopy textbook information. If a teacher finds herself in a situation that calls for students to be able to see the content, teachers could employ document cameras and avoid infringing the textbook’s copyright. The research involved in the development of these artifacts revealed the intensity of safe, healthy, legal, and ethical situations students and teachers can find themselves in. Responsible educators must be hyperconscious of the dangers students face and must make Internet safety a top priority in their technology-enhanced lesson planning. As well, the legal dangers teachers face with copyright laws are nothing to mess around with – copyright infringement has ruined lives. These artifacts are important to share with my colleagues for our students’ protection and our own. To improve the quality of the artifacts before sharing, I plan to add specific standards-aligned lesson models to the blog post and increase the number of scenarios with technology-based solutions in the Prezi. A veteran teacher myself, the research still opened my eyes to the true horrors of the Internet underbelly and potential dangers of copyright infringement. Sharing both artifacts with faculty and students would encourage important dialogue. The impact on faculty development could be assessed via pre- and post-survey determining faculty awareness of how to help students act responsibly and safely online and the specifics of copyright law as it pertains to classroom usage. |