NETS-T4

This weeks topic is the NETS-T4 standard. It states that teachers understand local and global societal issues and responsibilities in an evolving digital culture and exhibit legal and ethical behavior in their professional practices. The indicator I am going to look at is a: advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources.

This is something, that I feel is sometimes looked over in the art world because there are so many art images online free for the taking. This is a great thing and it can be a bit of an issue. If you wanted to find a picture of The Mona Lisa on Google, you would probably come up with hundreds of images. Yet Da Vinci isn't around to say "hey, you can't take my image without my permission!" It's great that these images are out there for students to use and see artwork that they never would otherwise be able to see, but there should be one reputable site that has a majority of these images and that would be a good resource for students.

There are also some websites that artists can go to to post their own artwork for the world to see and if they don't copyright it and have that watermark on the image, anyone can take it without that artist making a dime. So there are some ethical issues when it comes to art and the internet, teachers need to stress that images are also resources and that they need to be documented just like any other source.