The assignment titled “Digital Safety Issues” consisted of both collaboration and research. Each group was given the tasks to research for an assigned topic, make a presentation, and share their findings with the class. The topic that my group was assigned was fair user practices and copyright issues. According to Copyright Alliance (2020), “A copyright is a collection of rights [that include the right to reproduce the work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies, and to perform and display the work publicly, and they] automatically vest to someone who creates an original work of authorship - like a literary work, song, movie, or software.” Moreover, Stim (2017), defines fair use as “any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and ‘transformative’ purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work.” Being well-informed of the guidelines can be helpful to anyone who wants to use others' works in their work, all the while avoiding the penalty, respecting copyright protections, and giving credit where it is due.
All of the topics play an important role in creating a cohesive, educational unit because it stresses the importance of digital safety for all users. Digital Citizenship Utah (n.d.) states that “Digital safety is learning how to safeguard your privacy and protect your family from predators as we connect in this new digital age.” As technology advances, older and newer generations learn to become more technology savvy and rely on technology for almost anything. Despite its significance in everyday life, the digital world can be a frightening place if one is not aware of how to stay safe and private. The main purpose of the assignment was to teach us, future educators, the dangers of the digital world. With these findings, we can share the newfound knowledge to our students and address the importance of digital safety for children, adolescents, and adults. If I were given the chance to add any topic, I would add in netiquette. Although the topics discussed the basics of how one should behave online, the information was used as a supplement to call attention to another topic. That said, I would like to learn about the concept and basic rules of netiquette.
When I decide to teach my students ways to be safe on the Internet, I will design an educational lesson plan that will address the topics at hand. According to Green, Holloway, and McKay (2018), “Because school-age children are starting to be independent online and might go online unsupervised, there are more internet safety risks for them than there are for younger children.” With that being said, I will first make a brief introduction to technology and the digital world. Then, I will start a class discussion about digital safety, where I will talk about the definition, major issues regarding the topic like cyberbullying, pharming and phishing, and fair user practices and copyright issues, the do’s and don’ts, as well as general tips for staying safe and private. Along with the class discussion, I will use resources such as educational websites and YouTube videos to share additional information. I will also use game-based learning platforms such as a quiz from Kahoot or Quizizz to test my students’ knowledge. In the end, I will hand out supplementary worksheets for an in-class assignment. Although there are various parts to this lesson plan, I believe each part will play an important role in calling attention to the topic of digital safety.
The web conferencing tool that my group members and I used was WhatsApp. WhatsApp is a free communication platform that allows users to send messages and share media to individuals or groups. With this tool, I communicated and connected with my group members using a group chat daily. In this chat, we discussed individual and group tasks and sent reminders to work on the assignment. Because of this tool, we were able to complete the Google Docs document and Google Slides presentation efficiently. I highly recommend using this communication tool as it is easy to understand and extremely convenient.
Overall, not only has this assignment helped me gain a fair amount of information about fair user practices and copyright issues, but it has also helped me learn about the various issues regarding the digital world. The issues that were discussed all served an important role in revealing the dangers and consequences of the digital world. One change that I would like to suggest for this assignment is to make the groups mandatorily share their websites or presentations. I believe sharing them can be beneficial because it can be helpful in a few ways. In other words, groups can have the opportunity to learn more about the other topics on their own time. Also, the websites or presentations can serve as future references to help us, future educators, when we teach our students about certain topics. Moreover, since researching my group’s topic, I have been more careful when using multimedia for my assignments. Instead of saving the image after searching for it, I would now go to the website and read the directions for usage. Although the digital world and its dangers continue to frighten me, I believe gaining knowledge and becoming aware can help me become more careful in the future.
References
Green, L., Holloway, D., & McKay, D. (2018, December 20). Internet safety: Children 6-8 years. Retrieved May 6, 2020, from https://raisingchildren.net.au/school-age/play-media-technology/online-safety/internet-safety-6-8-years
Stim, R. (2017, April 11). What is fair use? Retrieved May 6, 2020, from https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/
What is copyright?: Copyright alliance. (2020, April 14). Retrieved May 6, 2020, from https://copyrightalliance.org/ca_faq_post/what-is-copyright/
Hi:
ReplyDeleteVery nicely written
-j-