Course 2:  April 20-26

Essential Questions
Are we preparing students for a world of Mass Collaboration?
How do we prepare students for a world of Mass Collaboration?
Does ISBs AUP take this issue into account?

As we made our way through looking at a wealth of pre-prepared links I began to wonder whether the majority of these sites were truely mass collaboration or just mass dumping.  That’s not to say that mass dumping is bad (because it’s so great when educators share!!) but what I mean is, a whole lot of resources uploaded (shared) but not necessarily altered in anyway and re-shared.  So, no actual collaboration has taken place.

If we truly wish to prepare our students for a world of Mass Collaboration then we do need to be involved in the creation and re-creation of information.  An amazing and worthwhile project that clearly demonstrates the power of mass collaboration, how it can work, and how it should look is none other than Vicki Davis & Julie Lindsay’s work in both the Horizon Project and the Flat Classroom Project as well as the more recently publicised (and replacement for the Horizon Project) NetGeneration Education Project.  These two ladies have been revolutionary in their approach to true mass collaboration, successfully co-coordinating classrooms from around the world to not just work on a project within the confines of their own classroom, but to work on a project where it’s more likely than not that you will never “meet” your team members “face to face.  They have set the bar high on Mass Collaboration.

So how do you prepare students for a world of Mass Collaboration.  Easy.  Get involved in projects like those in the paragraph above.  My Year 7’s back in NZ got involved in the Horizon Project as a sounding board classroom.  They loved it.  Use your PLN to find like-minded educators and put something together OR start smaller than that – do something across your grade level, or with your kinder-buddies.  It can be as easy as our KinderBuddy VoiceThread that we collaborated on – that’s mass collaboration.  We all added a piece to make it one project.

Does ISBs AUP take this issue into account?  Well I’m only commenting on the ES AUP – and it goes some way to setting a standard for the communication part of mass collaboration when it talks about telecommunication (which, I believe, is at the heart of Mass Collaboration)

Telecommunications is like speaking and writing
Telecommunications is another medium of communication.  Like speaking and writing, we can use telecommunications to hurt feelings, invade privacy, spread lies, and plan law-breaking activities.  Or we can use it productively and responsibly to exchange information and communicate with others.  The choice is ours.

Acceptable/appropriate communication needs to be at the heart of any Mass Collaboration project.  As educators, it is our responsibility to teach our students how to collaborate, communicate and cooperate with others who are not necessarily in the classroom with us.  It should be just part of the way we do things ’round here.

April 13-19’s essential question for CoETaIL.Asia

Enduring Understanding:

The communication tools that exist today are powerful mediums to help spread positive change and global awareness.

So what was the first thing I did? Asked my PLN (Personal Learning Network) of course!
First I asked my twitter network:

Then I asked my Facebook network:

And that was just the replies I got in 5 minutes.  Many, many  thanks to my PLN!!

Enough said.

Cyberbullying is no different to offline bullying.  Bullying is bullying is bullying.  Some may argue that it (cyberbullying) is worse as there is an element of anonymity about it and emotional detachment at the time of the bullying that does not bode well for stirring empathy.

Is cyberbullying prevalent at ISB?  Well, we honestly don’t know.  Some colleagues shared stories they knew of but statistically, we do not know.  Finding out may prove equally hard.  Research indicates that most adolescents keep bullying incidents to themselves, believing that to tell, will only make the situation worse.

Elona Hartjes blogged about some eye-openers she’d gleaned from the book Mean Girls by Kaye Randall & Allyson A. Bowen.

Our AUP for elementary school mentions it, but does not expand into any specific detail.  If we stick to the premise that bullying is bullying then this is quite clear:

General school rules for behavior and communications apply.

No profane, abusive or impolite language should be used to communicate nor should materials be accessed which are not in line with the rules of school behavior.  A good rule to follow is never access, view or send materials which you would not want your teachers and parents to see.

Bullying in the school, playground, buses etc is not tolerated, nor should cyberbullying.  But is this clear enough – do our students realise that bullying is bullying regardless of where it takes place – is cyberspace a misconception held by our students.  The more digital we become, the more embedded this knowledge should become with our students.  It should not be taught in isolation, it should be part of what we talk about each time we “go” digital – it’s part of being pro-active.

Cyberbully gets it own heading in the ES AUP but there is nothing in the paragraph about it.

Computer Trespass or Cyberbullying
Illegal or unauthorized access, alteration or deletion of computer programs or applications is known as trespass.  Computer trespass, depending upon the circumstances, is a punishable offense that may receive sanctions for Classroom Disruption, Stealing, or Damaging Personal or School Property.

Seems like this might be the right time for our AUP to be updated.

Many colleagues felt we out to find another name for it too.  Apparently the older students think it’s a terrible name (it makes them snigger, it sounds geekish).  If it’s no different to any other bullying, then we should just call it what it is ….. bullying …… there just happens to be one more place where it can, and does, happen.  And it would be very remiss of us not to be pro-active about the destruction of it wherever it may take place.

Image Attribution: bullying.co.uk poster: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3604/3406087027_2c39a300ac_o.jpg

Saturday’s Face to Face session dealt mainly with the 5 Principles of Best Practice
From the Code of Best Practice in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education by the Action Coalition for Media Education (AUSOC Centre for Social Media – School of Communication American University)
“Educators need to be leaders, not followers, in establishing best practices in fair use.”

1. Employing Copyrighted materials in media literacy lessons.
Using materials inside your classroom, taking reasonable steps to work within Fair Use i.e:  password protected blog, internal server, attribution to author/owner,  but posting on YouTube – NO

2. Employing copyrighted material in preparing curriculum materials.
Again using copyrighted material in class with fear, working within Fair Use – which enables you to use as much material as you wish as long as it is for the purpose of teaching your students what you need to teach them.

3. Sharing media literacy curriculum materials.

Can you sell it – but not for profit? Yes, and sometimes (in the case of the Video Case Study #1 – you could sell for profit if you were an educational institute. – You are adding value to the works.

4. Students use of copyrighted materials in their own academic and creative work.
If you keep it in your confined space of classroom, internal server – etc then you are pretty much ok.  Once you start posting on the web – then you need to consider the next step – are you keeping within copyright and fair use.

Audience matters – what is your audience?  Work backwards.

Technology allows us to reach a wider audience.  Allows students to have an authentic audience.  What are the things we need to be teaching them in order to operate safely?

Can not use mood and emotion as a justification for breaking copyright/fair use

5. Developing audiences for student work.
Meeting the transformative guidelines you can stay within copyright/fairuse in order to show/share your work to the rest of the world.

NOTE:
This document has been reviewed by specialist copyright lawyers, (listed on the last page) but this has not been tested in court.

Interesting conversations were had, especially discussing the Case Study videos.  There is certainly a lot that is considered when Judges make rulings about Copyright and Fair Use.  It’s fairly obvious that there are clear guidelines that we can follow as educators to ensure that we do not breach Copyright or Fair Use.  But it is also pretty clear that as educators, as long as we don’t abuse Fair Use, we can safely use other’s material to help students learn in a variety of ways.  It would seem the most care needs to be taken when you are posting your creations of work (based on others materials) for the rest of the world to see.

In order to consolidate our learning of these 5 principles, we were giving time in the session to use a multi-media tool to convey the messages of the 5 principles.  You can see some of the other groups work here .

Our group chose Glogster. (Our experiences with it to be a later post – it is still in beta form and it is definitely not the best tool for students – YET).  If the flash doesn’t work, click here for the direct link:

Copyright is for the people, to protect us.

It was interesting to discover that the rules we followed as teachers in New Zealand, 10% of a book, 2 chapters, 30 seconds of music etc were NEVER law.  They were just something that the Ministry of Education gave us guidelines to follow.  In fact we discovered that there are so many guidelines, rules, procedures etc out there, that no wonder this is such a hard topic to get your head around!

Aren’t we also governed by the generousity of others to make their creative works available for us?  Technically we come under Thai law (1994) – but ethically we follow the International Copyright Law.  Big multi-national bodies/companies seemed to have used “scare” tatics to uphold their view of copyright when in actual fact they are in the wrong (in some cases).  It was interesting to discover that copyright law was not intended to protect the original work of an artist – but to enable the artist to share their work.  Somehow along the years this intention has about-turned and has become more negative and the positive reasons it was intended to be used under.

We are all automatically covered by that lovely little “c in a circle” when we create original work – but we as educators would like to be encouraging CreativeCommons and encouraging our students to build on the works of others, add value to it, transform it, and redistribute it to the rest of the world for them to do the same.  There is a wealth of “artists/creators” out there who willingly share their works for us to use, recreate and redistribute to others.  Some people, however, make their livelihood from their original works, and they too deserve the right to protect their work and not “lose” potential earnings from someone taking their idea or intellectual property.  It certainly is a right can of worms with strong arguments for and against.

This little quiz we completed in our groups was very interesting!  Our group did pretty well with a score of 76% (3 incorrect questions).  You really do need to have ALL of the information before you can make a decision on whether or not you are breaking copyright or fair use. And above all, your INTENT has an awful lot to do with whether or not a judge will rule in your favour or not should you ever find yourself in the courtroom.

No one could find a case where a teacher had been prosecuted for breaching copyright or Fair Use.

Do you know of any?

Photo Attribution:
Eks:http://www.flickr.com/photos/eks/388335353/