WORLD WIDE WEB IN EDUCATION

Ethical Use of Resources and Information

Andreanna K. Koufou

Department of Educational Science and Early Childhood Education, University of Patras

University Campus, Patras, Greece

Dimitrios K. Tsolis

Department of Computing Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras

University Campus, Patras, Greece

Keywords: Internet, World Wide Web, Ethical use of resources and information, Use policy, Intellectual Property

Rights, Conceptual representations, Internet didactics.

Abstract: Internet is nowadays included to almost all National Curriculums of the elementary school. A comparative

study of US’ UK’s and Greek, curriculums leads to the conclusion that a complete curriculum should also

aim to student’s acquisition of the abilities to navigate and search for information and additionally to

emphasize on ethical use of resources and information, specifically referring to Intellectual Property Rights

laws and regulations. In a constructivistic knowledge framework instruction of these Internet characteristics

has to take under consideration the conceptual representations of students. The following paper presents the

conceptual representation of students of eleven years old, attending the Sixth Grade of Greek Elementary

School about World Wide Web and proposes a course based on them, in order to introduce students to the

ethical use of resources and information.

1 INTRODUCTION

World Wide Web offers an enormous range of easily

accessible information. Therefore students have to

conquest capabilities of collecting information

through the Net but also adopt principles towards a

responsible use of it, especially regarding respect to

Intellectual Property Rights laws and regulations.

Taking under consideration the above and based

on their conceptual representations about Internet a

course was designed and materialized about World

Wide Web, with the participation of eleven years old

students.

2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 Ethical Use

& Intellectual Property Rights

Borrowing a book from a library seems easy but as a

matter of fact, it is based on a complicated

mechanism, involving laws, publication policies and

many financial and technological parameters. This

mechanism might be in a balance and in everyday

use but this balance could be affected by the rapid

digitization of the information provided (the books).

The problem can be proved in a simple way: a

book could be borrowed by one or two people at the

same time by the same library. An electronic book

could be borrowed by anyone with a telephone line,

a computer and an Internet connection. From the

Internet user point of view this news is really good.

The library owns a book which is never exclusively

borrowed and is always available for countless

readers. In fact this library is open for twenty four

hours a day, seven days a week. On the other hand,

the news is very stressful for publishers and writers.

How many copies will be sold or published while

digital networks allow world wide access to digital

information? The publishers and writers could think

of the number of one and only copy. How many

books, movies, music pieces and copyrighted

information can be created, published and sold to the

Proceedings of CSEDU 2009

International Conference on Computer Supported Education

Internet while for world wide access to readers,

listeners and viewers one digital copy is enough?

The aforementioned simple (as it seems)

problem, is describing exactly the modern digital

dilemma as Randall D. (Randal, 2001) has predicted.

World Wide Web (WWW) is a powerful mean to

publish and distribute information and the world’s

largest infrastructure for making digital copies of

this information. It is a technology with which free

and efficient access to information could grow at an

unbelievable pace, but at the same time could prove

to be a force of deepening the discrimination line

between the one who has and the one who hasn’t.

According to the House of Representatives

(1998), the Information Society Technologies are

changing the most common methods of providing

access to digital content. The information available

in digital form is increasing in an every day basis,

the Internet is connecting world-wide digital

contents and the WWW is providing an efficient

platform consisting of access services, a gate to

scientific and cultural resources, music, movies and

video archives to everyone as well as children. The

technologies which provide access to digital content

are at the same time provoking important problems

concerning the protection and management of

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for this digital

content. This is happening mainly because

technology is supporting efficient access to and at

the same time ease of copying copyrighted

information. As a result many legislative rules and

laws for IPR which are referring to physical objects

are almost invalid for digital objects. The specific

problem is becoming even more intense while

broadband Internet is being applied world-wide and

any Internet user has fast data transfer rates at his

disposal. Other examples which prove the size of the

problem include the free distribution of copyrighted

music and movies through the Internet, the on-line

sale of copyrighted digital images of art and culture

without permission.

Proposed solutions to the problem of Intellectual

Property Rights (IPR) protection in the internet tend

to be aggressive and lock valuable educational

content which is accessed only from private and

restricted numbers of users threatening e-inclusion

and the Internet democracy as a whole.

The only approach which deals with the issue in

the long term and sets the basis for future ethical use

of the Internet is instructional actions which raise

awareness and teach the Internet user the basics of

IPR and at the same time the need to respect the

The instructional approach starts from the early

grades of the elementary school and through specific

curriculum and courses aim to “preserve honest

internet users, honest”, supporting the ethical use of

the Internet by children. The structure and rationale

of these courses are mainly based on the experience

of experts in the area and most of times do not take

into account what are the conceptual representations

of children about the Internet. This leads usually to

complex teaching activities and to non –

constructivistic courses.

The proposed by this paper approach is to study

the conceptual representations of children about the

Internet and based on these representations to

implement instructional activities towards the

construction of new knowledge and capabilities for

ethical Internet use.

2.2 Conceptual Representations

Contemporary psychological approaches of learning

and science didactics create a new, common base for

the design and the materialization of various

subjects. Nowadays the aspect that learning

procedure is not possible to be materialized if it

doesn’t take under consideration the conceptual

representations of students and the process of

knowledge construction is becoming more and more

acceptable.

Thus, learning is not a Knowledge collecting

process, is not being acquired or transferred. On the

contrary, it takes place when the student’s

exploration of the student reveals inconsistencies

between current representations and experience. In

that case, a student tends to change his/her

conceptual model not necessarily in order to replace

it by the objectively right but by the most viable one

(Von Glasersfeld, 1990). A major theme in the

theoretical framework of Bruner is that learning is

an active process in which learners construct new

ideas or concepts based upon their current/past

knowledge. The learner selects and transforms

information, constructs hypotheses, and makes

decisions, relying on a cognitive structure to do so.

Cognitive structure (i.e., schema, mental models)

provides meaning and organization to experiences

and allows the individual to "go beyond the

information given" (Bruner, 1973).

Therefore, starting point of learning is what a

person knows or ignores before teaching. Often

traditional teaching slightly effects the conceptual

representations of a student not only after a course

but even after adult age (Viennot, 1979), because of

the ignoration of conceptual representation during

teaching. It is clear that a teaching course based on

constructivism has to study the conceptual

representations of students in order to use them if

they are according to a scientific model or to

reconstruct them if they are conceptual obstacles, via

the creation of conceptual conflict learning

conditions (Ravanis, 2003).

Also the instructor should try and encourage

students to discover principles by themselves. The

instructor and student should engage in an active

dialog (i.e., socratic learning). The task of the

instructor is to translate information to be learned

into a format appropriate to the learner's current state

of understanding. Curriculum should be organized in

a spiral manner so that the student continually builds

upon what they have already learned (Bruner, 1966).

Based on the above axioms the paper in the next

sections presents a research methodology which

leads to the implementation of an innovative course

which supports the construction of new knowledge

about the ethical use of Internet.

3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Objective

In the following sections is presented the design and

the implementation of a course about WWW in

which took part eleven years old students, attending

the last grade of Greek elementary school.

The objective was the design and implementation

of an innovative course about WWW, that would

raise the awareness of IPR, based on the study of

student’s conceptual representations.

3.2 Research

The research took place in real class conditions.

Took part six elementary school students, eleven

years old, who consisted two work groups, divided

by gender. The research initiated by the study of

conceptual representations.

In order the conceptual representations to be

emerged the researcher used personal questionnaires

and interviews (Pandelis, 1995). A questionnaire of

twenty questions, gradually more demanding was

given to every student. There were many types of

questions as open questions, semi-open, closed,

multiple choice (Javeau, 2000). After the

questionnaires was filled in, students took part in

personal interviews where answered to questions

about the answers given to the questionnaires. The

answers of the questionnaires and the interviews

were organized using the statistical software SPSS

(Evaggelopoulos, 1987). Then, a course was

designed that took under consideration these

representations.

4 RESEARCH ANALYSIS

4.1 Students’ Conceptual

Representations

In the following paragraph will be presented the

students’ answers about critical aspects of WWW

and the researcher’ s conclusions.

All students have a personal computer at home.

They don’t take computer lessons but they use their

computer in many different ways, such as navigating

in WWW in order to search for information and

games.

Figure 1: Frequency of Internet use.

Figure 2: Reasons of Internet use.

Students know about the technological means

demanded to access the Internet and that they are

able to access through it to any kind of information,

in any language. Though they ignore where

information is being stored and how to search for

them.

Also they consider that all information in WWW

come from experts, so that they are valid and

updated. Finally they totally ignore the concept of

“Intellectual Property Rights”.

Figure 3: Credibility of Internet information, Copyrights.

4.2 Setting Didactical Goals

The goals that the course set for students to achieve,

based on their conceptual representations were:

 To accept and embrace WWW as a source of

information

 To evaluate the credibility of the information

given from WWW

 To perceive concepts as “Intellectual Property

Rights” and “Copyright protection and

management”

 To adopt policies result from them

5 IMPLEMENTATION

Students access pre chosen sites where is

emphasized that their content is being protected by

the laws of Intellectual Property Rights

(http://www.culture.gr - http://www.in.gr).

 Is being discussed the matter of Copyright

protection and management

 Teacher calls students to compare the copyright

protection of the content of a site to the

 Then they visit a pre chosen site

(http://www.geocities.com/makedonia007/)

that publishes historical information about

Macedonia. They compare that information

with history books realizing that the two

sources are totally different.

 Initiates a discussion about the credibility of a

site. Who publishes the information of a site?

Is he/she an expert? Is it a formal site or a

personal one? Is a published book more

trustworthy and under which conditions?

6 CONCLUSIONS

Raising awareness to children and at the same time

constructing new knowledge and capabilities

regarding the ethical use of the WWW is the most

sustainable approach for the future respect of the

Internet user to the IPR laws and regulations.

Research has to turn towards to this direction.

More statistical data about student’s conceptual

representations on the matter, case studies and

curriculum planning is needed.

REFERENCES

Bruner, J., “Going Beyond the Information Given”. New

York: Norton, 1973.

Bruner, J., “Towards a Theory of Instruction”. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1966.

Evaggelopoulos, Sp., “Experimental Pedagogy with

statistics” (In Greek). Athens: Dania Publishers, 1987.

House of Representatives. “Digital Millennium Copyright

Act”. 1998.

Javeau, C., “ L΄enquκte par questionaire. Manuel de

l΄usage du practicien”. Bruselas : Universitι Libre de

Bruxelles, Institut De Sociologie, 1971.

Pandelis, Sp., “Research methodologies in education

sciences” (In Greek). Patras: University of Patras

Press, 1995.

Randall, D. “The Digital Dilemma”, Communications of

the ACM pp. 80, Volume 44, 2001.

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Viennot, L., “Spontaneous reasoning in elementary

dynamics”. European Journal of Science Education,

9(1), 205-221, 1979.

Von Glasersfeld, E., , “An exposition of constructivism:

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