21st Century Information Fluency

Ethical Use of Digital Content

Tip# 1 Respect Copyright Laws

Although documents, pictures, audio and other information are all easy to copy from the Internet, it is your responsibility to understand and respect the laws that protect the author(s) of electronic information. The copyright laws that govern information in all formats are complex. It is impossible to reduce them to a few simple rules. We encourage you to visit the pages listed here. They have been prepared by legal and other experts on the subject of copyright and can help you learn to decide for yourself whether it is appropriate to use electronic information sources in your work.

The first and most important rule is, "If you have any doubt about the legality of using copyrighted information, don't!"

But please note that this is an area of the law that is changing rapidly. All materials recommended here are intended to help you make good decisions. Good decisions related to copyright will always require critical thinking on the part of the user.

Copyright Law in the Electronic Environment An extensive and readable overview of the major terms and concepts related to copyright issues in education.

Fair Use of Copyrighted Materials Deals with the doctrine of fair use, a special application of the copyright laws in the educational environment.

The Copyright Clearance Center specializes in helping users obtain permission to use copyrighted materials. Their web site also contains a selected list of Internet resources on copyright issues.

Copyright and Fair Use An extensive listing of web documents and sites dealing with copyright issues, compiled by the Stanford University Library.

Tip# 2: Use the browser find feature

When you are reviewing web pages to see if they are relevant and worth keeping, you may find yourself scanning pages in search of your key words. One way to do this quickly and easily is to use the browser's "Find" command.

Scanning pages visually can be time consuming and inaccurate. Using this automated feature of your browser can save you time as well as help ensure that you don't miss something, especially if the page is long and involved.

Click the "Edit" menu item at the top of your browser. Then select the "Find on this page" (Internet Explorer) or "Find in page" (Netscape Navigator) command. When the dialog box appears, enter the term you want to find and click enter. Click the "Find Next" button to locate the next occurrence of the term in the page.

One qualification, however, Find only works if the web page is text based and not tied up in frames or complicated tables.

It's true that it USUALLY works, but sometimes it will take an old-fashioned scan to find the information. Double check with a precautionary scan - use it as a helpful tool, if you are certain that the site contains appropriate information do a visual scan before dismissing the site as irrelevant.

Tip# 3: Use bookmarks/favorites to organize documents as you find them

Bookmarks (or Favorites as they are called in Internet Explorer) are a quick and convenient way to save the addresses (URLs) of pages you find and want to revisit. Bookmarking a page or site is as easy as clicking on the Bookmarks (or Favorites) menu item at the top of your browser and then selecting the "Add Bookmark" or "Add to Favorites" item. The address of the page will then be added to your list of Bookmarks.

But when you add Bookmarks this way, the address is simply added to the end of the existing list of Bookmarks. If your list becomes long, it may be difficult to recall which URLs are related to a particular topic. You can save yourself time reviewing and organizing URLs later by organizing them as you go. Both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator enable you to organize URLs into folders.

Netscape Navigator
To create a new folder:

Click the Bookmark menu item at the top of your browser. When the Bookmarks dialog box appears, click on the File menu item and then select "Edit Bookmarks." You will see a new window showing existing bookmarks. To create a new folder, select the File menu item at the top of the Bookmarks window. Then select New Folder. A dialog box will appear. Enter the name of the folder you want to create and click OK.

When you want to add a new bookmark:

Be sure the document you want to bookmark is showing in your browser window. Then click on the Bookmark menu item. If you select "Add Bookmark," the URL will be added to the bottom of your list of bookmarks. You can then move the new bookmark to any folder you choose by clicking and holding the (left) mouse button on the bookmark and dragging it to the folder where you want to store it.

In recent versions of the Netscape Navigator browser, you can also use the "File Bookmarks" item which allows you to place a URL directly into a folder without dragging it from the bottom of the list.

Just click on "File Bookmarks." Select the folder where you want to place the URL. Release the mouse button.

Internet Explorer
To create a new folder:

Click the Bookmark (or Favorites) menu at the top of your browser. Then select "Organize Favorites." The dialog box shows existing bookmarks and allows you to create new folders. Click on the "Create Folder" button. A new folder icon will appear in the Favorites list. Type a name for the new folder. Additional buttons allow you to rename or delete existing folders and files, and move files to folders. You can also organize existing files and folders by dragging them within the list.

Tip# 4: Create an annotated URL list

While bookmarks are a convenient way to store and organize a list of URLs, bookmarks don't allow you to add comments about those URLs.

Traditionally, students are taught how to use the library. Libraries are more frequently being organized around and by the computer. More and more information can be found on the Internet. To be successful, students will need to know how to use these new resources as wisely as, or perhaps more wisely than, they use print resources.

Once you know how to create an annotated list, there will be no end to the adaptations you can make creating annotated lists for the teachers in your school, refreshing old topic lists, and/or teaching others to do the same. When teachers begin to make their own annotated lists for the curricula they teach, you will begin to see a growing mutual learning environment.

There are several ways to make an annotated list of web addresses. Here is a simple, manual process that works on almost all computers.

In some word processors, such as Microsoft Word, the URLs you paste in will become active hyperlinks (underlined in blue), so you can revisit the pages by simply clicking on the links.

First open a word processing program of your choice on your computer. Make the window a little smaller than the size of the screen and move it to the right side of the screen. Now open your browser. Make it a little smaller than the size of the screen and move it to the left side so you can see some of the word processing program's screen at the same time. When you want to save and make comments on a URL, use the mouse to select the URL displayed on the "Location" (Netscape Navigator) or "Address" (Internet Explorer) field at the top of your browser. Usually one click in that field will select the whole URL. Click on the Edit menu and select "Copy" or use the CTRL-C or Open Apple-C keys to copy the selected text. Now click on the visible part of the word processing screen to activate that window and then paste the URL into the word processing program page. You can now add comments describing the contents of the page at this URL. Click on the visible part of the browser screen to activate that window. Repeat the process to add to your annotated list of Internet information resources.

Tip# 5: Cite internet documents correctly

Just as with print resources, there are different ways to cite information found on the Internet. The goal of these different methods is the same--to give credit to the author of the information and to enable the reader to find that information easily. Which citation style you use will depend upon the purpose and audience of your report or presentation. Before selecting a citation method, check with your audience to find out which one is most acceptable. Then be sure to use the same citation method consistently throughout.

Tip# 6: Incorporate text from the web in reports and presentations

Once you have found text information in digital format that you want to use in reports or presentations, you may want to move it from the source page to the pages you are creating in a word processor or presentation program. Because the information is in digital format, this process can be as simple as cutting and pasting.

Note that formatting from the html document may not be preserved, depending on which browser and which word processing program you are using. If you are using recent versions of the Internet Explorer browser and Microsoft Word, standard word processing formatting (bold, underline and the like) will be preserved. If you are using other programs, you may have to do some touch up formatting. In general, html formatting (tables, links and the like) will probably not be preserved. But then we usually don't need those in word processing documents.

In your browser, place the cursor so that it is an arrow icon (not a hand icon). Then click/drag to select the text you want to transfer. Click on the edit menu of your browser and select "Copy" (or use the CTRL-C or Open Apple-C key combination.) Now click in the window of a word processing document. Click on the edit menu item and select "Paste.

Tip# 7: Incorporate images from the Internet in reports and presentations

Images on the Internet come in a variety of digital formats. Recent versions of the major browsers provide built-in software to display most of these formats automatically when the images are embedded in web pages. If you want to download these images (after making sure you are observing copyright laws) and incorporate them in your report (with appropriate citation of the source), you need to know some basic information about digital image formats.

Basic Information

Formats

The most common formats for images on the Internet are .gif (pronounced "gif" as in "gift" or sometime "jif" as in "jiffy") and .jpg or .jpeg (both pronounced "jay-peg"). Files in the .gif format have a .gif attached to the file name, as in image.gif. Files in the .jpeg format have either .jpg or .jpeg attached, as in image.jpg or image.jpeg.

Copyright

If you are confident that you can legally copy an image in one of these formats on the Internet, you can download the file to your computer's hard drive (or to a floppy or other diskette) and then insert it into a word processing or presentation software program.

Web Page Construction

Before you can do this, you need to know a little about how web pages are constructed. A web page that includes an image typically consists of a main page written in html and at least one additional file that contains the image that is displayed in the page. This typical organization means that when you use the "save" or "save as" commands in your browser, only the main html page is saved. The image file is usually not saved automatically. If you use a browser to open the page you saved on your hard drive in this way, the text will be displayed but the images will not.

Saving Files

To save images files so you can use them in other documents, you need to use special software or special browser commands to save the image rather than (or in addition to) the main html page. There are several commercial software programs that allow you to download images. These programs allow you to save main pages, images, and other constituent parts of web pages such as sound files and the like. You can also save images files by using a special feature of the Internet Explorer browser in versions starting with IE 5.0.

To save an image file using Internet Explorer:

First load the page with the image into your browser. Now click on the File menu and select the "Save as..." item. When the dialog box appears, click on the pull down menu following the "Save as type:" line. Select the "Web Page, complete (*htm, *html)" option. When you click the "Save" button, the main web page along with all the files necessary for it to display properly will be downloaded to your disk.

If you navigate to the directory where you instructed the browser to save the page, you will see an html file with the name you selected for the saved file. You will also find a new folder with the same name as the html file. In that folder are stored the image and other files. Open that folder and look for files with the .gif or .jpg endings. There is no way to know exactly what name was given to the image file you want to use. You'll have to use trial and error to find it. Just click on the various .gif or .jpg files. They will open in your browser or perhaps another graphic display program, depending upon how your computer is configured. Once you have found an image file you want, You can simply cut and paste it into a word processing program or into a presentation program. See our citations page for instructions on how to give credit to the author or source of the image file.

Tip #8 Publish Educational Information Using Web Pages

These days it is possible for teachers and students to create web pages for use in learning environments without having to write directly in html code. There are a number of commercial products, called wysiwyg (pronounced "wiz ee wig") editors, that can help you do this. WYSIWYG stands for "what you see is what you get".

There are also free programs that enable you to create web pages easily and conveniently. One easy to learn system is Google Page Creator. Google provides this system free of charge to those who create a Google account.

There are also web sites that offer WYSIWYG interfaces that enable you to easily create and publish web pages without writing html code online. For example, Mind University provides a user-friendly interface for creating, storing, organizing and sharing web pages and is designed specifically for educators and students.

Tip# 9: Use effective design in creating your web page

But what is effective design? Of course, its impossible to answer that question definitively, but a good place to start is to consider the purpose of your pages. We start by assuming that you are designing web pages for use in educational environments, so here are some links to pages that contain "rubrics" used by teachers to assess the impact of web presentations in their classes. They are an interesting place to start developing your own principles and measures of the effectiveness of web pages for learning experiences.

Kathy Schrock's Guide to Website Evalution Schrock lists dozens of excellent resources for evaluaiton of website quality. You're sure to find what you need!

The Blue Web'N Evaluation Rubric The web page evaluation criteria for the popular Blue Web'N educational site.

The "Web Pages that Suck" site One of the most popular commercial sites that offers graphic design criteria for web page design.

Tip #10 Make Your Electronic Information Resources Part of "Engaged Learning" Experiences

Research shows that information technology has the greatest impact on student learning when it is incorporated into authentic, engaged learning experiences. Many organizations have spent hours defining and elaborating on how to integrate information technology with engaged learning.

The North American Council for Online Learning provides a wealth of information developed by onine educators for for educators.

From Now On is a non-profit web site created and maintained by the Educational Technology Journal. It provides extensive professional development resources for educators interested in educational technology and engaged learning.

The Problem Based Learning Network at IMSA is a highly evolved website with many free materials to help educators develop problem based learning activities.