A Transition to 1:1 in Middle School – Creative Commons
This coming August the Middle School/High School will be fully 1:1. Every student in our Middle School will be receiving a TabletPC for the first time on August 17, 2010. With that in mind, I’ve started thinking about how we can smoothly transition our students into this new environment. What are the important ideas that we need discuss and promote as a school to our students from Day One?
Of course, we’ll need to teach some of the technology operations and concepts: how to use OneNote effectively; how to use Outlook for email and assigned tasks; how to replace the daily planner with an electronic version (probably, once again, using Outlook’s calendars); how to effectively use our school’s SharePoint portal.
I think it is also vitally important to reach some essential agreements – among teachers and stated explicitly to students during that first week – on issues related to the use of technology: cyberbullying, online identity, privacy, digital footprints and copyright. (If there is more that you’d add to this list, I’m all ears! Leave ‘em in the comments below.)
I started thinking about a scope and sequence for teaching Creative Commons and copyright to middle school students*:
| Grade 6 | Grade 7 | Grade 8 | |
| Creative Commons/ Copyright | • Understand the meaning of copyright.
• Understanding and recognizing CC licenses. • How to find CC licensed work. |
• Citing CC licensed work in your own projects.
• It is expected that students attempt to find CC licensed work before copyrighted work. • All work is to be cited correctly in the body of the work and in the bibiliography (MLA format) |
• Explore Fair Use and explain how it can be used in school and at home.
• Students are to use CC licensed work except in the instance in Fair Use. • Students are able to justify why the feel their use of Copyrighted works falls under Fair Use. |
Does this seem reasonable? Are my expectations too low? Too high?
How do you teach Creative Commons at your school? What are the minimum expectations that you put on each grade level?
* – to simplify my life, I’m conveniently ignoring the fact that our grade 5 students will be in a 1:1 environment next year as well. I haven’t included them in my scope and sequence, although I probably should!
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