To all parents and caregivers,

Welcome back to the second part of 'Mr Davies CyberSafe Blog'. I hope you have gained some valuable reflection over the past week and was able to engage in those open and honest conversations about appropriate online behaviour with your son or daughter.

This week I will begin with discussing intellectual property, in particular plagiarism and Creative Commons. Plagiarism refers to the copying of writing/information without due recognition (Brick, 2011), and Creative Commons is the licence that grants copyright permissions to creative works. Understanding intellectual property is important as it allows us to recognise innovation and hard work generated by others. By year 10, students should be able to: 

-Apply practices that comply with legal obligations regarding the ownership and use of digital products resources (ACARA, 2016 p.7) and
-Identify and describe ethical dilemmas and consciously apply practices that protect intellectual property (ACARA, 2016 p.7).

CC0
https://pixabay.com/en/glasses-read-learn-book-text-272399/

In order to meet these standards, imbedded into my history classroom is the use of high quality research generated from a variety of academic search engines and books. As such, the students also develop a range of strategies in order to best understand the sources they are reading and citing. ‘The Little Penguin Handbook’ published by Pearson Australia is a shared classroom resource that discusses various aspects of academic writing, including; finding and incorporating sources, effective language, and the legality of information ownership. This resource, plus reflective quizzes (Kahoot/Socrative), are utilised to ensure students understand and are exposed to intellectual property and its importance in today’s society. Furthermore, it is a requirement of assessment that students submit through Turnitin, a free text-matching tool, with this plus correct use of referencing worth 20% of all assessment pieces.

Try not to feel overwhelmed if this is new or seems alien to you. Both the student’s and I have been practicing these strategies all term and still continue to find new, or contrasting understandings of intellectual property each week. The following sites are simple and helpful guides to understanding plagiarism and Creative Commons at home;

http://www.plagiarism.org/

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

I cannot emphasis enough the importance of student’s ability to write truthfully, and recognise others intellectual property, not just for future academia but also their own integrity in the adult-world. A strategy you as parent’s can utilise is involving yourself in the writing process of your child’s assessments. I would recommend you:

-Discuss where they retrieved their sources from.
-Have them explain their argument to you in 20 words or less.
-Encourage them to articulate how and why they used other authors to support their own position.

-Ensure all pictures/graphs/tables are cited in some way.
-Suggest they read their assessment out-loud to ensure they can pronounce/understand each word they have used.

Once again I would recommend you continue to have open and honest conversations with your child about the importance of recognising intellectual property and relay any queries back to me.

I hope these two blog posts have helped you develop your own understandings of safe, ethical and responsible uses of ICT. I plan to continue these blogs next term, and together we can create a digital world in which your children thrive.

With warm regards,

Mr Davies.

References

Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (2016). Information and Communication Technology Capability Learning Continuum
< http://v7-5.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/Pdf/ICT> (Accessed on 12/10/2017)

Brick, J. (2011) Academic Culture: A student’s guide to studying at university. Macmillan Publishers Australia.  

http://www.plagiarism.org/

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/