Communicate 1.1.2 Laws of Communication

Professional educators, whether virtual or brick-and-mortar, must adhere to high standards regarding ethics and laws.  But a teacher can only adhere to these standards as long as they understand them.  FERPA and Copyright laws are two of the most important ethics for a teacher to uphold, yet many educators have a shallow understanding of both.  To try and simplify it for myself and others, I've provided a few basic guidelines to follow.

FERPA
In the opening statement of Faculty Focus' FERPA and Social Media blog post, they appropriately comment that "FERPA is one of the misunderstood regulations in education."  With so much confusion on the rules and regulations of FERPA, it is no wonder that the mere mention of FERPA causes anxiety amongst a room full of educators.  But to relieve some of those fears, one can refrain from violating FERPA guidelines by committing to a few common sense rules:

• DO remember that FERPA, in the most simplistic terms, is a privacy law that protects students' education records.
• Do NOT share any information about a student with anyone other than parent/guardian.
• Do NOT release student grades in an email.
• DO make a phone call in all instances where grades or personal student information must be discussed.
• DO treat your students' personal and educational records as you would like to have yours treated, with discretion, respect, and privacy.

Copyright
It is the running joke among educators that teaching is the only job where it is okay to beg, borrow, and steal.  This is true if we are talking about awesome teaching strategies!  This is NOT true if we are talking about copyright laws!   Images, documents, music, etc... we must build an expectation of sharing and attribution in our classrooms.  Yet, in the virtual classroom, it is not required that all work be original.  So how does the online teacher maintain sound copyright ethics?  Below are some tips to keep your sharing within the boundaries of the law:

• DO remember, most information on the internet is not in the public domain.
• DO properly cite and credit all copyrighted material.
• Do NOT use "Fair Use" as a justifiable means to defy copyright laws.
• When in doubt, DON'T just assume... get permission to share.
• DO make Creative Commons and the public domain your default for images, graphics, print, music, and more!

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