Students working in online environments and/or who are using other peoples created works need to have an understanding of safe legal and ethical practices related to their own practices.
It is important to keep students safe with regard to this subject. Firstly, students must be taught online etiquette and acceptable behaviour. Students must be made aware of policy relating to online bullying and the consequences for both bully and victim. Students must be made aware of how inappropriate postings of a slanderous nature, relating to individuals, businesses and services may result in legal issues. Having discussed the negative it is also important to provide examples and discuss appropriate online behaviour and how positive commenting on others works, can have an impact on collaboration. Students must be made aware of not posting personal information which may allow them to be identified to ensure they are kept safe. Teachers should continually monitor students and their online activities to ensure they are working within the policies and are kept safe.
Ethical practices involved with online interaction is an area under constant development. As new technologies are appearing so rapidly, there must be guidelines for it's involvement with students. Certain online technologies exclude children under certain ages from using the tools and students must be made aware of these. Academic fraud is an area students should be educated on as it is important to ensure that the work an individual has submitted is genuinely their own work.
It is essential to educate students on the importance of copyright legislation. Today's students can have access to just about limitless works of others that they can included in their own. Copyright is the rights that are given to the original creator/s of a piece of creative works to stop others from being able to copy without their permission. This gives control of the creative works to the creator/s. This allows them to make decisions about who can and how their works can be used by others. Copyright protect's images, text, music, dramatic works, films and moving images and sound recordings. Copyright protects images, text, plays and songs until 70 years after the death of the creator. Copyright protects films, MP3s and CDs for about 70 years after the works have been released.
Copyright cannot protect ideas.
Plagiarism is another area where students need to be educated. Plagiarism involves using another person's creative works and claiming it is your own.
It is important for teachers to be aware of the policy's relating to individual learning centers where they are involved with to ensure that they are not working outside of the established guidelines for that site and that students are protected.
When using the creative works of others, it is important to gain consent from the creator and/or be aware of what you can use and how much and how to attribute. I am aware of legislative requirement and I know where I can access more information relating to the specifics.
Students can be encouraged to provide links to the creative works of others rather than uploading as no consent is required for this. Most creative works require greater that 10% of entire works to be used before consent is needed to be gained, however attribution is required.
Link to further copyright information
http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/go
Queensland Government Department of Education specific information
http://education.qld.gov.au/web/schools/riskman.html
Link to copyright information created for children.
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