By now many of you are beginning to realize how much information is out in the world that you still don't know. The evolution and metamorphosis of the Internet is moving at an exponential rate. I can't even keep up with all the changes (and I do this for a living)!
Several of you have seemed skeptical about 'selling' this idea to the classroom teachers due to the apparent workload. I agree with the statements about how teachers barely have enough time to grade papers and write lessons. How are they ever going to buy-in to the idea of writing their own textbook. I'm going to have to ask you to really think outside of the box on this. No one will disagree that writing a textbook takes a lot of time, but remember, we don't have to write a textbook from scratch if we have a digital copy of it licensed under Creative Commons (Remember our first session?---more on this in a bit).
Well, I don't want to overwhelm you too much with copyright information. Suffice it to say that this is all good news for education and even better news for creating your own digital texts. If you can show your Administration and fellow teachers the possibilities of Open Educational Resources, then the numbers ($$$) will speak for themselves. Once the idea takes root it would be up to the individual teacher, district, or collaborative to decide if they wanted to dedicate any time to personalizing the 'Digital Content' or Ebook for their specific curriculum.
One additional resource you can use with your own textbook development would be the FlatWorld Knowledge site. They are another organization that is creating free, quality textbooks, but they are geared towards higher education:
So let's get to this week's session.
Several of you have seemed skeptical about 'selling' this idea to the classroom teachers due to the apparent workload. I agree with the statements about how teachers barely have enough time to grade papers and write lessons. How are they ever going to buy-in to the idea of writing their own textbook. I'm going to have to ask you to really think outside of the box on this. No one will disagree that writing a textbook takes a lot of time, but remember, we don't have to write a textbook from scratch if we have a digital copy of it licensed under Creative Commons (Remember our first session?---more on this in a bit).
One of the topics we'll be covering this week will be understanding copyright. Some of it is redundant based upon previous lessons, but bears repeating. I know---I know it sounds boring (and it can be incredibly tedious), but I'll try to keep it relatively brief. (You're not all Librarians after all.)
As I stated above, you may recall that I mentioned that all of my weekly sessions are licensed under Creative Commons. To truly understand what that means you have to first wrap your head around the concept of a 'Shared Culture.' To help you gain more "Depth of Knowledge" begin here with a few videos that may help reinforce the concept of a shared culture:
Once you've watched that you then need to understand how it's done:
Well, I don't want to overwhelm you too much with copyright information. Suffice it to say that this is all good news for education and even better news for creating your own digital texts. If you can show your Administration and fellow teachers the possibilities of Open Educational Resources, then the numbers ($$$) will speak for themselves. Once the idea takes root it would be up to the individual teacher, district, or collaborative to decide if they wanted to dedicate any time to personalizing the 'Digital Content' or Ebook for their specific curriculum.
One additional resource you can use with your own textbook development would be the FlatWorld Knowledge site. They are another organization that is creating free, quality textbooks, but they are geared towards higher education:
So let's get to this week's session.
As you move through Session 5/6 (Link for session here not in margin) please keep in mind that this is all meant to support your Midterm assignment. (Details are at the bottom of the syllabus.) You should start on an outline now and complete your Mid-term Final Draft before the July 19th.
Also, don't forget about the links from the syllabus under Session 5/6. They'll keep you pretty busy.
Also, don't forget about the links from the syllabus under Session 5/6. They'll keep you pretty busy.
Good luck!
PS--I just checked out our Google 'Shared' Document and it finally looks like some of you have made some changes. (You can definitly tell what Nick's contribution is--once a die-hard fan; always a die-hard fan). Check it out again, but this time, go to the 'File' menu. From there choose, 'Revision History.' There you can revisit a copy of every change that each contributor made as well as revert back to a prior version, or compare different versions. Play around with resource some more.
10 comments:
I feel like I'm struggling just a bit--to create your own text book, you need to either write your own material, use materials in the creative commons or find material in the public domain? When we are working on our midterm, this is what we really need to keep in mind when we are building our collection of materials? Do you just declare your work in the creative commons, including your own rules of use or do you have to apply somewhere for that right?
As confusing as it is, I think the best aspect is you are not relying on device-specific restrictions, like file formatting.
S5-6
Regular copyright is confusing enough but the Creative Commons rights are even more confusing. In “Copyright and Open Educational Resources,” the explanations of “By,” “Share Alike,” “No Derivatives,” and “Noncommercial seemed to make perfect sense. But then when I tried to apply them in the Remix Game, I got all turned around. There was a symbol in the game that was not in the article and I could not figure out what it was – PD(?). I looked around in reading and could not find an explanation. Anyone know what I’m referring to?
I also have a question about Share Alike. “The Attribution Share Alike License lets other copy, distribute, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you as the original author and license their derivative creations under this same license (BY-SA).” If someone makes money off of your creation do you get part of the profit? On page 13, the article discusses the ways to violate the licenses and gives some examples. So even if you give credit to the creator, as we would with regular copyright, you can’t violate the license terms? That is what I find so confusing. Sadly the game didn’t help me in understanding much.
In the OER Commons Wiki, I found the links embedded in the text distracting. Do you have to click on the links as you read, diverting your attention to some other issue, or are the links there only if you do not understand something? I have the same problem with Wikipedia. In a non-linked text, the reader is forced to focus on the text to read and understand the text. Links in a text distract the reader and defeats the objective of learning to focus on one thing. What is this doing to reading comprehension for students or is this part of the rewiring of young people’s brains?
To add to my confusion about OER licensing terms, when I looked at some of the lesson plan resources in the OER wiki, I came across something that did not jibe with the reading. 100+ Teaching Resources about the Japan Crisis by Edudemic had a as part of the terms of use. How is this possible? I thought all Creative Commons material had to have one of the CC codes.
Well, reading these last 2 blogs make me feel a little better as I am a bit confused about the creative commons right and how you cant cross over into some areas and mix with others.
I wish I could help you Barbara but I am at a loss as to what PD stands for too.I feel the same way about links in a text. By the time I get back to the original text I've already been distracted by searching through the links, which sometimes makes me want to search for more links within links. Ha!
@teresa--yes, you need to either create your own material (doesn't have to be a textbook) or find some OER material and personalize it for your educational setting. Once you are finished you can simply note which kind of licensing your are publishing the work under. Remember that if you are using CC material that is already labeled, 'share alike' then you must follow those guidelines for your derivative work as well. Understanding CC licensing can be complex and there are copyright attorneys and librarians that take these concepts to ever-deeper levels, so my suggestion is to keep this process as simple as you can to eliminate over-complicating things.
Hi
I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling confused. I have found that I feel like I'm watching & reading the same material over and over and not getting "it". I understand the concept of OER and Creative Commons but I agree that applying these its more tricky. I don't feel like we have anything substantial to digest. Anyone else feel the same?
As I was reviewing the materials for this session and beginning to frame my comments, I felt disgruntled and impatient. Boy, did I feel better after reading the first comments by Teresa, Barbara C, Karen, and Carolyn. I agree that in many instances we seem to be ingesting the same information redundantly. The thing that is making me craziest is my impatience with some of the clumsy and amateurish presentations. Specifically, the presentation on the formats for eBooks had SOME information I wanted to know, but the method of the speaker, the lackluster slides, and the general bumbling seemed to be a waste of my time. I can read and understand information SO much faster that the time it takes some of these people to find out whether or not they are taping and just spit it out. Also, with a text, if I am familiar with the information, or I am confused, I can easily back up or skim ahead to the section I want. This is difficult for me in video presentations. The CC videos seem to be heavily focused on propaganda techniques. I am realizing that much of my personal learning strength relies on visual perception, especially on the image of the placement of words. I am also realizing that when we educators design the delivery of instruction, we must be mindful of the needs of a variety of learners. I will definitely keep this in mind as I design my class assignments.
In response to Barbara--Yes,I agree, regular copyright is confusing. CC licensing is meant to simplify not complicate. The PD in the remix game stands for Public Domain. That means that the material is completely free of any licensing restrictions. More details can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain For example, the material found in Project Gutenberg is all in the Public Domain. More details here: http://www.gutenberg.us/
--Regarding the questions about someone else making $$ off of your work; if you license it NC (non-commercial) then they are not allowed to make $$ off of it, but if you don't restrict it through NC then they can make $$ w/o any requirement to pay you anything, but you choose this option when you initially license.
--Regarding the links embedded w/i the text; all educational, 21st century textual content will be embedded with hyperlinks. It can take awhile to get used to reading this way and a learner only needs to click on a link if they require more information, but the benefits outweigh the distractions. eTextbooks with embedded links allow for a teacher to truly differentiate their instruction. The advanced level students may need to just read the page w/o clicking anywhere, but the students that are visual learners,auditory learners, experiential learners, all will have the ability to view multimedia, simulations, or more details to help them fully internalize the content for that lesson. Reading text with embedded links isn't easy for everyone, but it is the wave of the future.
-Regarding the 100+ resources copyright. This is an example of how it is not an infallible system.
--I apologize if some of the material seems redundant. Sometimes this material can be hard to intellectually digest when heard from only one perspective, so I build in redundancy from different viewpoints to try to service course participants from all levels K-12.
Dave, I'm glad you and a few others addressed the potential of links becoming a distraction. I started a wiki this week and it's so tempting and easy to build even slight references into a link because steps to create them are so fluid. Ultimately to keep the reading focused, I think we are going to have to actively teach young readers how to view digital content as we make it available. We already teach them internet-safety, ethical-use etc. I think this will become one more layer as devices become affordable and possibly the preferred method for tweens and teens. I think our training will be key.
Another issue that we're going to have to deal is the casual approach some will always take is the enforcement of copyright and copyleft. I do worry about the team of young teachers with whom I will be building a collection of digital content for our high school campus. I can just see it now. I'll try to attempt to explain these confusing concepts. They'll probably respond with, "who is monitoring and enforcing all of this?"
BTW, I loved the way the Connexions founder used the terms "rip, mix and burn" usually associated with music and video and placed textbooks in that frame. Priceless.
I forgot this one. The Connexion guy also said we with this technology we could essentially become educational deejays. ROTHFL.
Some things I remember from previous study that were reinforced in these readings: You don’t have to register something for it to be copyrighted. You create it; it is copyrighted. Even if you think you have all four parts of fair use covered, you may still be violating copyright. Each case is handled individually, in court, if it gets to that point.
From my experience, most teachers do not want to hear about copyright. Their resources are limited and they use what they feel they need to teach. The comment I get is, “are the copyright police coming in to my classroom?”
Creative Commons and CopyLeft are in the middle somewhere between copyright law (all rights reserved) and public domain (no rights reserved.) Teachers need to work with materials that are under Creative Commons licenses and materials under open educational resources. My challenge is this: if the teachers don’t want to hear about copyright law and fair use guidelines, how am I going to get them to listen to me about Creative Commons? The fair use guidelines are hard enough to follow. Starting with one of the videos we watched about the basics would be a good beginning I guess.
On another note, I have to agree with everyone about the links being distracting. I start following links and forget what my original task was. I worry that I’ve missed some of the required readings because I’m jumping from link to link. I’m glad Dave clarified the differentiated instruction point. We don’t have to follow the links, but they are there for those who need them. One of the benefits of taking a course like this is that I am reminded of my personal preferences in learning styles and how they might not match those of my students. We need to remember those learning styles !
Sonja mentioned the ‘rip, mix, burn’ comparison in the TED talk video. It was a good way to explain the whole concept of technology changing the textbook business. ( I still have 8-track tapes in my possession, not to mention 45’s, albums, and cassettes.)
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