Digital Citizenship - Week Ten

I really have enjoyed the video at the beginning of this week as I do totally agree with Kirby Ferguson and have watched it several times this week. I liked it so much I could not resist adding it here. Try as I might, the code supplied for embedding just would not work. I loved the piece where Kirby speaks to Apple and how they used copyright to their advantage.

I honestly believe that the people in the world are no smarter then those generations past, we just have been starting our learning and exploring and expanding our knowledge base from a totally different starting point. This is accelerating at the speed of the web as new ideas are shared almost instantly. The gap between time and space has shrunk considerably in the past century. Albert Einstein was several years getting his new theory of relativity out to the world and yet more before he could prove it as he was trapped in war torn Europe. We now get video footage from behind the lines almost as fast as it is happening. I know I have never had a truly new idea in my life but rather just thoughts or adjustments to the ideas of others. The entire world remixes.

The object of study this week of course would be copyright laws. While most people might not enjoy the exciting read any copyright law is, I am sure they would prefer it to a court order. One of the pieces that I did learn form was the part on fair dealing. I find this very interesting and I think that its intent is to enable some people the ability to use certain material in constructive ways for the betterment of all. I like that it does give the ability for material to be used in education and for study. I do find it interesting that this has yet to be tested in the courts. I would hate to be the first so for the near future I will still proceed with caution. I think that if I remain reasonable and remember to properly cite the information then I should be safe. While it might seem like they have given education more freedoms, we did learn last week that with freedom comes responsibility so I will still cite.

The creative commons article was also very interesting and enlightening. I totally enjoyed looking at each of the creative commons licenses when I was looking for images for my Aminoto. A very cool concept and I think that it will become a huge piece of my classrooms going forward. As our College moves towards an entirely mobile institution, more and more students will be posting things on the web. They will all need to understand this concept and I think that as a College we should make it a policy that we do not allow students to post anything they will be using for grades unless they have first created their own Creative Commons account. It protects the students, has them learn about copyright and helps them become better digital citizens.

Unfortunately I did not find anything in my feeder that peeked my interest. There was one that started out very good but turned into speaking about funding. Another that I did enjoy was based on five lies about Brock University. I liked this because some of the things mentioned had actual ties to being a good student, which every successful Brock Student must be, as well as some humor. Check them out.

Have a great weekend.

Jeff

Ted Talks (2012), Kirby Ferguson:Embrace the Remix. Retrieved from; http://on.ted.com/FergusonRemix

Media Smarts (n.d.), Fair Dealing for Media Education. Retrieved from; http://mediasmarts.ca/intellectual-property/fair-dealing-media-education

Wolf, L.G. (2010). Remix Reuse Recycle- A Creative Commons Assignment. Retrieved from; http://www.leighgraveswolf.com/2010/06/11/remix-reuse-recycle-a-creative-commons-assignment/