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August 30, 2006
Creative Commons for Student Work
Three days of blogging in a row! Before I tap myself on the back too much, I’ve been thinking about copyright. Not that I think people are lining up to re-sell my content, but it certainly is an issue where technology runs far ahead of the laws.
Yesterday I added a Creative Commons license to my blog. I am very happy to have others pick up my work and reuse it for non-commercial use. In fact, I hope lots of people pick up all of the information I put on the web. That’s the educator in me, I suppose.
What I’d really like to see is all of our high school students applying Creative Commons licenses to their schoolwork. What a great way to make it explicit to students that their work should be good enough so that others will want to use it. Teachers should also be thinking about the assignments that lead to those works so that the questions and problems that are posed lead to publications that others might want to read or enjoy.
Posted by Pat on 7:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 29, 2006
Saving Social Networking
Tomorrow I am giving my first of several talks to groups of parents at local schools. Last year I spoke about this for the first time focusing on MySpace. At that point, the news media was covering MySpace and the dangers of predators every day. In my own review of MySpace, I saw a lot of the dangers, especially for younger kids.
As I redo the presentation now, the fad of MySpace has proceeded like all fads. The older kids are moving off of MySpace and on to FaceBook. The younger kids are taking over MySpace.
It looks like this fad will eventually fade but what will be left behind is social networking online. My dilemma is how to give a balanced view of all of the benefits of social networking while everyone is focused on the dangers of MySpace. The US Congress xx is considering the passage of DOPA (Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006). This is scary legislation inspired by fear. It’s aim is to stop all social networking sites in any school or library receiving e-Rate funding. But the definition of social networking sites is any site where a user can add content. And the final determination of what those sites will be is the FCC. This could mean all blogs or collaborative projects online or Wikipedia.
This would certainly be a loss for education and puts educational decisions out of the reach of educators.
Posted by Pat on 8:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 28, 2006
Starting out...again
Today seems like a good one to begin writing in my blog on a more regular basis. I went out for my morning walk and kids were at the bus stop for the first day of school. Well, actually, kids, mothers, dogs and SUVs were at the bus stops, but that’s for someone else to blog about.
On my walk, I listened to a podcast of an interview with Shuna Fish Lydon the author of the blog EggBeater . She blogs about her expertise, the food industry, but I could have inserted education in almost everything she said. Many of the people she deals with everyday can’t even open an attachment.
But the experience she has had in the blogosphere has really been all about networking. By blogging, she has “met” people around the world and has online friends who have given to her and she has given back to. As an educator, I’m concerned that we help kids use social networking to have this kind of experience. These aren’t the 20,000 MySpace “friends” but real people who have become friends because of the give and take.
It’s hard to articulate these differences, but it certainly is something worth pursuing. It seems to me it is really an extension of how we taught kids not to talk to strangers and began refining that with every new person we met.
Posted by Pat on 2:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
