Saturday

#15 (WEEK 6) Copyright, Creative Commons, and What’s Coming Down the Web 2.0 Road

Putting the ‘social’ into social networks allows us to freely exchange information. But with the free exchange of information comes the responsibility of how we share it, and how we give credit to the author of that information. Check out this video, “A Fair(y) Use Tale” and learn some history of copyright.


In the school library and classroom, we are often faced with the copyright challenges of when it is acceptable to copy something and how much of an item [book, website, music, movies, art, photos, images] we can copy. Faced with declining budgets and little time, we are tempted to go ahead and make copies. But with the advent of file sharing, downloading and RSS, we must acknowledge and teach the ethics of information gathering and sharing. We do not want our school, students, or ourselves called to the carpet or confronted with a lawsuit or jail sentence!

Creative Commons is a copyright license that allows us to choose to share our intellectual property. This course is designed under a Creative Commons license and is an example of how one can take a piece of information or a product and re-work it to make it fit your needs. By acknowledging the original authors, they have given permission for you to share.

What will the future bring? Web 2.0 new media tools keep coming at us at a pace faster than most of us can catch and apply in the classroom. Lucky for us that there are always individuals who love to follow or develop the new tools and keep track of them for us. One of my favorite resources is the team of academics who contribute to the HORIZON REPORT, a New Media Consortium (nmc) project. Each January, the HORIZON REPORT presents a few select higher education technology applications for the immediate (1-2 year), near (3-4 year), and 5-year time frame.

Discovery Exercises:
  1. Find an example or attribution that shows this program has been modified from it's original. (HINT: look at sidebar)
  2. Read two or three of the resources on technology issues and trends from the list below. Create a blog post about your thoughts on any one of these.
  3. Review the most recent HORIZON Report and then review an earlier version. Compare the two and post about how "on target" or "way off base" the earlier report was. Consider creating a technology application forecast for your school, to position alongside.
Discovery Resources:
Curriculum Connections:
Idea #1: Work with your teacher librarian on student projects that require giving proper credit to music, videos, or other copyrighted material. This is a good time to reinforce information literacy skills related to copyright and communications ethics. Be sure to refer to the curriculum content standard and/or Model School Library Content Standard addressed by the project.

Idea #2: Use the HORIZON REPORT and have students compare technology applications for the current year and past 2-3 years. How many application expectations were "spot on", "fizzled out" or were "left in the dust" of other more compelling or better marketed applications, and how many applications changed significantly due to how students used it? Arrange for the students to present their findings at a school board meeting or library special event.


Suggested "tags" or labels: technology trends, web 2.0, Creative Commons, copyright

We hope you're enjoying all the exercises you've done so far. Keep having fun exploring and thinking about how you will use these new tools.
Posted by at