5 Things We Have to Stop Pretending

"Heiwa Elementary School" by ajari / CC BY 2.0

What should we stop pretending is good in education?

I was first asked this question by +Nancy Minicozzi when she wrote her "5 Things We Have to Stop Pretending." In her blog post, she challenged me and four other educators to come up with our own five things to change in education. Then, after publishing our post, we must pass the challenge to five other educators.

So how can we #MakeSchoolDifferent? Here are five beliefs I think we should change:

1. Our digital natives are digitally proficient.
2. Multiple choice tests and quizzes are effective assessment tools.
3. A quiet audience is a captivated audience.
4. We should teach our content areas in isolation and not recognize the importance of cross-curricular connections.
5. To create an academically rigorous class, teachers need to assign more work, more tests, and more homework.

Below is the elaboration on my five points.

1. Our digital natives are very adept at using technology for social networking and gaming, but we need to give them opportunities to expand on their skills by letting them practice what I perceive to be the "9 C's of Digital Literacy."
2. In the real world, we don't take multiple choice tests to demonstrate our skills. We are asked to create products and provide services, neither of which has any resemblance to the summative assessments most students are asked to complete in schools.
3. Just because students look like they are listening during a lecture, it doesn't mean they are actually learning. Instead, give students the opportunity to practice, explore, and showcase their understanding of a lesson with collaborative work, hands-on learning, and eportfolios. Talk less and have students do more. 
4. The world is interconnected in so many ways. It's time we showed students the connections.
5. Learning doesn't have to be hard for it to be valid. Great teachers scaffold their students so that students can successfully meet their learning goals. Excellent educators make difficult-to-learn concepts easy to understand.

Now I pass the challenge to five of my good friends: +Liz Castillo, +JR Ginex-Orinion, +Jeanne Reed, +Lisa Nowakowski, and +Jo-Ann Fox. I look forward to hearing from them and others who come across our blogs. Please use the hashtag #MakeSchoolDifferent to continue the conversation.

Don't Plagiarize! Just Cite It!

Image by Alice Chen / CC BY 4.0

It's so easy to avoid plagiarize, and yet many students, and even adults, don't realize this. By definition, plagiarism means to take information (words, concepts, creations, etc.) from another person and present it as your own.  You can easily avoid plagiarism by simply citing the source of the information.

Here's a great video created by EasyBib that explains how to cite work so that you don't become a plagiarist. Please share this with your students so that they can be role models for others.

In-text Citations from EasyBib on Vimeo.

Also check out this great resource plagiarism.org to learn more about this topic.

Do You Really Have the Right to Use That?

"Copyright Symbol" by Mike Seyfang / CC BY 2.0

Most students, and even educators, don’t think twice about copying and redistributing content created by other individuals, not realizing that they may be in violation of copyright laws. As of March 1, 1989 all creations (text, images, videos, etc.), automatically receive this protection even if the creator never formally files for copyright status.

In this post, I’ve put together a quick guide to help educators better understand this concept and to help them teach students the need to respect the work of others.

---

Quick Guide to Copyright, Fair Use & Public Domain

---

Copyright

• Only expressions of ideas are copyright protected. (However, appropriating someone else's idea without credit attribution is plagiarism.)
• As of March 1, 1989, all work is copyright protected the moment it is created.
• Copyright registration is not required to copyright a creator’s work. (It is, however, helpful in ligation cases to establish proof of copyright.)

What fair use usually allows (however, there are exceptions)

• Criticism and comments
• News reporting
• Research and scholarship
• Nonprofit educational uses
• Parody
• Noncommercial uses

Does it qualify under Fair Use?

It depends on how you use the work. Each case is unique, and there is no guarantee that the courts will rule in your favor. These are the questions usually considered in a court of law when determining fair use.

• Is this an entirely new creation?
• What is the purpose of using this work?
• Will you be competing with the creator of the original work?
• How much of the original work are you using? (You can only reproduce a small portion of the work.)
• What quality and essence of the original work are you using? (There is no magic percentage that protects you under Fair Use. If it is the “heart and soul” of the work, even reproducing a tiny fraction of the work could be considered a violation of copyright laws.)

How to Determine If a Work Is in the Public Domain (United States Only)

The table below is created from information published by Stanford University Libraries’ “Welcome to the Public Domain.”

Publication	In the Public Domain
Work published before 1923	Yes
Work published between 1923 and 1963	Work has copyright status for the first 28 year, but has to be renewed to retain copyright status
Work published between 1993 and February 28, 1989	If the work has no copyright notice and “the law has not made an exception for its omission, then the work is the public domain.”
Work created by the government	Usually

Sources

"Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright (Library of Congress)." 2007. 15 Feb. 2015

"The 'Fair Use' Rule: When Use of Copyrighted Material is Acceptable." 2011. 28 Jan. 2015

"Welcome to the Public Domain - Stanford Copyright & Fair Use." 2013. 25 Jan. 2015

---

This guide cannot be substituted for legal advice and should not be construed as such. The information contained herein is based on the works cited above.