Voltage Pictures, the production company that produced the Oscar winning film The Hurt Locker, announced that they plan to sue more than 5,000 fans who participated in file sharing networks to illegally access the movie. Defendants, who have thus far only been identified only by their IP address, will receive notices regarding the suit shortly.

Internet users are all ages, but the highest density of users are teens and young adults. According to a December 2009 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 93 percent of 18-29 year olds are online. Furthermore, more than half of adults in the United States use the Internet to download or watch video content. While there are many ways to access video content legally (even as I write this post, my husband is watching the crazy zombie movie Dead Snow using Netflix’s streaming video feature), there are a multitude of sites that facilitate illegal file sharing.  For a media junkie like me, surfing the Web can sometimes feel like I’m a kid again let loose in a candy store.

Regardless of my personal feelings on copyright laws, using file sharing sites to exchange content is both illegal and subject to major fines. However, my students seem to regard copyright laws much like they do the act of driving five miles an hour above the speed limit – illegal, yes. But everybody does it, right?

When I teach social media strategies I inject a healthy dose of basic ethical theory in the lesson plan, but I just don’t think that my application of the teachings of Kant and Aristotle are getting through. The punishment for pirating seems so remote that I tend to fall back on more opaque ethical theories to discuss reasons not to take advantage of the free but illegal content available online.

How do you teach students responsible use of Internet resources? Do you think this latest lawsuit will be the concrete evidence needed to convince young people that copyright infringement is serious business?

I scrapped the lecture idea and instead spent the next five hours developing Twepardy – a Jeopardy-like activity that forced my students to sort through the reams of data populating the Web to find information on microblogging.

Lest my work go to waste, I uploaded Twepardy on to my favorite presentation sharing Web site, SlideShare. Please feel free to download to use and revise for whatever means fit your needs.

I had my students create Twitter accounts as homework, then at the start of class they signed in to a private chat group I created on TweetWorks. The students could then Tweet the answers to Twepardy questions without spamming their followers. One bag of mini-Snickers to pass out for correct answers, plus a ceramic, duck-shaped piggybank for the big winner, and we were off.

While using Jeopardy style games in education is certainly nothing new, I found the format extremely conducive to teaching the ins and outs of new technologies. It’s always difficult to teach new programs. My students have differing skill levels and preexisting knowledge of applications and I spend more time trouble-shooting than I do educating. Using techniques like online scavenger hunts, trivia contests, and research races makes the process of puzzling through new technologies much more enjoyable.

As you can see from the student Tweets below, Twepardy is sure to be the next big thing in EdTech.