Nick Briscoe, Full Sail emdtms grad, talks with Dr. Deason, Dr. Ludgate and moi about Web 2.0 tools such as social networking and their use in education. This is the first episode of Nick’s Educatium podcast which he’s created with fellow emdtms grads Paul Martin, Aletha Williams and Emily Wray. They can only get better from this beginning video podcast. Really.

Here’s a bonus outtake of Dr. Siegel wanting to join in as we were setting up the interview:

        

Another student take on Zander’s giving student’s an automatic “A”:

"May I axe you a question?" Astro's Got an Axe! by tohoscope

Bob is still looking for his A

Grades in middle school are controversial, especially now that students earn credits to be promoted to the next grade level. Ask a teacher at my school to “give an ‘A’” and their response is likely to be one of confusion, disbelief, laughter, or even anger. Administrators will tell you that grades should be used to measure student success and communicate progress. Unfortunately, many teachers use grades to communicate a very bad message and focus on “principle.” “Its the principle of the matter,” exclaims a colleague. “If you give an ‘A’ to a student who does nothing in your class, what kind of message are you sending the kid who works their butt off?”

So it goes back to measure and comparison (see chapter 2). Giving an A is not about allowing students a free ride and telling hard working students that it is all for nothing. Rather, it is eliminating the “anticipation of failure” and allowing the class to focus on what is more important; learning. It’s all about placing everyone on a level playing field (pardon the competitive sports analogy) and saying, “you already have the grade, what’s next?” It’s likely that the response will involve a feeling of relief and willingness to explore.

Ashley’s always reaching for an ‘A.’

However, I think the next step of giving an ‘A’ is just as important as giving the ‘A’ itself. Teachers who feel that giving an ‘A’ would eliminate student accountability will like this step the most. Requiring that students predict how they have earned the A before they have actually received it, helps them develop goals and builds intrinsic motivation. It also helps them see the possibility of being successful, something many have given up on.

Interested in seeing how I felt about this in October, click here. – Noel Nehrig

And my erudite response:

Grades are a bit like religion. There may have been a point at some time but it’s gotten lost in all of the noise and people are very scared to consider what to do if grades/religion had never existed. In the classroom, has the point of all the effort gotten lost to pursuing a grade? I mean, just like religion, isn’t all of this effort suppose to amount to something intrinsic, some good that goes beyond measure?

Grades are institution solution to communicating student progress and/or position in the A-to-F continuum within the classroom. There the measure, not the point. But i’ve seen instructors at all level quibble looking to seal up any possible loophole that a student might use to game the grading system. At best a grade is an approximation that may or may not be related to student progress fulfilling course requirements. In the end, it’s what we carry in our heads and hearts that matters more than this imperfect approximation. Funny how only those who excel and those who feel besmirched care so much about grades. What’s up with that?

Sources:
Wk 1 Reading- “A” is for Ax Murderer by Noel Nehrig. http://web.me.com/noelnehrig/The_Blog_Prince_for_EMDTMS_MAC/2010_MAC_OCD_Wk1/Entries/2010/2/6_Wk_1_Reading-_%E2%80%9CA%E2%80%9D_is_for_Ax_Murderer.html retrieved on 2/9/2010

Astro’s Got an Axe! by tohoscope. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tohoscope/182444838/ retrieved on 2/9/2010

Stone mason by sk8geek. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sk8geek/3917647300/ retrieved on 2/9/2010

Pretty Princess Picking Her Nose by Pink Sherbet Photography. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3295969599/ retrieved on 2/9/2010

        

As I continued to explore online teaching/learning platforms for my LMS course (Learning Management Systems), I revisited Digication, a platform that I used my last year teaching middle school technology and media classes. The following are my notes that I passed along to my students to study before our weekly online session. The last portion are three examples of the Udutu teaching module that we’ve been studying.

Digication Revisited

In between large-scale enterprise level learning management systems imposed upon educators and roll-your-own systems like moodle are many smaller online options such as Digication (http://digication.com/). I heard about Digication from an interview of one of the founders, Jeffrey Yan, on Leo Laporte’s "Inside the Net" podcast. Digication’s founders recognized the need for something more than just another place to post content, something that would cater to educators’ special needs that aren’t being addressed by overly-generalized web-portals, and at the same time be as simple to manage as an email account. Following is a Behind-the-Scenes tour of Digication and the "Inside the Net" interview of Digication founder, Jeffrey Yan (NOTE: the interview is a bit long…). Please review these items before our wimba session.

Inside the Net 35: Digication (http://www.twit.tv/itn35)

One of the things that attracted me to Digication was that it had all of the features of a full CMS but didn’t require that I code it myself or try to get the assistance/permission from my district IT. Only limitation for the free account was that there couldn’t be more than 1,000 users at my school. I’ve written about my experiences with Digication a few times on my blog:
* Digication Gets My Vote
* Classroom Website on Digication

* Utudu & You: You should be well into creating your Udutu course/unit. Make sure that you make your way through the Udutu tutorials at http://udutu.com/tutorials.html. Please come to our Wimba session ready to share your progress, frustrations and victories. Remember, you want to have your Udutu course set-up quickly enough so that your fellow students have time to visit and comment on your Udutu course (during week 4). The following examples of Udutu units are offered as an inspiration and encouragement (the first one was created by the President of Udutu!). Enjoy:

All About Web 2.0 and Udutu Genesis by Roger Mundell

Introduction to 20th Century Art by Liz Perry

Introduction to Technology Accessibility by Emily Wray

Sources:

* featured image: Study by hermes. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hermes-/421203877/ retrieved on 12/9/2009

* audio podcast: Inside the Net 35: Digication by Leo Laporte and Megan Morrone with Guest: Jeffrey Yan of Digication. http://www.twit.tv/itn35 retrieved on 12/7/2009

* videos: LMO Moments: Behind the Scenes Tour: Digication by Joe Bustillos – emdt/FSO. http://www.viddler.com/explore/joebeebee/videos/22/ retrieved on 12/7/2009

* Udutu units: All About Web 2.0 and Udutu Genesis by Roger Mundell. http://publish.myudutu.com/published/launch/1612/Course15573/Launch.html?redirect=true retrieved on 12/7/2009

* Udutu units: Introduction to 20th Century Art by Liz Perry. http://publish.myudutu.com/published/launch/12441/Course21598/Launch.html?redirect=true retrieved on 12/7/2009

* Udutu units: Introduction to Technology Accessibility by Emily Wray. http://lms.myudutu.com/LMSGadget/courses/lms/12244/Course21696/881/v2009_8_24_18_23_39/course/Course21696.html?redirect=true retrieved on 12/7/2009

        

I just finished updating the reading part of my course and I somehow ended up telling my own story of Possibility. At this point in the course my students have read the first nine chapters of the Art of Possibility and are finishing up their final week in my course. They are just about to begin their last month in Full Sail’s emdtms program. Thus, the following is a glimpse of what my students suffer through. Don’t feel sorry for them. I’m the one who has to read (and grade) their blogs. Ack. Actually that is one of the best parts of this job, it’s reading the great things they share in their blogs… oh yeah, I usually share such things right here in this blog. Duh. Enjoy

:: Description
You will read the Art of Possibility chapters 10 -12 and post one entry (or more) into your blog.

:: Rationale

pacbell by joe bustillos

Ah, but the story continues from there. Truth be told, being a teacher was somewhat akin to being a phone company drone in that the highest form of praise tended to be that one always showed up for work on time and never did anything that made work for others. Yeah, I somehow ended up in another world of "lifers." Of course, I didn’t know any better so I kept doing things like teaching my students video journalism to help with their literacy and brought computers from home into my classroom. I guess I became a bit more entrepreneurial because I’d get involved in creating some new tech/ed/media program on campus, we’d have great success and then after a couple of years the funding would go away and I’d find myself working for another school/district, bringing tech/media to the natives. While getting a master’s degree and time spent working on a doctorate I continued the "create a tech program/find success/lose funding/change jobs" cycle three times. Alas, the doctorate program ran aground (twice), but I was lucky enough to work with Dr. Ludgate and somehow found a home on the opposite end of the country working for Full Sail. I am not the poster child for the Art of Possibility. But I am kind of stubborn as far as expecting a lot from myself because I’ve already been given so much. And if I can influence someone to not settle for the status quo, to push the technology, to enable their students, well then, that’s a damn good day.

The following video features someone who found amazing success, in many ways, through equally amazing failures. Having witnessed three of his incredible keynote speeches, this is not one of his better speeches. But the message is all the more real given the speech’s lack of polish. Enjoy.

:: Resources

The Practices
This books is less of a “study” book, where you try to analyze every sentence and paragraph and more a book that you want to move through and try to focus on the over-arching concepts presented. At the end of each chapter are some questions that form the “practices” part of the book. Use the questions to prompt your book notes that you will post in your blog. Feel free to answer the following study questions, or comment on the practices at the end of each chapter, or write about whatever moves you most (that’s directly related to the reading). Your choice.

Chapter 10. Being the Board: It’s not them. It’s not the circumstances. It’s me. It’s my choices. Now what do I do?

Chapter 11. Creating Frameworks for Possibility: How do I take this flash of insight and make it into daily thing? And how do I share this with others?

Chapter 12. Telling the WE Story: I told you it wasn’t about you. Have you been able to tap into the power of combining your expertise and passions with someone equally gifted? Have you had the pleasure of lifting a teammate, student, stranger up enabling them to realize their dreams and exceed anything that you could have imagined?

Coda: Now what do we do?

Sources:
Image: Pop!Tech 2008 – Benjamin Zander by Pop!Tech, http://www.flickr.com/photos/poptech2006/2968249798/ retrieved on 11/12/2009
image: pacbell01.jpg by Joe Bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/pacbell01.jpg retrieved on 11/12/2009
image: jbb & zander by Joe Bustillos, http://web.me.com/edm613/media/jbbnbzander.jpg retrieved on 11/12/2009
YouTube: Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005 posted by peestandingup, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA, retrieved on 11/12/2009.

        

An open letter to my emdt co-workers, co-conspirators & creativity enablers,

On one level or another I’ve been teaching communication and writing since I took my first teaching assignment 15-years ago. One thing that I learned right away was that it seemed to be a big function of the education system to take the eagerness of our little learners to share their every creation and over time crush it down to nothing, such that every fourth grader knows that no one wants hear what they have to say and even less what they think. The smart ones, in this system, are the ones who learn to speak and write in the language of their teachers, and that it’s critically important to not make any mistakes in spelling or grammar. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the ones who might suffer the most from this fear of writing are the ones who are part of the system that enforces this approach to writing, our masters students. But what they may not know, which I learned from my second-language 6th graders, is that they’ll never get any better at writing without working at it on an ongoing basis and that requires that I release them from the system that says that they can only write about things that the teacher cares about and only in the style set by the teacher. You have to work against a lifetime of “correction” and just get them to write before you can help them to write “better.”

As we begin to make blogging a bigger part of our process, please consider the learning process and that putting thoughts down in writing for others to read takes something more than can be expressed in a check-list (though a check-list can be very helpful in the beginning). What prompted this concern is the following exchange between two of my current students about having to do a blog in my course:

edm613 student blog entry:
“I must admit, I disliked blogging in the last class in which it was a requirement. I am really not sure why- I like to write- but it just never gelled for me. I did, however, revisit the idea of blogging after losing my job at the end of the last school year. I thought I would chronicle the ups and downs of my lack of job, talk about the new and exciting things I would encounter and boast about my new accomplishments. I would fill the pages with salsa lessons, daily musings and funny anecdotes. I think I actually managed to write a paragraph once or twice and it consisted of me complaining and moaning about emotional drudgery. I have a difficult enough time sounding interesting in one line on Twitter- I couldn’t possibly blog about my life- or lack there of.

“I decided not to re-purpose my last blog but start a new one. It will be chock full of fresh and new ideas, brilliant insight and astute observations. Words will flow from my mind, through my fingers and dance onto the page. I will be clever and captivating. What does this have to do with anything in class? Nothing, but every blog has to start somewhere. Welcome.”

Second students comment:
“I agree with you about blogging in our last class. The requirements were very limiting and seemed to hold me back. The blog became a chore and I dreaded each and every post for fear that I wouldn’t get a good grade or I would make some simple mistake and have to redo everything. I am very excited to get to share with everyone and express my thoughts more freely again. I like that you have brought a great sense of positivity into your new blog. I like your new point of view…you think you can assist me in bringing back my light?”

Standards of excellence and creativity will never be found where one doesn’t have the freedom to make a thousand mistakes first. I should know. jbb

Sources:
image: keyboard – clipart.com/jupiter graphics
thanks to jolene t. & joann s. for your thoughts and comments on blogging and giving it “one more try.”

        

Last time I talked to Dr. Sparks (“Sparky”) we were enjoying a late night dinner at the Old Ebbitt Grill following a week roaming the streets of DC and the halls of power with my Pepperdine cadremates. He wasn’t completely satisfied with my consultancy project and charged me with the assignment to get a better grasp on what I really wanted to do with my doctorate degree. Of course he had no idea that seven days later I would get kicked out of the program for failing to get a B or better grade in a different class (see Sound of Doors Closing). So the question shifted from what I wanted to get out of getting a doctorate with Pepperdine to what justification do I have for taking up this costly battle again at some other institution. What are my intentions?

Me and Sparky before the End - photo by Joe Bustillos (cc) 2009

My proposed consultancy was to help an independent folk artist, Neva, with her website, to take her web-presence to the next level and leverage the tools out there for many many others to discover her music and great onstage presence. Sparky has known me for a long time, going back to getting my masters degree at Pepperdine in 2002, so to him it probably looked like Joe was just doing another web project and not stretching himself all that much. Though he would never say this directly, he was asking me what makes me think that I deserve to be part of their “doctorate club,” what do I bring to the table that might permit me to add “Ed.D” to the end of my name?

Kirk: Captain of the Enterprise, huh?
Picard: That’s right.
Kirk: Close to retirement?
Picard: I’m not planning on it.
Kirk: Well let me tell you something. Don’t! Don’t let them promote you. Don’t let them transfer you. Don’t let them do *anything* that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you’re there… you can make a difference. – Star Trek: Generations (1994)

I had a friend who became my friend after he beat me, getting the job that I wanted as technology coordinator for the school district we both worked in. He was the much better choice for the job. I’d go to his office every once in a while and he’d be required in a hundred places at once and after the dust settled, he’d ask what I was working on in my lab. He’d listen carefully and then say how much he missed crawling under tables, connecting CAT-5 cables, setting up servers and making the hardware and software work. I don’t doubt that there were days that he’d easily give up the suit and tie for the cable-ties and dust-bunnies, but he did so much good setting the policies, practices and standards that enabled the school site tech-coordinators to be education- and student-centric, to drive the technology to do what the vendor promised in pursuit of delivering the best educational experience. I was told that he was a pretty damn good teacher in the computer lab. But the circle of his influence reached so many more students when he left the classroom and started enabling teachers and tech-coordinators to do their best. That’s what I wanted for myself when I began the doctorate program five years ago, to take the good that I’d learned with my classroom of students and enable other teachers to give the same opportunities and learning experiences to their students.

When I began the doctorate program I was a computer lab teacher working at a K-5 elementary school, seeing about 600 students per week, working on everything from basic keyboarding, to teaching PowerPoint to first graders, Excel to second graders and HyperStudio to everyone else. Beginning the second year of the doctorate program I took a job teaching print media/technology and math to sixth, seventh and eighth graders at the middle school level. The transition wasn’t particularly smooth and I ended up taking a leave of absence from Pepperdine after the winter term in order to adjust to my new assignment. Before taking the middle school job I had applied for the same tech coordinator job that I’d lost out to my friend, who was being kicked upstairs to an assistant superintendent job. It was another “no,” and I knew that I lacked secondary ed experience, so that was one thing that was in the back of my mind when I took the middle school job. At the end of three years teaching at the middle school level I could say that I was pretty good at what I did but I was still working on a level that wasn’t really reaching much beyond the walls of my classroom. Fortunately, the opportunity presented itself to break free from my former classroom’s walls and teach online at the masters level for Full Sail University.

Stickam screenshot by Joe Bustillos (cc) 2009

While not as influential on a policy level as a district tech coordinator might be, I was influencing a new group of teachers every month, making a difference in their professional lives, helping them develop new tech and media skills and enabling them to deliver a better educational experience to their students. Thus, working at Full Sail has definitely helped me realize part of the dream to be an influencer on a much bigger level than my previous classroom had afforded to me. And while there are monetary benefits that would come from having the doctorate, the job is not depended on adding three letters to the end of my name.

What still lacks, though, was something that I knew when I set about to get my masters degree. At the time I was teaching video journalism to fifth and sixth graders as part of a Magnet school program that I had helped to develop, but I knew that my position was dependent on the whim and choices made by people further up the chain of command. And sure enough, at the end of the grant I was “encouraged” to find another assignment and ended up at the K-5 computer lab, switching districts. Then four years later it happened again (funding changed and my job was eliminated) and that’s when I switched to the middle school job. The masters degree was supposed to help me keep my tech position and it did help me keep my middle school job because I didn’t have a single-subject credential or a computer science undergraduate degree. But I still was working at a level where if someone up the chain sneezed, I caught the cold. These days there are no teaching jobs with 100% security, but I think what I’m really driving at is working on things that are much more fundamental to teaching and technology than ensuring a cushy teaching position.

The research that I was beginning to work on, before my disenrollment from Pepperdine, was what impact might happen if a public school district were to switch from printed textbooks to e-textbooks delivered on small devices like iTouches and Kindles. I wasn’t thinking in terms of literacy improvement but on bottom-line TCO level and the possible shift away from fixed, one-size-fits-all curriculum to dynamic, interactive, current, classroom-specific curriculum where the expertise of the classroom educator and familiarity with specific class’ strengths and need might be drawn into the process of what e-textbooks are used in the classroom. I was also thinking about the destabilizing factor this shift might have with the powerful textbook lobby as far as reducing their part of the budget which might also reduce their influence on the politicians who determine which curriculum to follow. Then, of course, the governator announced his proposal to go computer-based e-textbooks to save the California millions of dollars. I guess I was on the right track.

So, if I were to continue this research than the whole state of California might become the testbed. The point is that as I was watching the deployment of this technology into the general public over a year and a half ago and I could see how it would benefit educational users in terms of TCO and, more importantly, in terms of shifting towards a much more flexible system for delivering educational content.

Raising my sights from this particular example to the larger picture of my life’s mission, which is what I think Sparky was trying to guide me toward, I have to lock on to the common threads that I have seen since my masters program days:

• The power of online technology to enable deep, long lasting, life changing communities of practice,
• The need to balance measurable learning growth with the fact that education is at it’s heart a human endeavor, and while we humans are forever capable of exceeding anyone’s expectations, we do not do so on anyone’s set schedule or according to anyone’s predetermined quotas,
• After 30-years in the classroom the problems with Technology are not about the need for more teacher training or even better technological tools. The problem is a persistent “school” culture that is still run on the competitive factory manager model where little unformed minds come in one door and little learners walk out the other, having all had the same coat of paint and varnish applied to their outsides.
• The world of technology is changing and moving forward at a pace that the traditional world of education cannot hope to keep up . But we have to find meaningful ways to keep up, which means we might have to abandon fixed mindsets about education and the classroom and teaching that were from a time when a high school graduate could enter the job market and build a lifelong career with one company.

What this means to me is that I see my position at Full Sail as a foundation to enable my graduate students to mine the depths of community, to change their learning environments one student and one classroom at a time, to reflect the best that we can accomplish by efficiently using technology and media in our instruction and interaction with our students, and to learn from every success and every set-back. This also means that I must dig deeper into my own community of learners and be less of a lurker and more of a participant and agent of change. Too long the writer in me has enjoyed the anonymous vantage of the untraceable voice making sarcastic comments from a hidden perch. And it is too tempting to let myself get distracted in my little cubicle by all of the shiny gadgets being introduced on a regular basis and to favorably compare my lack of progress with those around me who have no calling in their lives. It’s time to occupy the Captain’s chair.

It isn’t about getting a doctorate and then “retiring” on some level. Perhaps that’s part of my previous caution, is that I didn’t want to expend so much energy in the pursuit that I wouldn’t have anything left for the post-doctorate part of my life. I don’t know where I got that notion from but it seems pretty stupid as I commit the thought to words on the screen. Anyway, I don’t come from a family with too many doctoral academics. There are plenty of masters graduates among my siblings and cousins (amazing when one considers that a high school diploma was the terminating degree of almost 100% of my parents’ associates who graduated at all). So I don’t come at this with any sense of expectation beyond acknowledging that I have been one lucky kid who worked to keep his options open to pursue his academic musings. I guess it’s time to be the adult and not the lurker, to do more than guide the next generation, but to have part in changing the paths that they will follow.

I think that drive, the intellect and passion behind it are the keys to my entrance into the hall of academics, the mythic doctorate club. I will not check my ID or my iPhone at the door.

Sources:
images: Me and Sparky and 090723 stickam session by Joe Bustillos (cc) 2009

Quote: “Captain of the Enterprise?” from the movie: Star Trek: Generations, story by Rick Berman, Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111280/quotes retrieved on 7/23/2009

YouTube video: Leading the Nation Into a Digital Textbook Future – Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (Teil 1), posted by http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hPi1hrJxFQ retrieved on 7/23/2009

        

Thinking a lot about copyright. In my course at Full Sail I cover copyright, Creative Commons, Fair Use and netiquette related to copyright in two one-hour sessions. Well, actually session one was mostly about Creative Commons and the second session was mostly about Fair Use. I’m good but I found myself stumbling around, going back and forth to make sure that my students understood what Copyright really meant. Not smart. So, I need to redistribute the info into three sessions: 1) Copyright, 2) Fair Use and 3) Creative Commons. (Note to my current students: I’m not going to spring this change on you ’cause that would mean that you’d have to cover the following material and be ready to discuss it in less than 22-hours. Not fair). So the following is a working prototype:

When: Second week Tuesday OR Thursday @ 8:30 pm EST (you only need to attend one session per week) Intro to Copyright Pre-Session Videos & Information: Please make sure to preview the following videos and read through the information listed below before our session together Copyright Basics: Definition of Copyright: * Permanently fixed work that can be seen or heard * Only copyright owner can use the work What can be Copyrighted: * books * plays * films/movies * dance * music Copyright Duration * lifetime + 70 years – company 100 years 10 Myths About Copyright Explained by Brad Templeton 1. “If it doesn’t have a copyright notice, it’s not copyrighted.” 2. “If I don’t charge for it, it’s not a violation.” 3. “If it’s posted to Usenet it’s in the public domain.” 4. “My posting was just fair use!” 5. “If you don’t defend your copyright you lose it.” 6. “If I make up my own stories, but base them on another work, my new work belongs to me.” 7. “They can’t get me, defendants in court have powerful rights!” 8. “Oh, so copyright violation isn’t a crime or anything?” 9. “It doesn’t hurt anybody — in fact it’s free advertising.” 10. “They e-mailed me a copy, so I can post it.” 11. “So I can’t ever reproduce anything?” Please go to Templeton’s site and review his essay and comments. We will be discussing his comments during our wimba session. This optional last video, Good Copy/Bad Copy, is a one-hour documentary on the controversy around issues of copyright and new media. Warning: This video contains “adult language” and disturbing images. Wimba Instructions: 1. Please make sure you have your headset plugged in and on. I will be turning on the video cam, so have a light on and a smile on your face. 2. Please look at pre-session videos and information listed above. We will be discussing Copyright. Hint: If you don’t know what these words mean, you might want to do a little research on these words. 3. Go to our Wimba site at: http://fullsail.wimba.com/ and go to the EMDT MAC Virtual Classroom 4. Be Prepared to discuss this week’s activities & project 5. Course Q&A/Open discussion Finally, please make every effort to be here – we benefit from each others’ input, questions and concerns. If you cannot attend the expectation is that you will review the archive of the session and then create a blog entry with the title: “Week X Wimba session X” and write a paragraph (minimum 5 sentences) about your thoughts or comments on the archived session. For attendees the blog entry is optional. Both attendees & non-attendees please make sure to click the DONE button at the bottom of this page. Sources: Youtube video: What is a Copyright? by Nathan Boehme/Expert Village, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es848GfNY retrieved on 6/8/2009 Youtube video: How to Copyright : Learn What Cannot Be Protected Under Copyright Law by Nathan Boehme/Expert Village, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAfKVg4SACY retrieved on 6/8/2009 10 Myths About Copyright Explained by Brad Templeton, http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html retrieved on 6/8/2009 Blip.tv video: Good Copy, Bad Copy Directed by ANDREAS JOHNSEN, RALF CHRISTENSEN, HENRIK MOLTKE (http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/), http://www.blip.tv/file/359180/ retrieved on 6/8/2009

        

Photo: Mannie Garcia (AP), Image: Shepherd Fairey

Another day, another Fair Use issue in the headlines. After working with my graduate students over the past six months I’m left with the feeling that most of them approach the subject of copyright as something that the big media companies hold over their heads, preventing them from using the music that they want in their videos or images on their websites. It’s an eye-opening experience for them to realize that there are options for them to use, such as creative commons, where they can find quality media and stay well clear of the gray area that is copyright law. Good times. I cover copyright and Fair Use over two sessions every month and by the end everyone knows that Fair Use is not a right but can be used as a defense if/when one is sued for a copyright violation. Or course none of my students want to be anywhere near a court, having to defend themselves versus some scary media conglomerate.

Then the last week of February, as if I needed a textbook case on Fair Use, I stumbled across an NPR interview of the artist, Shepherd Fairey, who was behind President Obama’s “Hope” poster that rose to iconic status during the election. Seems that the Associated Press was threatening to sue Fairey for the use of the photograph that he used to create his poster. Just before NPR ran the story Fairey decided to beat AP to the punch and sue AP claiming that his use of the photo was covered under Fair Use. To make things even more complicated, the photographer, Mannie Garcia, is suing AP claiming that he was a freelancer and not an AP employee when he shot the disputed photo and therefore he is entitled to compensation from this litigation. Let’s say it together: Fair Use is not a right but a defensible position. Again, Fair Use is not a right but a defensible position.

I asked photographer and TWiT contributer, Scott Bourne, his take on the case (via Twitter) and he said, “I think the artist stole the photo and his fair use claim will end up costing him treble damages. All depends on whether AP owns pic.”

When NPR’s Terry Gross asked the photographer of the Obama image, Mannie Garcia, his take on Fairey using his photograph he said, “[It's] crucial for people to understand, simply because it’s on the Internet doesn’t mean that it’s free for the taking, and that just because you can take it, means that it belongs to you.”

A cursory survey of opinions online from the likes of Milton Glaser on BoingBoing, Mark Vallen on Art-for-Change, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and Chal Pivik on the Los Angeles METBlogs, seems to show that the more the pundit knows about the actual steps or changes to the photo that Fairey made to create the poster the more likely the writer will come down on the side of Fairey’s Fair Use claim. Finally, NPR did an excellent job covering all of the angles of the story, finishing up with a discussion with law professor Greg Lastowka on the case and Fair Use. Click the player below for the complete NPR recording.

NPR: Fresh Air: Shepard Fairey: Inspiration Or Infringement?

Los Angeles Times Video: Hope: Shepard Fairey and Barack Obama

Postscript: Had my research on this story ended with the NPR piece I would have been left with a different image of Shepherd Fairey than the one I gained via a series of videos that were created long before Obama campaign, when Fairey’s main claim to fame was his “Andre the Giant: Obey!” world-wide sticker/poster/street art project. Fifteen-plus arrests later for “street art” activities and it’s little wonder that he’d be a media darling while at the same time being in trouble for taking someone’s else’s photograph and not thinking twice about using it to make the Obama: Hope image. When he says, “Icon” for the G4 series of the same name, implying his own status in the art/street culture world, I’m put off by the arrogance and willingness to play both sides of the media. When all of this plays out the title of his next video might be, “Shepherd Fairey: Oops.”

Sources:
Obama photo: Mannie Garcia (AP)/Obama image: Shepherd Fairey, retrieved from http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/09/milton-glaser-weighs.html on 04/09/2009

Shepard Fairey: Inspiration Or Infringement? NPR Fresh Air interview, retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101182453 on 02/27/2009

Hope: Shepard Fairey and Barack Obama – Los Angeles Time interview/video retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_EOzZ9iaJQ&NR=1 on 04/07/2009

ICONS: Shepard Fairey, YouTube video retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNv-9IOBZZo on 04/07/2009

        

Since the very first month of teaching my graduate media course at Full Sail University my students have struggled with the vagueness and conflicting messages surrounding the topics of copyright and fair use. Tasking educators, many of whom are very new to online anything, to creating an unending number of audio podcasts, videos, blog entries and assorted media projects and then telling them that they cannot use any images, music or videos that they might find on the Internet is like inviting them to a party and then telling them that they are not permitted to having any fun. it’s downright confusing. Then for me to try to be authoritative on what is permitted and not permitted, while knowing that the subjects of copyright and fair use are life-work of an army of lawyers and policy makers, makes the whole thing downright silly.

So after one of our class sessions, one of my more media savvy students made the following comment in his blog:

Copyright is such a touchy subject, it’s getting crazier and crazier, even for students, to try to use resources. It seems like it’s going to get to a point where you have to have a law degree just to understand when and where you can use an image or reference someone else’s works. One solution is to always create your own work and I’m going to try to do that more often, so that I really don’t have to rely on others. But it [the session] really showed us that there are quite a difference of nuances that we really need to be aware of and really pay attention to, especially in our work now (Quinto M.)

I’ve had a number of students who are band, drama or media teachers who have to pay rather large fees out of increasingly non-existent budgets so that they can do their job and teach the next generation of musicians and artists their craft. The more I thought about it and Quinto’s comment about not relying on others the more I got pissed off that this whole copyright thing is backwards. I added the following comment to Quinto’s blog:

This is one of those subjects that one can go on and on and on about. The more that I think about it the more that I’m convinced that there needs to be a special “educational” license to use media because the first step that any artist makes, going back all the way probably to the cave paintings in Lascaux, is to carefully copy the techniques and works of the masters. Every artist owes their livelihood, if they are fortunate enough to make a livelihood to some teacher who taught them their craft. How dare the artists demand payment from the teachers! There would be no artist collecting a fee if it weren’t for the teacher who taught him in the first place!

Sources:
clipart: Task Force Clip Art (c) 1995
image: Quinto Martin 2009
http://web.me.com/tatt2q/Q_Blog/Blog_Week2/Entries/2009/3/11_Copyright_Schooling.html

        

One of my students recently wrote about his experiences as an online curriculum development person who works for an online university that has a division that partners with traditional higher-ed institutions to help them bring graduate programs online. He noted that the upper management was all crazy about stuffing as much media into every course, then joked that they were much less energetic about paying for the media or what it takes to create it. That’s kind’a typical. Then he made the following comment about student usage of this media content:

Careful analysis of click-tracking data is showing that only around 50% of the students are actually watching the media elements integrated into the courses. We are trying to understand the reasons why students aren’t watching the media. Sometimes, it is clear that they are just not seeing the value in the media pieces. And admittedly, not all the media is uniformly excellent. However, we are also finding that our online students are incredibly task-focused. They do exactly what they need to do to complete the assignments and nothing more. As an online student myself, I guess I understand that one! (d. lungren)

My words of wisdom to this student:
Some very valuable analysis here. The quality level and relevance to subject being taught, or even just the perceived level of importance of the media really makes a difference. It’s that careful incorporation of content and delivery methods that can get easily lost in the pursuit of having all kinds of “shiny things” on one’s educational website. A lot of folks on the top of the institutional food-chain often confuse what works well for student learning versus what looks good in the PR video clip. Hell, look at any educational institution that presents itself as promoting “technology” and the first thing they’ll show you is there computer lab and shiny boxes. But ask them to show you how the tech is used across the curriculum and your likely to run into institutional double speak. In fact… I did a whole video on just this subject:

Again, thanks for the inspiration. Great job. jbb

Sources:

http://web.me.com/dlungren/Site_5/Musings/Entries/2009/2/14_thoughts_on_media_and_online_learning.html#