Digital Citizen's Arrest

As educators we have a very important job. We must help encourage our students to be lifelong learners so that they can create. Anderson’s taxonomy is an evolution from Bloom’s in which the highest virtue is to create and in doing that we must ensure they are creating their own work. We must hold our students accountable for digital copyright law. The goal of copyright law and policy is to foster the progress of science, the creation of culture, and the dissemination of ideas. (ARL, 2015). Thus teachers and copyright lawyers are essentially there to foster a society in which everyone wants to create.

As educators I wonder what efforts we make to this end? What have I done to help foster the creation of culture and dissemination of ideas? I would think that most teachers look for plagiarism, but this is more of a punitive action. We should be doing more to help our students understand what plagiarism and copyright infringement are and what they are not (Bailey, 2013). Often times the the 2 overlap, but not always. Ribble (2015) discusses digital law as one of the 9 elements of digital citizenship education. Plagiarism is fairly simple, it essentially asks the student to ensure the work they turn in is their own. So why do students plagiarize? Most often it is due to extreme procrastination that puts them into a corner and up against a deadline. Other times they are disengaged from the topic and could not be bothered to read and analyze so as to create their own thoughts. There seems to be a bigger issue at play. And it is the student engagement. For me the COVA approach (Harupnik, 2018) has allowed me to give up control in the classroom and allow my students to take a more active role in their own education.

Recently, I sat in a meeting where department heads were chatting about a testing incentive for our statewide assessments. I couldn’t help but think if there were better incentives aside from just exempting students from the final. What if we provided alternative options to create something. Perhaps if we are discussing Biology class, the students could focus on a real world topic from the course and give a TED talk on something they have seen in the real world where the concepts taught in class intersected with their own lives. Perhaps they can start a blog in which they discuss biological topics that matter to teens. Helping students to create new and innovative projects can actually help us get a better idea of just how proficient they are in a subject area. It also allows them to unlock their creativity; something that bubble tests will never accomplish.

Ultimately, instead of viewing copyright and plagiarism as a burden of education we need to see it as an opportunity to do what copyright was meant to do all along. We want to progress our society and encourage people to create. It starts with the lens through which we look. Students need good role models who are willing to step outside the box of what was always done and help us forge a new path in education that more efficiently gets us to our destination.




References


(2018, July 14). COVA - It's About Learning. Retrieved December 7, 2019, from http://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6991

Bailey, Jonathan (2013, October 7). The Difference Between Copyright Infringement and Plagiarism. Retrieved December 7, 2019, from https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2013/10/07/difference-copyright-infringement-plagiarism/

Ribble, M. (2015). Digital Citizenship in Schools (3rd ed). Eugene, OR: International Society in Education.