Week 2 “Free Licenses, Copyright & Openness”
What an interesting week. I really enjoyed learning so much history through watching the life Story of Aaron Swartz. Although a story with a sad ending pointing to such obvious flaws in our system, I also found some inspiration and was amazed by the impact of determination and ingenuity from one person trying to make a difference. How often it seems that it takes a tragedy to shine a light on areas that require change, awareness, and a new way of seeing things. The fallout from Aaron’s death and the creation of Aaron’s Law is a perfect example of this.
The Remix Manifesto was so eye opening and highlighted just how gray the area between copyright and original creative work can be. It was fascinating to watch how mash-ups are created and listening to how original work can become something completely different. I seem to keep coming to back to the same thought wondering, is there such a thing as totally original work? The video gave fantastic examples comparing popular songs. How can we not build upon these. It made the Copyright Register, Marybeth Peter’s quote, “You can’t say it’s creativity if it’s not your stuff” almost comical. I found myself saying, why not? The question posed to her about how much trouble a person could get into using clips of music, again shows how gray the whole issue is. Her answer, “it depends how upset they are”. I have to say I was infuriated, when during class I heard the fact that my school district owned any resource I create. Does the district own work I design during my VIU courses if it is for my class? It is something I will be looking into further, as I plan on copylefting all of my work in the hopes it will be used and improved upon. As I mentioned in my first post, my children are consumed with making videos. My son especially is interested in adding music and creating gaming videos. This led me to look more closely at copyright for Youtube. Interesting to note, Youtube gives strikes against using copyright work. Three strikes and your account is out! I found an interesting video How To Legally Use Copyrighted Music, Games, and Movies on YouTube. The copyright “expert” B Chambers, explains the steps needed to use copyrighted work to enable someone to make money from their work and not receive a strike. I was left with the thought that I would really have to want to use that music to follow all of those requirements. I can see I have a lot to learn to teach my kids. 505 Initial Reflections into OER
Coming into this class, my only understanding of open education resources was from my brief experience in 502 where we discussed creative commons and looked at the impact for the future of education. I remember thinking at the time that we had barely scratched the surface, so to review, I started by reading the definition of an OER. https://goo.gl/k5IuSN The first thing that caught my attention was that there are different definitions for what an OER actually is. Although I had a general idea, I was surprised at the variety of resources covered. The definition by William and Flora Hewlett states that “it includes full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge". To prepare for class, I watched the listed videos and read a few of the readings. At the time, one of my takeaways was the idea that all great artists build on the work of other people. Lawrence Lessig’s message that many of our youth today find their voice in remixing and recreating digital content struck home. I often watch my daughter create videos and remixes of what she feels is important in her life, most likely not giving a lot of thought to copyright. Is she breaking the law? I agree we need to find a balance between copyright and copyleft. I had not given thought to ownership of work until our synchronous class, when Alec mentioned controversy surrounding teachers-pay-teachers. As a resource I often use to find ideas or spring-board my own, it hit home. I find the opinions about what property is and is not really interesting. Are the ideas created by these teacher’s original work or are they created from other people’s ideas and remixed? Why do we expect people to recreate the wheel when we can expand and improve from it? The idea of teachers sharing resources led me to an interesting video, Sharing: The Moral Imperative by Dean Shareski. Shareski supported my idea disclosing that nothing he had created was completely original. We need to be embracing a culture of sharing where we can use, critique and remix other people’s work. Based on David Wiley’s idea that it is the obligation of our institutions to teach within our buildings and beyond, I agree with Shareski’s quote that “teaching is sharing and if there is no sharing, there is no education”. David Wiley, in his article iterating toward openness, explains the most important point of open education resources is the support in student learning. I have had similar experiences to Stefanie, trying to teach from outdated textbooks in all areas of the curriculum. Wiley cites studies and reviews showing the effectiveness of using OER’s in place of regular textbooks as either the same or better. He also highlights the fact that high prices do not equate to high quality, although this may seem counterintuitive. I would recommend a quick scan of his article if you are interested, which was written in response to Op-ed: If Open Education is the Answer, What is the Question? I am left after my first post with many more questions than I have answers for and I look forward to this fascinating journey through OER. Critical Challenge Question: How can I teach students how to ask essential questions and use inquiry to build the skills and abilities needed for critical thinking and problem solving? An Inquiring into Effective Inquiry How did I come up with this idea? This past January our class attempted a polar bear inquiry unit. Getting students to think beyond the most simple “why” questions into deeper thinking such as making connections, analyzing and synthesizing information was challenging. Below is an example of what we did. What became most apparent was that the students did not know how to ask essential quality questions. They did not understand how to use observation to guide their questions and seemed unmotivated to work together to find a solution to our class problem.
Where am I right now? A few weeks ago, some my students came rushing into the classroom and over to the pots of sprouting seeds we had planted . At that time, we were supposed to be quietly reading so I ushered the students over to get books. Something felt wrong with that action. Later that day when we did looked at our seeds, I once again attempted to get the students to make observations and ask questions based on those observations. It was like pulling teeth - even with modelling. Reflecting on the day, what I really felt was that I had a missed out on a teachable moment of curiosity and wonderment. If I had rescheduled the lesson right at the moment of excitement, I considered that it might have led to more active questioning and inquiry. It was then I began to think seriously about researching into how to develop my students' skills and abilities to explore and find answers. The following will be used as a guide for my critical challenge question. How do I most effectively teach the children about essential questioning? How do I best model inquiry skills? Is there is a better way to practice and ask questions to get students thinking? What types of activities best promote wonderment and curiosity? The process and final goal? To begin, I did an initial search to see if I could find enough open education resources to support the research and learning and was happy to find a variety of materials to complete the project. With the development of BC’s new curriculum, we as teachers are expected to look at our units in the light of inquiry. I am looking forward to developing a comprehensive list of resources to pull from for each subject area. My task for this next week will be to look through the research and come up with ideas on how to best implement my plan. My goal in the end is to come up with a primary cross-curricular inquiry unit that will help develop the foundational skills necessary to support using inquiry, critical thinking and problem solving required for student success in the future grades and beyond. |
AuthorK-7 Coordinator in SD68. Archives
January 2017
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