I am working on a certification - the ISTE Educator Certification. In the course, we examine the ISTE Educator standards in detail. In particular, I am reflecting on how I am exercising Digital Citizenship skills as a Digital Agent. Specifically, how am I "Mentor(ing) students in safe, legal and ethical practices with digital tools and the protection of intellectual rights and property."("ISTE Standards for Educators", 2017)?
Much written about Digital Citizenship has been more about protecting yourself or Do's and Don'ts. In the refresh of the ISTE Educator Standards, it is more appropriate to view Digital Citizenship as a opportunity to students to responsibly participate in our world.
A large portion of my job is spent creating instructions or tutorials to assist learners at my district use creative tools or purchased systems. In that sense, I am creating things that may contain images to illustrate or enhance a document. I need to model responsible use of anything that I use to ensure I respect intellectual rights of others and copyrights.
I examined a number of items I prepared for this school year and found that when it came to presentations, I always observed copyright and made strides in ensuring that all images were properly used. To do this, I often started looking for images at websites like Photos for Class or Unsplash. I must stress, though, that it isn't enough to use the image from the site like Photos for Class without examining the license closely. To do this, one must always find the original source of the image to determine the usage rights.
I often use resources that are licensed under Creative Commons. What's great about these licenses is that anyone can label their content with a license to let people know exactly how the image should be used. This is a powerful way to share your work so that others can use it.
Wanna Work Together? from Creative Commons on Vimeo.
Something that is common among all of the licenses is that one should attribute the original source and author. This is something that should NOT BE FORGOTTEN and should be consistently practiced when using others' content.
In looking over presentations I have given, I have done pretty well with this!
However, when looking at tutorials I create about online tools used at my district, I have been a little lax with this. For the most part, I am showing images of online pages of proprietary software. I will investigate proper attribution with the companies to ensure I am giving proper attribution.
In addition, sometimes I have copied support articles word for word to help create more condense versions of FAQs for staff. I need to examine how to do this without infringing on copyright. On the one hand, I am creating something more usable for staff. However, this is not modeling proper attribution and responsible usage of someone else's intellectual property.
Overall, this was a useful check to ensure that I am modeling the "safe, legal and ethical practices with digital tools and the protection of intellectual rights and property."
Sources:
ISTE Standards for Educators. (2017). Retrieved May 30, 2019, from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-educators
