Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

Our first Teachers' Strategy Guide: Reading in a Participatory Culture, offers strategies for integrating the tools, approaches, and methods of Comparative Media Studies into the English and Language Arts classroom. The guide provides a set of lesson plans using Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as the sample text and a theater adaptation by Ricardo Pitts-Wiley entitled Moby-Dick: Then and Now as an example of a contemporary adaptation. The guide is intended to demonstrate techniques which could be applied to the study of authorship in relation to a range of other literary works, pushing us to reflect more deeply on how authors build upon the materials of their culture and in turn inspire others who follow to see the world in new ways.

Imagine a high school student in the year 2015. She has grown up in a world where learning is as accessible through technologies at home as it is in the classroom, and digital content is as real to her as paper, lab equipment, or textbooks. At school, she and her classmates engage in creative problem-solving activities by manipulating simulations in a virtual laboratory or by downloading and analyzing visualizations of real-time data from remote sensors. Away from the classroom, she has seamless access to school materials and homework assignments using inexpensive mobile technologies. She continues to collaborate with her classmates in virtual environments that allow not only social interaction with each other but also rich connections with a wealth of supplementary content. Her teacher can track her progress over the course of a lesson plan and compare her performance and aptitudes across a lifelong “digital portfolio,” making note of areas that need additional attention through personalized assignments and alerting parents to specific concerns. What makes this possible is cyberlearning, the use of networked computing and communications technologies to support learning. Cyberlearning has the potential to transform education throughout a lifetime, enabling customized interaction with diverse learning materials on any topic—from anthropology to biochemistry to civil engineering to zoology. Learning does not stop with K–12 or higher education; cyberlearning supports continuous education at any age.

The closest U.S. privacy law comes to a legal doctrine akin to copyright is the appropriation tort, which prevents the use of someone else’s name or likeness for financial benefit. Unfortunately, the law has developed in a way that is often ineffective against the type of privacy threats now cropping up. Copyright primarily functions as a form of property right, protecting works of self-expression, such as a song or painting. To cope with increased threats to privacy, the scope of the appropriation tort should be expanded.

An attorney for a suspended Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher said Thursday she never intended for the public to view negative comments she made about students on Facebook. But the case is now part of a national debate that pits teachers' right to free expression against how communities expect them to behave.

She now faces possible firing for listing “teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte” among her activities.

e district allows teachers to post personal information online, but had to take action because it affected the teacher's ability to interact with students and parents. She called the comments racially insensitive or offensive to students at Thomasboro Elementary School, where she teaches.

Not only is their goal to ensure the safety of minors but also to protect particular adult groups such as gender-specific, age-specific and multi-cultural groups.

A local woman believes her story illustrates just how frustrating it can sometimes be fighting Internet harassment.   Tina Austin claims someone harassed her by posting information on the popular trading website, craigslist.org, last February.   The postings gave Austin’s name and work cell phone number.   The three separate postings claimed Austin was giving away a diamond necklace, a Chevy Suburban, and another which was, let’s just say an “R” rated request.   “I ended up getting [the most phone calls for the diamond necklace],“ Austin said Wednesday.  “[I didn’t get] quite as much for the Suburban.“