The use of ICT in the Australian Curriculum is a general capability and a necessary skill for young Australians. ICT underpins learning in the digital age (Duchense & McMaugh, 2016, p458). Students generally perform better when technology is integrated into the curriculum (Archer et. al, 2012, as cited in Moni & Hay, 2019, p381). However, as technology becomes more integrated, the need for digital literacy becomes more prevalent, and strategies must be implemented to ensure ethical use of ICT.

On my practicum, my Year 8 students were finishing a project based on Ai Weiwei’s Chinese Zodiac sculptures. The project was almost finished, and my mentor told me that students do a self-evaluation as a way of recapping their work over the term. He told me in recent years, the school had been encouraging teachers to incorporate ICT into the curriculum, and the evaluation was now done digitally in the form of a PowerPoint. The digital evaluation consisted of a background on the artist, an explanation of the preliminary exercises leading to the final work, how they created their final work, and a reflection on their overall work. My mentor told me that these were typically presented as PowerPoint presentations. In other classes, I noticed that some students were not engaged with the task and were frequently messing around. I also noticed that the students often did not cite their images.

I decided to open the following class with a brief ‘crash course’ in how to use ICT ethically in Visual Art. Before the class, I researched into digital literacy and ethical use of ICT. I was interested in strategies for integrating ICT into the curriculum without the students going off topic, using the technology for unintended purposes, or ignoring intellectual property. I discovered that working with a peer can increase accountability. I created a step-by-step PowerPoint explaining the assignment to students. As I showed the slides, I emphasised the citations at the bottom of each image in Chicago referencing style, as well as showing an overall guide - Figure 8. I explained the importance of proper referencing, and its significance in the world of art. I also discussed how common misattribution and plagiarism are on the internet, and the responsibility we have as artists to consider the ethics surrounding crediting artworks. I also mentioned “non-sources”, such as Pinterest and Wikipedia – sites that gather their content from other sources – and informed the students that while the content may be correct, it is not appropriate to cite it as a source.

The class was structured to allow 20 minutes to complete their biography of Weiwei, and then 10 minutes to cross-check their work with a neighbour – focusing on proper citation and referencing. In the second half of the class, they worked collaboratively to write about the creation process of their own work. I found that students were still occasionally off-topic, but the timed nature of the lesson and peer review element counteracted this by enforcing accountability. My mentor asked me for the citation PowerPoint slides to use for future digital evaluation classes. When the students submitted their work, only one student had not attempted to reference correctly. On reflection, I believe that the vast majority of students were referencing accurately because the introduction asked them to critically think about why referencing was necessary, and made them consider the ethics their digital output.