Information at Our Fingertips

Judy Johnson, GCHS English Deptarment Head

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We live in an age of wonders: at our fingertips, we have the ability to create understanding of material in ways that meet the needs of our students, and in such a way, that those students can captivate audiences while sharing what they have done. With power comes responsibility. We are able to access more information with just a few clicks of a mouse, but we need to make sure that we are crediting the sources for that information.

Below are listed some links for teachers and students to use when creating presentations as well as some links that will aid us as a school in making sure that we are giving credit where credit is due.

Every item that is used, unless you created it yourself (in that case, you want the recognition!), needs to be accredited to the person or persons who created it. This means that every project needs to have a bibliography because even material from a free site needs to have documentation about from where it was taken.

The two links below from the Landmark project are online permission forms (one for teachers, one for students) to aid individuals in asking permission to use materials that are not free. Many free materials sites do make the stipulation that they are given credit for the material, but even if it doesn’t state that in the fine print on their page, their information needs to be cited. 

http://landmark-project.com/permission_student.php
This URL listed above is a student permission form. It provides a fill-in-the-blank template that students can use in order to contact the creator of the material that they wish to use. It provides all the necessary contact information for the student and the recipient.  Teachers may wish to use the URL listed below for similar purposes.
http://landmark-project.com/permission1.php

To create a bibliography, nothing can be simpler than navigating to the following site:  www.easybib.com.  Easybib.com is a spot where a person can create a bibliography on the fly. It even keeps track of the sources used during a session. Just keep a window open while accessing the Internet and copy and paste the information in it. If the work is done simultaneously, the bibliography will be done before the project is. Then to finish, all that one has to do is copy and paste it into the project or save it as a separate file to be handed in with the project.

Below is a chart that lists the fair usage for any type of material that students or teachers may wish to include in a project. This chart can be downloaded as a PDF file.
Classroom Copyright Chart

Please notice that this chart indicates that re-posting to the Internet requires permission; no how small the sample size is you still have to give credit and receive permission for use.