Mission Completed! / My Reflections

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

Copyright Basics for Teachers. Produced by Royce Kimmons. YouTube. May 11, 2016. Accessed March 26, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9H6Ksp36q0.

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.