Scenario+B

Recap of Scenario B:

You have several seventh grade science classes collaborating on wikis. Students are divided into groups and are collecting information on each of the kingdoms of living organisms. The wikis are used to present the information, including some slide presentations and graphics your students have created. Your Monera kingdom group has been doing extremely creative work and has created an impressive presentation on bacteria.

The group has received a request by a teacher to use some of their graphics on bacteria cell structure for a project at a school in a nearby state. The students who created the work would get credit for their contribution, and the request is for two graphics out of over a dozen in the presentation.

How do you advise your students?

Before responding to the request, I would check to see that the teacher is a teacher as he/she suggests. I would do this by getting a name of the teacher requesting the information and the school district in which they work and first checking their school's website for their name and biographical and professional data. If that would not work, I would call the school district. If I got not response then we would ignore the request. I find it interesting that the wiki was not set up in a "protected/private" site from an audience availability point of view. Why are outside people able to view and respond to this classroom activity?

The project teacher should spend class time talking about copyrights, intellectual property and how to protect their creative work as well as credit the creative work of others. Plagiarism should be discussed, how it would feel to see one of their illustrations or slides show up on the internet without any credit to them and why it is wrong to plagarize other's work or to use without credit and/or permission. Students should know that teachers use programs to check if students have plagairized.

The teacher would need to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of putting someting on the internet with one's name - even if it is to credit you for something you have created.

If the school allows for students to have their name used on the internet for something related to the school parents will need to be contacted to see if they agree to having their child's name noted as the creator or contributor to an illustration, slide, etc. Parents could be referred to either online information about copyrights ( Creative Commons FAQ [] or Us Copyright Office's FAQ []) or could be given a handout with information if they do not themselves have access to the internet.

The teacher will need to consider how to determine who is to be credited for the illustrations, etc. In some situations this would be clear-cut, in others where many people had a hand in the creation it might be less clear and the teacher may decide to credit the entire class. Student's could receive credit by their first name, by the class's name (6th Grade Mr. Brown's Self-Contained Class, Martic Elementary School) or with parental permission, and if it does not contradict school policy,their full name.

It would be wise to address all of these issues in advance with the students. In the letter home to the parents the teacher might want to anticipate how he/she would deal with giving credit for specific work, taking into account school policies regarding privacy, internet useage etc. If there are no school policies that address this scenario the teacher might want to talk with school administrators about how to proceed.