Dear Principal Smith,
I wanted to let you know that I
have completed my assignment to research how we, as a school staff, can help
our students become ethical, digital citizens. This process has been very
beneficial and I think you will be pleased with the information I have learned
and the resources I have found to share with our staff during professional
development this year. Below is a summary of the work I have completed. I look
forward to meeting with you and discussing what action we want to take next to
implement some of these ideas on our campus. I truly appreciate the opportunity
you gave me to grow as a professional through this project.
Sincerely,
Emily Adams
Article Analysis
In the article, Youth, Creativity, and Copyright in the
Digital Age (Barns, et al. 2009), the authors address the copyright and
ethical issues that today’s young people or “Digital Natives” are faced with on
a regular basis as they use online tools to be creative. This article provides
a sample curriculum with practical ways for educators to teach their students
to be ethical digital citizens. Using this interactive curriculum as a guide, I
would like to create a staff development program for teachers so that they are
informed and can model what it means to use digital content ethically for their
students.
Collection Development
I would like to order the
following materials to provide our teachers with a special collection of
resources that focuses on educating students about ethical behavior in a 21st
century digital learning environment. These materials could easily serve as a
part of our professional development curriculum for next year.
·
Ribble, Mike.
Digital Citizenship In Schools: Nine Elements All Students Should Know.
3rd ed. Duluth, ISTE, 2015. Paperback. ISBN: 978-1-56484-364-7. Price:
$31.24
In this book,
Mike Ribble provides information that will allow teachers and students alike to
become productive and responsible users of digital technologies. He provides
sample lesson plans for teaching digital citizenship to students as well as
professional development activities to teach citizen concepts to educators.
· Fromm, Megan. Ethics and Digital Citizenship. New York:
Rosen Publishing's Rosen Central, 2015. Hardback. ISBN: 978-1477780664. Price:
$30.25.
This book discusses
the ethics of journalism for students who are growing up in the digital age.
Readers will learn about important issues such as censorship, self-expression,
and social media.
· Hsu, Jeffrey. International Journal of Cyber Ethics in
Education, 2011. E-Journal. ISSN: 2155-6903 Price: $260.00
This is a
quarterly-published journal that provides readers with state-of-the-art
research on the impact and general principles of ethical computer use in an
educational setting. Some of the topics covered include: teachers and ethical
use of computers, plagiarism and intellectual property rights, and ethical
issues in e-learning.
Interview
In an interview with a library-media specialist at one of the public
high schools in our community, I learned how to redirect and help teachers when
they are providing their students with instructions that are unethical or do
not comply with copyright law. This interview process was very valuable to me
because even though I am comfortable with correcting students who are behaving
unethically, providing the same correction to teachers is much more
intimidating to me. I now feel much more confident in leading professional
development on ethical behavior in a 21st century learning environment with our
staff.
Webpages
The following websites provide
resources that will help our teacher educate their students about copyright law
and how to have behave ethically as they write and create. Some of the
resources can also be used by administration to educate teachers on following
copyright law.
Edutopia is a website and online community that "increases knowledge, sharing, and adoption of what works in K-12 education." Check out their "Five-Minute Film Festival: Copyright and Fair Use for Educators" for a compilation of videos that can help educators explain and teach copyright law and fair use to their students in a way that makes sense to them. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/film-festival-copyright-fair-use
Copyright Clearance Center is an organization whose goal is to make it easy for businesses and academic institutions get the licensing they need in order to adhere to copyright law. Check out their many videos that can be used to teach about copyright law. http://www.copyright.com/learn/media-downloads/videos/
Purdue Online Writing Lab is a free source that can be used by teachers and students for help with research writing. Check out this page that explains how to determine whether or not a resource is a credible source. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/588/02/
FlickrCC is a portion of Flickr that contains works that are under Creative Commons Licensing. Provide students and educators alike with this source so they can learn to use photos and graphics ethically in their presentations. https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
Research Article Analysis
Lau, Wilfred W.F., and Allan H.K.
Yuen. "Internet Ethics of Adolescents: Understanding Demographic
Differences." Computers & Education 72 (2014): 378-85.
doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2013.12.006.
This study looked at
adolescents/digital natives and their likelihood to participate in unethical
digital behaviors such as unauthorized acts, internet stickiness*, and
plagiarism (Lau and Allan 2014, pp. 378). According to the authors, adolescents
lack the experience and knowledge to make ethical decisions, and now, with
information at their fingertips, digital natives have an even harder time
making ethical digital decisions (Lau and Allan 2014, pp. 378).
After reading this research, I
understand more than ever the need for educators to be proactive in helping
students develop moral and ethical behavior when dealing with digital media.
Many times, adolescents do not have the experience or mental maturity and
development to make ethical decisions on their own. It is our job to guide them
to learn best practices for using digital media. This research confirms my
project of creating a professional development program for educators in order
to teach them how to guide students to use the internet and digital resources
properly.
*Example
of Internet Stickiness: feeling unease when there is no internet online access
for a certain period.
Grants & Funding
The following grants are available
for high school librarians and could be used to develop a program that teachers
educators how to instill ethical digital behavior in today’s youth.
· Laura Bush
21st Century Librarian Program: The
Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program (LB21) supports professional
development, graduate education, and continuing education to help libraries and
archives develop a diverse workforce of librarians to better meet the changing
learning and information needs of the American public.
· Activating
Community Opportunities Using Museums/Libraries as Assets – A National
Leadership Grants Special Initiative: The Institute
of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is interested in supporting projects that
address significant challenges and opportunities facing the library, archive,
and museum (LAM) fields and that have the potential to advance theory and
practice.
· Inspired
Special Event Grant by AASL: This grant
opportunity supports a special event so that an existing public middle or high
school library can create new or enhance its extracurricular activities in
order to increase student academic achievement at their school. The goal is to
provide direct assistance funding to middle or high school libraries for
special short-term projects or events that would create new or enhance
educational activities in order to engage students with and in the library and
to promote reading, books, literacy and authors.
Film
The following video provides very
valuable information about the ethical use of digital media in the educational
setting. So many teachers believe that they can use anything “for educational
purposes” and they are highly mistaken. It is so important that our teachers
understand the terms copyright, fair use, public domain and creative commons
and that they model the proper way to use digital media for their students.
Workshop
Amsberry, Dawn, Joann Dornich, Karen Feldbaum, and Andrew Tatusko.
"Strategies to Make Academic Integrity Work as an Educational
Process." Webinar, Penn State World Campus, August 15, 2015. https://meeting.psu.edu/p71g3as0c1h/.
This webinar was hosted on August
15, 2015 and was geared towards instructors at Penn State University. The
presenters discuss difference resources and strategies that instructors can use
in order to prevent plagiarism and other issues of academic integrity and
ethical behavior. They also made sure that participants understood the
university’s academic integrity policy and what steps to take when students do
not adhere to it. Since my research for this semester has focused on ethical
behavior in a 21st century high school learning environment, there were many
valuable points and ideas that I can apply to a high school library setting.
My Reflections
I
really enjoyed learning about digital citizenship and the ethics of digital
learning in the high school library setting. I think that one of the biggest
points that stuck out to me was that we, as educators, have the opportunity to
shape our curriculum and assignments in a way to where students are more
inclined to use ethical behavior. I have always thought that students just need
to know and follow “the rules.” However, this project has shown me that we
cannot provide traditional, “old-school” assignments and content in a digital
environment if we want students to learn and achieve something. Many times,
traditional assignments such as worksheets, provide an easy opportunity for
students to behave unethically by cheating, plagiarizing, ghosting, etc. In the
webinar I watched from Penn State, one of the presenters recommended providing
students with assignments that are personal to them so they are not able to
copy one another or paste the answer from the internet.
While
I think that it is important for us to educate students on ethical behavior in
a 21st century learning environment, I think it is equally important for us to
model what that looks like for our students. In order to do so, teachers and
educators need to be taught what digital citizenship should look like in the
classroom. Hosting professional development workshops on digital citizenship
and ethical research strategies is important in order to make sure all teachers
have the same information to share with their students. I appreciated the
advice I was given during my interview with a high school librarian in my
community. She told me to always let the teacher save face in front of
students, but to always confront them in private if they are providing
unethical instructions.
Overall,
this project was extremely beneficial and applicable to my current job and the
school setting in which I work. Right now, I work with 9th-12th grade students
who are enrolled in a blended high school learning program. Some of their
schoolwork is completely online. They struggle with ethical behavior while
using internet resources to complete their coursework when the teacher of
record is not in the room to keep them accountable. I plan to use the
information and materials I found during this study to help the teachers,
academic coaches, and students on my campus learn to have ethical behavior in a
digitally-driven environment.
