Public
Schools Handling Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Plagiarism
Missouri
Baptist University
Stacia
Wagers
August
13, 2012
The
more technology impacts the school curriculum the more changes have to be made
to ensure academic integrity. As educators it is our responsibility to teach
students proper procedures and legal and ethical behavior in regards to digital
citizenship. Teachers need to model for students those same behaviors. The more
access we have to a variety of multimedia the more we need to educate student’s
acceptable methods to use this information. “We have to set this bar of
expectation student must learn to give credit where credit is due. Integrity
work ethical responsibility.” (Huffman 2010, 38)
United
States Patent and Trademark office defines intellectual property as “imagination made real. It is the ownership
of a dream, an idea, an improvement, an emotion that we can touch, see, hear,
and feel.” (U.S. Patent and Trademark, 2006)There are four ways to protect
the different types of intellectual property: patents, trademarks, copyrights,
and trade secrets.
First, most do not understand that legally,
regardless of format used for expression or communication, credit must still be
given to authors, designers, photographers etc of works that are used as a
foundation for professional presentations, classroom lectures, videos, teaching
materials, student work. (Huffman 2010, 38-39)
It is important that
educators understand and can explain intellectual property to students and help
them understand that just because you have access to all of these different
forms of media you have to use caution.
Another component is
the term “Fair Use” The U.S. Copyright Office defines:
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which
the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as
criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether
or not a particular use is fair.
1. The purpose and character of the use,
including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit
educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion
used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential
market for, or value of, the copyrighted work (U.S. Copyright Office, 2012)
Fair
use had very broad criteria. The best way to explain fair use is by examples. Teachers
and library media specialists have to monitor student research and multimedia
projects to ensure student work follows the proper ethical standards.
Students
have access to all types of information on the web and the market is ripe with
dishonest people willing to sell documents to them. Recently a news
organization uncovered a man posing as a student and taking standardized tests
for a price. Plagiarism is a growing problem in our school communities. For
years it has mainly be an issue at the collegiate level. Plagiarization can be
tempting with the pressure students find themselves in to perform. So how do we
combat this issue? Many schools have no-tolerance policies regarding
plagiarism. Degrees of disciplinary action vary by case. Companies have also created software that can
be used to scan work and flag suspicious documents. As educators, we need to teach students about
the pitfalls of plagiarism. A student can ruin their whole academic career with
just one bad choice. We need to create an environment of academic integrity and
honesty.
In
2010 the Missouri Department of Education unveiled grade level expectations for
information communication for technology literacy for grades K-8. Section 6 A
deals with standards for digital citizenship and academic honesty. “Practice
ethical, legal, and safe use of information and technology.” (D.E.S.E, 2010) So
as an educator for the state of Missouri it is my responsibility to educate
students of the laws regarding intellectual property, copyright, and plagiarism.
Also I must demonstrate for students ethical behaviors in following the law. The
21st Century learner needs to understand and demonstrate these
characteristics on a daily basis. It is vitally important for schools to
incorporate these academic honesty policies. During the course of my research I
located several local school districts that have academic honesty policies in
student handbooks. One district took this policy one step further. The Parkway
District also had a resource page of links for parents and students. Parkway School District has created an
expectation and environment where ethical behaviors are the norm. Students need
to be held accountable for the work they produce.
In an article written for Tech Trends in 2010 the author
Stephanie Huffman describes the lack of citing resources in regards to multimedia
presentations. Unlike research papers where students learn through the writing
process to document cited sources, multimedia presentations currently have no
standard of documentation. Being so students are creating multimedia
presentations for assignments this gap needs to be addressed.
Compounding
the problem is the growing popularity of “mashups” in which users create new
music or videos from existing materials. The “fair use” doctrine often (but not
always) protects material used for classroom projects, scholarship, and
research, but
students
may not realize that fair use does not apply to works used for commercial
purposes, such as music posted on an employer’s website or images used in company
reports and presentations. (Veltsos &Veltsos 2010, 465)
We have to protect our students and ourselves
from making poor choices. The school community has to set the example of being
good digital citizens and meeting academic honesty standards. We need to create
an environment where citing resources is habit. “Students, for example, must
learn that access to works on the Web (Zmuda & Harada 2008, 107) “Does not
automatically mean that these materials can be reproduced and reused without
permission or royalty payment” (Donham 2005, 222) As Missouri educators in
order to meet grade-level expectations we need to teach our students how to be
great digital citizens of the 21st century.
References
Citefast (2008). Citefast. Retrieved
August 12, 2012, from http://www.citefast.com/
Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary
Education (2010, March). D.E.S.E Information and Communications Technology
Literacy Grade-Level Expectations. Retrieved August 10, 2012, from http://http://dese.mo.gov/divimprove/curriculum/GLE/documents/cur-ca-il-gle-0410.pdf
Parkway School District (2012, May).
Intellectual Property. Parkway School District. Retrieved August
10, 2012, from http://http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/panda/subjectlinks/copyright.html
U.S. Copyright Office
(2012, June). U.S. Copyright Office. Retrieved August 12, 2012, from http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
United States Patent and Trademark Office (2006,
August 21). What is Intellectual Property.United States Patent and Trademark
Office. Retrieved August 12, 2012, from http://http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/museum/1intell.htm
Huffman, S. (2010). The Missing Link: The lack
of citations and copyright notices in multimedia presentations. TechTrends, 54(3),
38-44.
Veltsos, J. R., & Veltsos, C. (2010).
Teaching Responsibly with Technology-Mediated Communication. Business
Communication Quarterly:Focus on Teaching, 463. doi:10.1177/1080569910385397
Zmuda, A., & Harada, V. (2008). Looking to
the Future: Providing Resources to Support 21st century learning. In Librarians
as learning specialist:meeting the learning imperative for the 21st century.
(1st ed.). (p. 107). West Port, CT/USA: Libraries Unlimited.
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