Connections Matter! Kids, Computers, and Curriculum

Parents and administrators are often concerned about students and the Internet. With a little foresight, having your students use the Internet can be an educationally enriching and safe experience. These are some guidelines I follow in my classroom: Always get a signed permission slip from the students' legal guardians, giving the students permission to use and publish to the Internet. Emphasize that students will be monitored at all times to ensure their safety. Do not let students use email, IM's (Instant Messaging), or chat rooms. It is very hard to monitor content on any of these. If your class uses a bulletin board to post discussions, all posts are tracked by ISP number. Email, IM's, and chat rooms are much more difficult to keep track of. Never post names and pictures on the same site. I try to use group shots, rather than individual poses. Never use full names on student work published on the website. I use first names and last initials. Establish rules for procedures for students to use when the inevitable accidental X-rated site appears. My kids instantly close the screen and then tell me. They know that the software on the server will record it, and we log the accidental access so that they are not accused of inappropriate use. (Many providers take advantage of typing errors to attract people to X-rated sites. Try typing "anglefire" instead of "angelfire," for instance.) Use webquests and scavenger hunts where the links are prescreened for research projects. This cuts down on accidents.

Fair Use and Copyright Infringement

Fair Use on the Internet is a legal quagmire. There are so many sites that deal with Fair Use in the classroom, but no firm case law that applies it to the Internet. It is so easy for students (and teachers) to cut-and-paste from online sites that plagiarism is a real problem. There is also a huge amount of "illegal" material that, despite being still under copyright, has been uploaded in its entirety. The acid test I use with my kids is that if they are depriving an author of rightful royalties, uploading or downloading the material is illegal. This goes for short stories, poetry, and artwork. All artwork that is used for illustration must be attributed to the author, and permission should be sought. Sometimes there are ways around this - a link can be made to Amazon to show the book jacket, for example, or links to online poster catalogues can be inserted. For teachers, each website should be investigated individually. Many teachers post their study guides, projects, and units online so that others may use them freely. Others ask that teachers who use them give the authors credit. Some websites contain pirated material and should not be used at all. (I found an enormous web unit devoted to the complete details of Fran Claggett and Joan Brown's book Drawing Your Own Conclusions on a SCORE website. They had no permission from the authors, and the only attribution was a tiny mention of the publisher. Fran and Joan complained, and the website was taken down, but the website had been up for quite a while.) I also use the search engines to help me find plagiarism. If a paper looks suspicious, I type in a section with distinguishing characteristics in a search engine. Enclose the text in quotations. If the text you entered didn't turn up anything, try another section. The search engines are incredibly efficient and will usually turn up the plagiarized material.

Clip Art

Clip art is a very sensitive area. Every clip art site I have ever visited has some version of a "terms and conditions" page which details the way in which the clip art may be used. Most clip art sites will give permission for art to be used on a personal site, and it states the provisions for commercial use. Artists and collectors will frequently ask for a link back to their site so that others may visit. (Typically clip art collections make money from the number of "hits" they get from customers, so the links actually increase their profits.) Some original clip are may not be used without paying a licensing fee. Teach your students to check the terms and conditions pages rigorously. A cyberacquaintance of mine is waiting to hear if she will be sued by a large publishing house for including copyrighted clip art on a collection page she maintained. She got permission to include the art from the collection where she found the art, but legally those people didn't have the right to give her that permission. She is facing a court case and a hefty fine. When in doubt, write for permission. I have never been turned down when I have requested permission to use clip art for a school site.

MP3's and Music

With the advent of Napster and other types of file transfer protocols, the trading of music files is rampant. Anyone with the relatively inexpensive equipment can buy a CD and upload it to the Internet. Much of this music is copyrighted, and letting students use it is copyright infringement. It is almost impossible to know what is legal, and I ban all music that doesn't specifically say it is free to use. There are a number of sites online that have non copyrighted music, and many of the bigger computer stores sell CD's of music intended for this use. Be careful, though; as with the clip art, there is a lot of music that looks legal on the website but is pirated.