Copyright

Wow. It seems like copyright talk is all over town these days. Well at least for me it is. This topic is most important as a school librarian. Not only do I need to know about copyright-- I need to teach my students and help my staff understand it.

Having worked in a school for the past ten years, it is evident that teachers need more training on fair use and copyright. I think academic librarians should partner with the education departments in colleges to teach this as part of teacher training.

For the past few weeks, I have ironically been teaching my students about copyright. With my sixth graders, we learned about images and the use of Creative Commons. They are wrapping up their projects, so I am excited to see their learning in place. In fifth grade, this week we learned the parts of a book-- including copyright information to set us up for learning about citing sources MLA style.

I found that my students understood the topic better when using real life examples. I pulled up my brother-in-law as a photographer-- and discussed his rights as an artist. I found that aI really zoned in on the parts of the videos that connected to me. The section on fair use, or Creative Commons. I also liked the real world examples of the cases (although I wish we could have seen the slides with the images.)

It really connected me as a learner to what I need to do to tech issues that are tricky. I was reminded why collaboration is so important in school librarianship. Teaching information interact skills alone does not resonate with kids. My sixth grade students were much more engaged with the issues of copyright, because we were creating something where it applied to them. My fifth grade students were learning a skill in preparation for things to come.

**On another note, I found the blog post we read on the Internet and copyright interesting. In many ways I agree with the author. The web is a new way of sharing information. Personally, that is why I don't have issues with sites like Pinterest. I love when people link to my work. If people are concerned, they should watermark their images, or post a do not link. It is a touchy topic, and I am interested to see where it goes.

Does anyone know if when you subscribe to an RSS feed if the website is punted as viewed. I would love some more information on this.

Youth and Technology

This week I went to a training on iPads in education.The keynote was Sue Meyer, a former educator/media specialist who currently  works for apple.

Sue discussed at length how the world is changing. And that change is inevitable, yet it takes a longer in schools. The pace of change is now happening at an even greater rate because of the rate of mobility. Experts have predicted that by 2013 mobile devices will outnumber desktop devices, more people will carry mobile devices than personal devices. She reiterated many of the same statistics that Cody Hanson shared with us.

The workshop excited me to see the opportunities that teachers are currently doing with students--and the opportunities that are coming.

Technology is a wonderful opportunity for personalized learning.

I was also reminded of David's presentation on gaming and learning. The presenters talked about how GAMIFICATION can really help learners. (achievement badges, leader boards, little no consequence for failure, incremental levels leading to mastery). The idea of little chance for failure really struck home with me. Sue talked about not risking the failure by raising your hand--and having the chance to succeed by trying again and again. A game I am excited to try with my students is POCKET LAW FIRM--which teaches students about the Bill of Rights through a game.

Millennial Learners are impatient and expect immediacy, digital natives, social and collaborative learners, experiential and exploratory Learners. They are motivated differently.

A recent survey from (eSchool news) on 'What do students want from school':--September 2011 reported:

5- more technology

4- teachers as mentors

3-learning to be interesting

2-to have choice

1-to do real and relevant work

This shows that students view technology and teaching as important.
I can't wait to see how my teachers and I can collaborate on these things.

Youth and Online Safety

This past week, I have been teaching our 5th and 6th graders my school district's Acceptable Use Policy. Basically, I go over the expectations and give the students some information, and then they have to sign a contract agreeing that they can follow the rules. Believe it or not, this actually comes in handy when 6th grade boys google search "big boobs." It is pretty easy to point out to them that they have agreed to use technology appropriately for educational purposes--I will assume that no teachers are assigning the kids to look at pictures of breasts online.

A couple of thoughts have been percolating in my head as I have been going over the curriculum with my students:

• Using technology is a privilege not a right.

Is it? I'm not so sure anymore. In the age of digital literacies--is it okay to not have some of our students using technology as a tool? If a kid was drawing pictures of breasts--would I not let them use pencil and paper anymore? Technology is becoming more and more prevalent in our teaching (at least it should be).

I have never completely banned a student from a computer before--but the privilege has been revoked for a short time. In this digital age--I think educators really need to start thinking about the ramifications of this.

• The issue my students have been most fascinated by is the issues of online privacy and and your identity online. (I really enjoyed reading the articles Rebecca posted regarding this topic--as it fit right into the work I was doing with my kiddos this week).

In a short library class--we were barely able to touch on these topics--and we will do more this year as we have authentic experiences.
My students were very intrigued with the idea of password security and not sharing information with friends or boy/girl friends. The ideas of people getting into your online accounts was new for many of them. Sharing real life examples of myself and people trying to get my information via email/facebook and stories of people I know who had shared their passwords and then "broken up" and had their accounts destroyed were very meaningful to my students. They asked meaningful questions and we talked a lot about appropriate people to share passwords with (parents) and how to keep them private.

In our lesson we also talked a lot about posting images and words online and the lasting effects it can have on you and others.  Time flew by--I feel like I could teach multiple lessons on this stuff. Here are a couple of video clips we watched (as well as a couple I will show them at a later time) that helped my students understand these topics. We had great discussions following each one.

Mobile Technology

This week, as I read Cody Hanson's articles on Mobile technology I couldn't stop nodding my head and jotting down notes like, "Yes!" or " "Great Idea!" even, "I remember..."

He laid out a foundation of information of mobile technolgy history that brought me back to my first cell phone my current iPhone and all of my mobile devices that I had in between.

Hansen is correct--mobile technology is here--and it is becoming more and more present as time passes. Just last year, I got my first iPhone, after using an iPad and watching conference attendees at AASL communicate and learn over their mobile devices. I convinced my husband to take the plunge--and it felt like a HUGE financial jump for us....And now, neither of us can imagine life without our devices.

Last year, I attended a conference on digital technology and equity. The keynote speaker was S. Craig Watson author of The Young and the Digital. Watson discussed (as Hansen does in his articles) the research he and his colleagues at the MacArthur Foundation had done about teens and technology. They found that the digital divide did not exist in the same ways of the past--as most teens that in the past would not have had internet access now did have that access in a mobile device. Hansen points out in his article that this is the case for adults as well.

This has big implications for libraries--if many people are only accessing our information online from a mobile device--our information better be usable from said devices. I especially was enamored with the ideas of librarians trying to use the libraries tools only from said mobile devices and experiences things as many patrons do. Internet technology is changing, and libraries need to make their tools user friendly.

As an elementary school librarian, most of my students don't have mobile devices, but many do use their parents. The articles were a good reminder to me to make sure that the things I publish on the web are mobile device readable--especially for my library the videos we publish, as most parents use their phones to get news from the web.

* Photo taken from Creative Coomons: jagelado

"The internet is too open. People now want an internet that is more stable, the same way they want an automobile or refrigerator or hair dryer that's stable. When people have the choice of an appliance that behaves nicely like the iPhone, they'll move to that. I'm afraid we'll lose the innovation and 'generativity' of the internet." ---Zittrain

Photo by Plan de Alfabetización Tecnológica Extremadura

Maybe I heard this wrong--but this quote seems like such an oxymoron to me. 

On one hand, he says we want a more stable internet--and Zittrain has strong arguments for how that could happen. He gives examples of a community working together to avoid the bad things of the internet. Yet, he also says that he is afraid we will lose the innovation and gerativity of the internet. 

And the scary thing is, I understand where he is coming from. His fear of the internet falling apart, creating computer zombies until no one uses the web anymore because there is so much junk out there--could be a valid point. The idea of the community of web users working together to evaluate websites is an interesting one (hmmm... did you catch my Minnesota use of the word interesting there?!) Basically, I'm not too sure what to think of this idea. Part of me says Wikipedia works well, and it is accurate--so maybe this would be a great thing for the internet. Secretly, I think this is the part of me that read Nicholas Carr last week, and is still a bit freaked out by some of the bad things that can happen with the internet.

The other more rational side of me, connects with losing the innovation of the web. Part of what I love about the internet is that anyone can publish. My students love to create their own web sites to show their learning. I also love to publish on the web. I wonder who will decide what is quality and what is not. My students are in the learning process--and I as a researcher would not use their information as a source. However, they love to share their learning in an authentic way with their family and friends.

As a librarian, I feel like it is a big part of my job to teach my students how to evaluate the information they find on the internet. I don't see the internet changing anytime soon--to be regulated. So, we need to teach our students to evaluate the information they find and use on the web--and to make good decisions based upon the tools they have.

Privacy Online??

"Computer systems are not at their core technologies of emancipation. They are technologies of control" (The Big Switch--pg. 191).

photo from Creative Commons: ckschleg

As I read this section, I honed in on "You have zero privacy." I guess I have thought this for a while, but I didn't totally get what it meant. AND for a pretty boring person like me, it's not really that big of a deal. I mean, I erased my history when I knew I was pregnant, and didn't want my friends and family to know yet, but it wasn't anything that was that damaging. This knowledge that we don't have privacy--that computers actually have control of all we do is a bit frightening. The scariest part, is most of us don't even know how much freedom we have given up (I certainly don't think about it that often--or I just brush it off, for the convenience of the web!)

So what does this mean for libraries?? In schools, it means we need to be doing a better job of teaching our students about privacy issues on the internet. Most kids know not to give out their private home information--they don't probably know that they are connected to a search history in which they can be identified (wow--I didn't know it was that easy!). It may mean that library computers and the multitude of people that search on them can help keep some patron privacy--letting the user have some control back..

As I sit here and type this blog post, I am logged into google--I've now searched privacy, keep out, and did some reading about the same sex marriage debate. Yikes--what are they collecting about me? And, even if I log out, I am still identifiable. I'm now wracking my brain about all the stuff I have researched on my own computers. 

We have a BIG job ahead of us--perhaps with education, more will jump into the fight.

"We see the interplay of technology and economics most clearly at those rare moments when a change takes place in the way a resource vital to society is supplied, when an essential product or service that had been  supplied locally begins to be supplied centrally, or vice versa" (p. 23).

I found it remarkable that so many inventions changed the way society worked. I was quite surprised that Edison had started Electricity as a small powerhouse--and that later it was expanded to be the service that it is. As I read this quote, I kept thinking about the long tail--and how companies like Amazon have changed the way business works. Business on the internet really connects with what Carr was talking about. The internet is changing the way that businesses work.