Lesson Plan: File Sharing Debate

Almost all students enjoy popular music to some degree. Teachers must keep a vigilant lookout for ipods as kids try to hide their earbuds under their hair or their hoods during class. So rather than fighting against music's presence in the classroom, it makes pratical and pedagogical sense to bring one of popular music's most contentious issues to the forefront of classroom discussion: illegal fire sharing. Students are engaged when lessons have relevance to their lives (and for many students, fire sharing is the main way they receive their music), so why not use an issue that is at the center of the problem of modern music distribution and use it to help kids develop skills in critical thinking, research, and discussion.

Objectives: Students will develop critical thinking, persuasive, research, and discussion skills by working with an issue that they have some personally experience with (even if they don't yet have strong feelings about it).

For this assignment, students will be debating the issue of illegal fire sharing. Most students will be familiar with the idea of illegal downloading as something that they or their friends do regularly. Because for much of their lives music has been available for "free" many students might have trouble understanding the perspective of the record companies (or even artists), so first, we'll have a brief discussion of the role of record labels including the amount of money that artists usually make per song/album purchase/download. We'll also frame this debate historically with a discussion of how a similar struggle occurred with the emergence of AM radio.

Next, students will research the effects of illegal file sharing on one of three groups: listeners, artists, or record labels. How has file sharing and internet technology helped each of these groups? How has it hurt them? Should record companies make money? Do they perform a valuable service for artists and for society, or are they just greedy corporations? What are the negative effects of downloading music for listeners (too much music to digest, potential lawsuits, guilt over artists not receiving money for their work)? How are artists negatively affected (loss of $)? How are they positively affective (greater exposure)? Students must find articles about the group they are focusing on, including opinions and quotes from specific individuals within those groups.

Next we'll break into two groups and students will debate the issue of file sharing. We will form teams where students will either be representing the "Pro" file sharing/free access to music side of the argument, or the "Anti" file sharing side. Working in their groups, they will decide on the arguments they want to focus on for their side.

We will probably have to do two debates because of class size; so when students are not participating in the debate, they will practice their active listening skills. Audience members must develop at least 2 questions for the debaters which will be addressed in one of the rounds of the debate. At the conclusion of the debate, they must also vote for the winner, and explain why they feel that that side won the argument.

Finally, students will write letters to record labels, explaining possible solutions to this issue. How can they operate and continue to make a profit? What ways can they still serve to benefit artists? OR are they going to become completely obsolete, and there's nothing they can do to stop it. Students must have strong arguments and they also must cite specific examples in their letters.