Category: Digital Law

Posted on

Why Creative Commons?

Although I’ve not managed to keep up fully with the Open Content Licensing for Educators course being run by the WikiEducator group this week, I have managed to spend enough time with to do a bit of thinking about copyright, Creative Commons, and what all this stuff means to me as an educator. The course has been a good introductory overview of these issues, although I was already fairly aware of much of  the information being shared. The real value was in connecting with other educators from all over the world and hearing so many different perspectives on how traditional copyright can be so debilitating, especially in the developing world.

I certainly don’t claim to be an expert on this copyright law stuff, but I have been taking a keen interest in the work of the Creative Commons folk for quite a while now and I try to take every opportunity to promote the benefits of the Commons. Reading through the forums, it’s clear that this hasn’t been the case for everyone, and it’s been great to see so many interested educators taking their first steps towards knowing more about CC and OER, and sharing ideas on how it can benefit them. As an exercise in spreading the excellent work of Creative Commons, the course appears to have been a great success.

Because I feel like I’m coming at the course content from a slightly different perspective, I decided to make this short video as a summary reflection on what Creative Commons means to me. It was prompted by a comment by Wayne Mackintosh in the previous post on this blog, where he pointed me towards a similar reflection video by Justin Cone, the producer of the Building on the Past video. As someone who has been pushing CC for a while, I thought it would be appropriate for me to take the opportunity to capture a few thoughts about it.

http://www.vimeo.com/21453342

I’d love to read some comments about how Creative Commons has made a difference to what you do as an educator.

Posted on

Playing Lawyer

I’ve been following a discussion online about school Acceptable Use Policies for using computers. AUPs are documents that many schools get students to sign which outline the rules for using the computers. Students – sometimes quite young students – then have to sign it like a contract, a sort of in-writing promise that they won’t do the wrong thing; visit banned websites, try to hack the system, abuse the equipment, etc . The contracts are usually enforced by people who rarely read the Terms of Service on the websites they visit themselves.

My own personal view is that getting kids to sign a document saying they will do the right thing is ‎rarely responsible for actually getting them to do the right thing. The best you can hope to achieve ‎with an AUP-style document is the chance to wave it in their face when they do the wrong thing… but ‎really, what positive thing has that achieved other than the opportunity to lord over them about the error of their ‎ways?‎ (Unless you consider creating a culture of mistrust a positive thing)

On the other hand, if all you really want to achieve with the AUP is to make sure that every kid knows ‎what the rules and expectations are, then there are plenty of more effective ways to do that than ‎having them sign some quasi-legal document invented by the school (or more commonly, copied ‎from another school).  ‎

There are lots of rules and expectations in schools that kids “just know” because it’s just part of the ‎culture and “the way we do things around here”.  Most of those don’t need to be enshrined in some ‎sort of unenforceable contract.‎ Computer Use AUPs are about as effective as Lineup Neatly in the Cafeteria AUPs, Do Your ‎Homework AUPs and Keep Your Shoelaces Tied AUPs.  There are rules, customs and expectations ‎about all these things, but we don’t seem to feel the need to have a contract for all of them. Why is Using A Computer so different.?

I think Computer Use AUPs harken back to the old days when going to the computer room was a big ‎deal, and computers were so rare that we needed special rules about using them. I’d like to think we’ve ‎moved on a little since then…‎

Image: ‘Panama Real Estate – Contracts‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23065375@N05/2235529638

Posted on

Lessons from the Conservative Right

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Larry Lessig is one of my heroes. This is a terrific video that ought to make you very angry (or at least, damn annoyed!)

The question is, what will you do about that anger? Are you in this fight? And what part are you, as a modern educator, playing in creating this important reform?

Recorded at TEDxNYED