WEEK 1.2 Safe, Legal and Ethical Practices online

Children Dancing, a photo by Government Press Office (GPO) on Flickr licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

SAFE, LEGAL AND ETHICAL PRACTICE ONLINE

SAFE PRACTICE

• Establish expectations for working in online spaces. Link these to face-to-face classroom rules and expectations. 
• Ensure students are aware that all online actions leave a digital trace and that the teacher monitors interactions and activities within the digital spaces used.
• Investigate online collaborative spaces thoroughly before using with students. Best practice is to create generic email addresses, usernames and passwords for sites outside the EQ environment.
• Teach and provide scaffolds/routines to help students keep their passwords secure. Explain why this is important both now and in the future ( i.e. using online banking or social media accounts as adults)
• Ensure that student identities are protected when working online. Teach students basic guidelines this.
• If needed access additional resources around cybersafety.

LEGAL and ETHICAL PRACTICE

• If sharing students work it my be appropriate to  obtain permission from students and/or parents. 
• If sharing/posting images of students ensure you have a written release and protect students' identities.

• Treat all materials, whether print or digital, as being protected under copyright law unless otherwise stated.  Copying of materials requires permission from the copyright owner.
• Use Creative Commons or open access materials wherever possible and attribute correctly. Teach students to do the same.
• Completely original works and those created using Creative Commons licences can be shared freely online by students. If the work contains copyright material that has been accessed under fair dealing, it should only be shared in a password protected location within the educational institution. Ethically teachers should ask permission to share student work and attribute accordingly.
• Teachers should label their own original work correctly – remembering that although they are the creators of the material the copyright is owned by their employer (i.e. Education Department). It is important to do this to avoid educational institutions paying fees to use works they already own.
• Because teachers do not own the copyright for work created as part of their duties, they need to consult with their local copyright manager (school authority) when deciding where and how to share their work. 

LICENCES used in EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS

STUDENTS are able to use a reasonable portion of copyright materials for study and research purposes under the copyright exception of fair dealing.

TEACHERS usually access material under two main statutory licences.

Part VB: Copying and communicating text, images and notated music.

 Education Licence B: Statutory Text and Artistic Licence allows the copying of a reasonable portion of a work for educational purposes. If this material is communicated electronically it must be accompanied by Part VB Notice ( EUS).

PART VB also includes an  Intellectual Disability Licence which allows Educational institutions to copy works for the purpose of helping a person with an intellectual disability ( NOTE: they must be destroyed after 3 months of the date they are made).

PART VA: copying and communicating material from TV or Radio

Education Licence A: Statutory Broadcast Licence allows entire radio and TV programs to be recorded/copied and communicated. It only applies to material that has been broadcast “ free to air”  AFTER 29^th January 1990. If this material is communicated electronically it must be accompanied by Part VA Notice.

Both these licences rely on the material being used for educational purposes only. Therefore any digital materials created using 3^rd party materials accessed under these licenses must be stored/accessed from a password protected site e.g. Learning Place EdStudio or Virtual Classroom.

Students should only have access to materials needed for the course of study at the time. Delete or archive unused materials as fees are calculated on whether students can access the resource NOT whether they are actually using it. ( To Further Explore….Teachers may also use the timer function on a Virtual Classroom to limit the window of access for materials – use groups function to provide access to the specific materials groups of students need rather than providing access to all materials).

NOTE materials accessed under PART VA and PART VB are paid for by educational institutions. CAL (Copyright Agency Limited) collect licence fees from Education Departments for materials used under PART VB. Screenrights is the collecting agency for copyright material covered under part VA.

This is a very good reason to use Creative Commons or Open Access resources where possible. They are free!

Under NEALS – National Educational Access Licence for Schools teachers are able to use publicly available educational materials produced by other schools and educational bodies free of charge, unless the material is specifically excluded.

Information sourced from

The Australian Copyright Council- http://www.copyright.org.au/

Smartcopying - http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/

Useful Resources

http://www.slideshare.net/nationalcopyrightunit

For information related specifically to the use of  ICT in Education Queensland refer to Acceptable Use of the Department's Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Network and Systems