As we are all now "citizens of Cyberspace," we must make it our responsibility to give credit where and when it is due. I really liked some of the links in this required activity. Especially the Online interactive course on the Internet. It really went through the whole history of the Internet. And said our Ethics must be our moral principals. I also liked the 10 commandments of computer ethics. The copykids site gave a great copyright quiz challenge that was easy to follow and would be good to use in the classroom.

http://www.selah.k12.wa.us/JHS/Gustafson/Library.cfm

http://www.copyrightkids.org/

http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVLPages/QltyPages/QltyEtiq.html

1. You find an outstanding World Wide Web site on the Internet and want your web page to contain some of the glittering wonderfulness of this site. You down load and use what part of the web page without infringing on copyright.

According to the law of Fair Use you are able to use parts of the site as long as you give credit to the site. You may not use the entire web site and call it your own however. This would be like copying an entire page from an outstanding book. There is a lot of wonderful sites out there but we must use our ethical moral standards to give credit to where we were able to get our wonderful material.

I see red flags all over this situation. Yes, Mr. Jamweimer can use his wonderful software to help his little Einstein, but he may not make copies of it for the school. As a parent he can suggest to the wonderful PTA about purchasing this incredible software even stating his son’s test scores as proof. But the school should not in any way use pirated material. Software companies would be out of business if this were to occur as a regular event.