Pekin Public School District #108 has no formal policy concerning copyright, intellectual property and fair use. It is touched in our AUP policy in the following ways:
As a classroom teacher, I feel that is my responsibility to teach these issues, and have done so. In my regular Communications class, I use the Truth on the Internet activity that Chip Bruce introduced to use in C&I 335. This involves taking some common "facts" and finding other information about them on the Internet. I also touch on intellectual property issues while teaching credibility, and that any one can have intellectual property but it may not be "right."
With my students in my web page design class, I divide them up into groups and have them read on of the two following websites:
http://www.ala.org/ICONN/issues2.html - This site provides a definitions of copyright, copyright owners, ownership on the web, and how to legally use someone else's information.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/Files/151.htm - This site is a place where there are clear answers to the topics of: Choosing to give credit, Making sure you are safe, and Deciding if something is common knowledge. There are also exercises to practice.
After the students read their web page, their job is to summarize the information in a web site. This allows me to teach the "usual" tools for the day (which for this lesson is a table.) But also allows them to complete an assignment in which they are learning something of value. For further discussion, the students then present their web pages to the class.
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