Ethical+Issues

It is December 21, and everyone is ready for Winter Break. Mr. Nozeherr is no different. He has been so ready for Christmas, he rushed through his unit on fetal pig dissection, and now there are two extra days of class he needs to fill before the semester ends. Mr. Nozeherr weighs his options carefully: he can jump ahead and begin his January unit on primate habitats, or he can stall, and not break up the flow of the class. He decides to go with the latter, and plans an alternate activity to fill the two days: watching the film Babe. There may not be a lot of educational value in the film itself, but Mr. Nozeherr knows the kids will enjoy the movie, and believes it will be a fun and relaxing way to end the semester. Additionally, it’s much easier than finding enrichment activities the kids will be interested in, as the movie is streaming on Netflix![1] Everything goes according to plan, until the library media specialist overhears two students discussing this between classes.

If I were in this situation, I would approach the teacher to discuss copyright laws with him. I would explain that, while I know it has probably happened before, showing films with no educational purpose does not fall under fair use rights. Consequently, showing Babe to fill two days before Christmas break is a violation of copyright laws. However, I know of some alternative activities that could be better for the students in the long run. Then, I would lead Mr. Nozeherr to the library’s collection of scientific documentaries and online resources with open content, where Mr. Nozeherr could find several exciting activities to keep his students occupied and learning.

Miss Böquewerm is a wonderful English Language Arts teacher, who is constantly looking for new, fun ways to introduce content to her students. Most recently, students have been reading Elie Wiesel’s Night, and learning about the Holocaust. In addition to reading about Wiesel’s personal experience with this terrible time, Miss Böquewerm wants her students to look at the Holocaust from multiple perspectives. She wants her students to understand not only what Jewish victims were going through, but also what the Roma, or Gypsy, people were experiencing—and what the German non-Jews were going through. In order to explore this, she takes her students to the library for a research project. The library media specialist has already pulled print resources to aid in the research project, and the library website has many online resources as well. Miss Böquewerm instructs her students to create blogs from the point of view of a member of the group they are studying. As they complete this activity, the library media specialist notices that none of the blogs have citations. The students are synthesizing information, but not giving credit to any sources.

If I were in this situation, I would first talk to Miss Böquewerm about the importance of citing sources when doing any type of research project. To use any type of source when looking for information and not cite where that information came from is a copyright violation in the form of plagiarism. I think it is important to note that sensitivity would be particularly important here, as Miss Böquewerm is probably already aware of this; she may not have noticed that her students were not citing. I would then ask her if I could do a brief presentation on citing sources to her class at the beginning of one of their days in the library, and then help them add citations to their blogs.

[1] Babe may not be streaming on Netflix. This is entirely hypothetical.