Quite a few teachers at our school are starting to see the advantages that a Ning community can offer. We have been using Nings this year with several classes, and I’m finding them a really good, really easy way to get teachers interacting with technology in ways they might not have done otherwise. Ning provides a visually rich, yet secure, environment for students to collaborate and socialise in, with a range of tools that are both useful and fun to use. Because Ning offers many of the same kinds of tools that Facebook offers – discussion, video, pictures, chat – students find it easy to adapt to. It also provides a few things that Facebook doesn’t – blogs, music and page customisation – so it allows teachers to modify the Ning toolsets to meet their individual educational needs.
Although Nings are proving incredibly useful for educators, the Google ads that appear on the right-hand menu are problematic for many educational purposes. As good as the Ning environment is, with the ads in place (and in a new Ning the ads are often for inappropriate things like weight loss, online dating, work from home schemes, etc) Nings become largely unsuitable for school use. While it’s possible to pay to remove the ads, the cost and red-tape involved in doing this in a school setting also make it less likely that educators will pursue it as an option.
Realising this, the good folk at Ning very generously offer an ad-free option for k-12 educators. Simply ask to have the ads removed, and they will remove them for you.
The problem is that the instructions for getting the ads removed are not obvious. They require you to write to them and ask for it; a nice personal approach, but not just a matter of clicking a simple checkbox in the same way that Wikispaces offers ad-free wikis for educators. With Ning, you need to know where to direct your request for ad removal, and that information is not all that obvious. If you Google “removing ads from a ning” you will find instructions to do it, but I’ve found that the instructions can be out-of-date or do not always match what you see on your screen… it can be a little confusing.
I just applied this morning to have a Ning made ad-free, and managed to work my way through the confusion. If it helps anyone else, here’s how I did it.
Fill in the URL for the Ning you want made ad-free
From the “Select a Topic” dropdown, choose “General Question”
In the “Describe your Question” field, write a short request for your ads to be removed… as an example, this is what I wrote… “Hello, I’d like to request that the above Ning be made ad-free for education. Our school is doing a collaborative project with our sister school in Japan and would like to use the Ning environment for these exchanges. Our students are aged between 13 and 17 and the Ning will be used only for educational purposes. Thanks!“
They say it takes about 3-4 days to get approved.
Thanks Ning-guys! Hope you get a great big serving of Internet karma as reward for your generosity!
So here I am in Christchurch, New Zealand for Ulearn 09, certainly one of the biggest Ed Tech conferences in NZ, and probably one of the biggest in the southern hemisphere I would think. It’s a education conference that I’ve wanted to attend for the last few years, having only ever heard good things about it, but for whatever reason I just haven’t been able to get here for it. This year was different, and after hearing how good it was from my work colleague, @sirchriss, I was very keen to get here. Fortunately, a number of Australian educators were sponsored to attend the event this year and I was lucky enough to have my presentation submissions accepted, so here I am.
It really is a beautiful part of the world, and Christchurch is a very attractive city. The conference itself is quite large, with close to 2000 delegates, 400+ workshops and presentations, 150 support staff and over 60 vendors. The logistical effort to plan and host a conference of this scale is significant and the organisers do an amazing job.
I got up early enough this morning to attend the Powhiri, a kind of Maori welcoming ceremony. I’m constantly struck by the energy and pride of the Maori people, and think it’s wonderful that the two cultures of New Zealand, the traditional and the contemporary, exist together in such harmony and respect for each other. This is a country that really values their indigenous people.
But mainly, today has been full of meeting people. Many of them for the first time (although I felt like I’ve known many of them for a long time.) I bumped into @janenicholls at the Powhiri, and then during the day I kept meeting more and more people who looked just like their Twitter avatars. “Hey, you’re @moodlegirl!” or “Hey, you’re @keamac!”, “Hey you’re @dwenmoth!”, etc, etc. Then of course there was the reconnecting with people I have met before, people like @rachelboyd, @allanahk and @dragon09. I also attended the unconference session in the afternoon at Boaters, where I got to meet many others and to take part in some powerful conversations. I really enjoyed the unconference – really just a very informal gathering to chat about whatever topics came up – and I got a lot out of it.
After the unconference, I met up with Matt from Core-Ed to record a short video interview as part of the Edtalks series. This is another terrific NZ initiative, and involves recording short video interviews with leading teachers about some of the things they are doing with technology to make learning more engaging for the kids they teach. Over time the Edtalks video library has grown to become a valuable collection of good ideas and best practice for other teachers, and it was a bit of an honour to be asked to make a contribution to it.
Tonight, I went to the dinner with about 40 other conference folk, where I met still more people that looked a lot like their avatars. More conversations, more great ideas exchanged, more opportunities to hear about how other people approach this incredible job called teaching. Likewise, I had a few people say to me today, “Hey, you’re @betchaboy!” as though there was almost a sense of celebrity to it for them. It’s really, really weird. After having a day full of these “Hey, you’re @that_person” moments, it made me think about how funny it is that we have these little “celebrity” moments when we meet someone that we’ve only ever know from the online world, especially if it’s just from reading their blogs, following them on Twitter or hearing their podcasts. I mean, we are all “just” teachers, and yet there is that glimmer of excitement when meeting each other for the first time.
It reminded me of an Intel ad currently screening on TV back in Australia, where Ajay Bhatt, the co-inventor of the USB, walks into a room full of “fans”. The ad concludes with a great one liner that kind of sums up the experience I had in meeting people today… I won’t ruin the line by telling you what it is, you can watch it for yourself…
Andy Warhol once said that everyone will get their 15 minutes of fame. Maybe with the rise of global social networks, extensive personal learning networks and the notion of “celebrity” now existing way out on the edge of the long tail, we’ll all just want to get our 15 minutes of obscurity instead?
I was in a staff meeting at school last week where we were given a presentation outlining 10 common myths about copyright. I thought it not a bad summary of what many teachers just assume to be true. Ironically, I’m reproducing it below basically word for word as it was presented to me, but I’m told on good authority that the original creator has authorised its use for reposting.
The other thing I really would have liked to have had included in the conversation was a little more talk about what the alternatives are. It’s one thing to talk about what you can’t do legally, but unless you provide a list of workable alternatives, simply making “though shalt not” pronouncements is a bit pointless. Copyright has a place, but in a digital world that place is changing dramatically. There is an obvious tension between the inputs and the outputs of copyright… if you are a content creator, you want the output of your work to be protected so others don’t simply steal your stuff, however, unless you can borrow and remix content from others, you will have very little to work with in the first place.
If you’ve not seen it, take a look at an amazing comic book produced by the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University. Issue 1, entitled Bound By Law, looks at the copyright issues faced by documentary filmmakers, and is an extremely insightful look at the pros and cons of copyright and how it can often unintentionally stifle the very same creativity it is supposed to be protecting. I think it explains it very well, and it should be read by all high school students (and teachers!). You can download a copy (Under a Creative Commons licence of course) from www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics.
For another lucid overview of the real issues behind copyright law, you really can’t go past the TED Talk by Larry Lessig (founder of Creative Commons) called How Creativity is Being Strangled by the Law. His final summation of the tensions that exist between the extremist viewpoints of “Let’s protect everything” vs “Everything should be free” is excellent, and he makes it very clear that, while the law might not be the ass we sometimes think it is, the notion of copyright certainly needs a good injection of balance and common sense if it is to remain relevant and workable.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, here are the 10 myths about copyright, as presented by my school last week (and specifically applied to Australian copyright law)
1. It’s OK – I found it on the net
The fact that something is on the internet doesn’t mean that it’s not protected by copyright or that you can use it as you wish. Material on the net is protected to the same extent as anything on paper or in any other type of format. In many cases, however, copyright owners put a statement on to websites stating how people can use the material – the permission they give can often be quite extensive, but don’t assume that it will cover what you are planning to do with the material.
2. We can use it – it doesn’t have a copyright notice on it
While it is recommended copyright owners should put copyright notices on their material, it is not compulsory, and it doesn’t affect whether or not something is protected. We will have a compliance issue to deal with whether or not the material has a copyright notice on it.
3. We’re non-profit so it’s OK
In some narrow cases, the non-profit statues of an organisation can affect its ability to rely on exceptions. However, there is no general rule to the effect that it’s OK to use copyright material for non-profit purposes.
4. It’s all right we’re attributing the creator
If you’re using copyright material, you do generally have to attribute the person or people who created the material. This is a general moral rights obligation. However, you’ll still have copyright issues to consider; attributing the creator doesn’t change this.
5. We only need to worry about copyright if we’re charging money
In some narrow cases, the fact that an organisation is charging money can affect its ability to rely on exception to the general rule that you need permission if you want to use copyright material in one of the ways reserved to the copyright owner. However, there is no general rule to the effect that you don’t have to worry about copyright if you’re not charging people for the material you are using.
6. The copyright owner should see this as good promotion
Whether or not a copyright owner sees your use of their material as good promotion is their decision, not yours, and you can never be sure they’ll see the situation in the same light as you do. Also, even if the copyright owner does see your use of the material as good publicity, don’t assume that this means that they’ll give you permission to use it for free. Many copyright owners make their living from the licence fees they charge, and they will often want to know beforehand how you want to use the material. If you don’t get a clearance when you’re supposed to, you’ve still infringed copyright – which may, for the College, work out as bad publicity.
7. It’s OK – I’m using less than 10%
There is no general rule that you can use less than 10% without permission. If you’re using any ‘substantial’ part of a copyright owner’s material – whether you’ve made changes to it or not – you’ll have to deal with the copyright issue. In the context, a ‘substantial’ part is any part that is important, distinctive or essential. It doesn’t have to be a large part to be ‘substantial’ in a copyright sense.
8. It’s all right – I’ve changed it
There are two common, but wrong, beliefs in this area. First, there is no general rule to the effect that it’s OK to use copyright material if you change it by 10% or more. Second, there is no general rule to the effect that you can use copyright material if you make five or more changes. As noted above, if you’re using any part that is important, distinctive or essential, you have to deal with copyright issues.
9. It’s OK – we paid for it
The fact that the College paid a contractor for something – such as a report or a series of photos – will have a bearing on how we can use it. However, this is not by itself a guarantee that we own copyright in it, and can use it as we like. Similarly, the fact that we own a physical item – such as a painting or photograph or a DVD – does not mean you can use it as you like (such as copying it or screening it).
10. No one will ever find out
If you know, and your colleagues know, why mightn’t the copyright owner – or the collecting society that represents them – get to find out too? Organisations that infringe copyright are always at risk from disgruntled employees, let alone the other people they come in contact with. Also, copyright owners have six years to take action for an infringement – that’s a long time for information to come to light.
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