Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Digital Natives, Turn Digital Citizens

In an age where students regularly download or copy information off the Internet, as teachers, it is helpful for us to review with students the Creative Commons licensing site. Here is an article to read more about what Creative Commons entails and how we might integrate it into our teaching: Digital Natives, Turn Digital Citizens. After perusing the article, leave a comment. How might you use information at the Creative Commons site in your own teaching?

2 comments:

Christine said...

This is a very interesting article. This generation of children have grown up with technology essentially as an extension of their right arm. The funny part (at least to me) is that they really don't know how to effectively use it to its fullest potential; especially when it comes to things such as using images, video, others work. They simply think they can grab it and go. That is always my fear when I allow my students to do research on the Internet. This website is very helpful. The Creative Commons allows the children to select images that are allowed for "fair use" and allows me to breathe a little easier for fear of breaching a copyright law.

(Of note, I am also interested in the website that the article referred to that you can check your students work up against a database! That's really incredible to me. Almost scary...)

What does everyone else think? I find this website helpful especially because I teach the little ones and it is never too early to teach them about proper use of other people's creative ideas.

Unknown said...

I love this post! As educators, I think it is important that we teach our students to write and research ethically, which definitely includes teaching students to cite work! I always think the first step of this process is giving students explicit guidelines as to what constitutes plagiarism and what doesn't. (For instance students see a difference between copying from a book rather than a friend's paper, but in both scenarios, its not the student's authentic work.) Once guidelines are set, using a site like Creative Commons would be an excellent way to generate a discussion about digital citizenship and citing online sources. I loved that the author brought up the fact that even though this generation grew up with technology, they are not growing up with all of the ways to appropriately use these tools. With a little explicit instruction and the help of website such as Creative Commons and Turnitin.com, we can help better prepare our students to be successful 21st century learners!

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