The one about Brad Pitt and digital citizenship

While the two Hicks chapters about adapting writing, genre studies, and mentor texts to a digital medium felt comfortable and familiar, the CMSI article, particularly the section about “Use of Media in Education vs. Media Literacy Education” (2009) struck a chord, as did the Creative Common Licensing article. It turns out I didn’t know what I didn’t know about being a responsible digital citizen. While I was correct in my understanding that once someone creates a text, photo, song, etc., it is automatically copyrighted, I was incorrect in my assumption that all one needed to do was cite the source when using someone else’s creation. It was eye-opening to read the Creative Commons licensing article which directs the user to search for open, usable content in Google by using an advanced filter. 

For purely educational purposes only, I tried a little experiment searching images of Brad Pitt. When I didn’t filter by license, there were seemingly thousands of photos of every stage of Mr. Pitt’s life. I’m tempted to demonstrate by posting a photo from each of his films, as well as all of the various facial hair stages he has gone through in the past twenty years. While that would make for a much more interesting post, because now I know better, I won’t violate copyright laws. Then again, because this blog post is homework for an educational institution, I’m protected under fair use, which the CMSI article (2009) defines as “the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances—especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant.”  Normally, it wouldn’t be appropriate to post a photo that isn’t available through Creative Commons licensing, but under the “Rule of Proportionality” as explained in the CMSI article (2009), I'm taking only what I need under Fair Use to demonstrate my point. With that, I give you one, and only one particularly dashing photo of Mr. Pitt.

photo credit: mubi.com

Continuing with my for-educational-purposes-only Brad Pitt experiment, this time I searched images using the Google filter “labeled for reuse” and was utterly disappointed with the results. No photos from my favorite films. No lovey dovey pics with Angelina. In fact, most of the photos were weird, fan-created drawings or pictures of celebrities who weren't Brad Pitt, or random strangers who happened to share his name. There were only about a dozen actual pictures of him posted, and they weren’t even all that flattering. Like this one.

commons Wikimedia.org
 

I'd venture a guess that most students, and likely most teachers don't realize the nuances and complexities included in being a good digital citizen. I appreciate the inclusion of Creative Commons lesson plans in the supplemental readings posted, as well as the turnitin.com tutorial. Students at Broomfield High School must submit every piece of writing through turnitin.com, and the definitions of the ten different plagiarism categories will be very helpful as I start my long-term substitute position there. Going forward, I will definitely incorporate a lesson on digital citizenship following the Creative Commons template, as misinformation abounds.