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Copyright & Creativity for Ethical Digital Citizens

June 5, 2024

I found a web tool on educating children and teenagers about copyrights. It seems a perfect fit with what we are learning in LIS 568. It's an appropriate time to experiment with this educational tool as I start to learn basic concepts about copyrights. I feel this tool is beneficial to me as much as to its intended audience.

This web tool - Copyright & Creativity for Ethical Digital Citizens - has been chosen by AASL as the best tool for teaching and learning. Some of the criteria for this recognition by AASL includes

  • Innovation/Creativity
  • Active Participation
  • Collaboration
  • User-Friendly
  • Encourages Exploration
  • Information/Reference
This tool appears to meet these expectations, especially in the areas of Innovation, User-Friendly and Encouraging Exploration.

Objective:

AASL gives a summary of what this tool do and its main objective, which is "to offer useful and positive information about what copyright allows and how students can successfully navigate and rely on copyright in their own roles as creators ...rather than just emphasizing what copyright prohibits," (Best Digital Tools for Teaching & Learning | American Association of School Librarians (ala.org)) This objective aligns with my takeaways from the course so far. The motive for lawmakers to control and protect copyrights is not to take rights away but to promote creativity of the citizens. This concept is demonstrated in the content of this tool.

Content:


The educational resources offered are grouped according to the users' educational levels: Elementary school, Middle School, and High School. There is also professional development resources for teachers. The video offered for each group delivers information that can be understood as well as fun to watch for the corresponding audience. The videos use animation as well as real people and speak to the audience in an engaging tone.

Recommendations:

Some recommendations in my opinion that can improve the learning experience with this tool are:
  • Enable the users to search specific topic and provide the related resource.
  • Offer questions or tests for self evaluation. 
  • Offer practice and exercise so that the users can better understand copyright concepts and use them in real life situations.
Overall, this is a useful tool for starters as well as those with some knowledge to gain more knowledge about copyright in a fun setting.

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