Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts

The Justice Project Summit

Dan Lawler and I participated in a presentation/panel discussion called, "Inclusive Schools and Education Equity" in which the following questions were posed:

  1. What does it mean to be a welcoming school district within the constraints of segregated housing patterns? 
  2. What can suburban residents do to effect change in a metropolitan system that sanctions separate and unequal educational opportunities? 
  3. Does diversity in schools create a net gain for all?
GUEST PANELISTS:
  • Dan Lawler and Spiro Bolos, New Trier's Metropolitan Community Project
  • Steve Bogira, The Chicago Reader
  • Kourtney Cockrell, Student Enrichment Services at Northwestern University

"A Lighthouse": Opening Day Speech (2015)

For my "Opening Day" speech (as President of the New Trier Education Association), I chose to focus on the theme of race, and I used a publishing platform called "Medium" (iOS app available) because of the beautiful balance it affords between multimedia and text. See the original slidedeck here.

A Lighthouse

Richard Prince Case Study (NSFW)

Based on Cariou v. Prince, _ F.3d _ (2d Cir. 2013).

Patrick Cariou published a book of photographs of Rastafarians and landscapes taken in Jamaica. Richard Prince utilized portions of and entire images from Cariou’s photographs in 28 paintings, many of which were shown in the Gagosian Gallery.
Slides are numbered for classroom or workshop: each participant can use the critical reasoning process to make a fair use determination. NOTE: some content may be deemed NSFW. For a detailed analysis, please visit Rebecca Tushnet's "Transformativeness doesn't require commentary on original" as well as Kenneth Crews' analysis of the "Four Factors" at Columbia University (quoted above).


NOTE: click the four expanding arrows on the presentation in order to view full-screen.

UPDATE: the five photos sent back to the lower court were recently the subject of a settlement. Terms were not disclosed.

The Battle Over Cell Phones

Should We Ban Mobile Phones in Classrooms?Image by In Veritas Lux via Flickr

This summer, spending more time at home with my teenage daughter, I had to confront my ambivalence about how we use cell phones in our society. On the one hand, I've been intrigued by the possibility of liberating the cell phone in the classroom, which would entail a fundamental shift in how many of us teach students -- a switch from a teacher-centered classroom to a project-based learning (PBL) environment. Here are some possibilities others are exploring:
But as much as I want to embrace this innovative, perhaps inevitable way of student learning, I am troubled by how cell phone use "causes" us to interact with others. I put the word, "causes" in quotes because I clearly feel that we have a choice: we don't have to respond to every bleep and blip emitted by this device, but it seems to me that the school-age culture doesn't share my view.

An example is how many teens equate texting with "talking"; i.e., that the message which has just appeared on the handheld screen is just as important as the conversation in front of them, or, just as important as the person in front of them with whom they may or may not be conversing. The New York Times published a tongue-in-cheek guide for parents and children called "Cellphone Etiquette for Kids", which did list some important implications of this explosion of technology. It advises kids to:
Look them [people around you] in the eyes. The technical term for it is “interpersonal communication” — and it’s such a big deal that the educational psychologist Howard Gardner counts it as a multiple intelligence. You don’t develop these skills if you’re glued to a screen.
I frequently text friends and family but I draw lines when I am in the presence of others. But maybe I'm being too old-fashioned and "counter-cultural": if this is the way things are headed, shouldn't we simply embrace this phenomenon of divided attention and 24/7 connection to one's social network?
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A Way Around the Law?

Photograph of a VHS cassette and a metric rule...Image via WikipediaAt least at our school, one of the teacher tools that was prohibited last year was the extracting of short DVD clips for classroom use. I think we all know what advantages this process offers, especially within the confines of the 40-minute period (or, as I like to refer to it, "the 40-minute fury"!). Excerpting clips instead of fumbling with the menus and previews of an actual DVD was the fulfillment of the early promises of DVD technology. Instead, I see teachers running around with old and degraded VHS tapes, laboriously cued and re-cued up to the scene they wish to use in class.


Although the DVD clipping process is clearly illegal according to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), we now have an opportunity to apply for an exemption to the law. The Librarian of Congress (LOC) is about to revisit the law for the first time since 2006 and could grant us the same rights given to film studies professors at the post-secondary level.

If you are at all interested in crafting a "comment" (petition) to the LOC, please let me know. Just to give you some perspective: in 2006, nationwide, only 74 petitions were posted. These were made by various organizations as well as by private citizens. Each and every request was reviewed and ruled upon by the LOC. A successful "comment" by New Trier would certainly be consistent with our "Lighthouse District" reputation, and might also be a relevant tie-in to our ECGC initiatives. If you are from another school and wish to join me in this effort, please contact me here. The due date is December 2, 2008.




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Fact Check THIS.

As the election heats up, so do the negative attack ads. Plus, the increasing number of forwarded emails we receive from family and friends ramps up emotions and starts rifts. How many of us have received an email that claims Barack Obama is a Muslim or that Sarah Palin has a list of banned books?


A new free service from the St. Petersburg Times critically examines many of these wild claims, on a website that is both fun and informative for students and adults. Politifact.com uses a "Truth-O-Meter" to rate the accuracy of the most recent attack ads, and a "Flip-O-Meter" to assess how consistent a candidate has been over time. They even have a version for the iPhone so you can flout your knowledge at parties!

Here's a small sampling from the actual website:


Fair Use?

Copyright symbol>Image via WikipediaOne of the trickiest issues for teachers is determining what constitutes "fair use" when utilizing copyrighted material, for ourselves or for our students. In the past, many well-intentioned educators published "fair use guides" on the web that were overly cautious or just plain wrong, focusing on, for example, the amount or percentage of time supposedly allowed when excerpting a clip. 


And certainly, the general public propagates many myths about what can or cannot be used. For example, take a look at this seemingly harmless (and mercifully short) 29-second video posted on YouTube:



You might have missed it, but Prince's classic song, "Let's Go Crazy" was playing in the background. According to Wired magazine, this video "was removed last year after Universal [record company] sent YouTube a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

But you might have also missed the fact that, "after being taken down for six weeks, the video went back online last year, having now generated about half a million hits." (emphasis added)

Fortunately for budding video directors (like our students) and us, the courts are more recently and more often siding with the creators of such videos, according to the Center for Social Media of American University: "In reviewing the history of fair use litigation, we find that judges return again and again to two key questions:
  • Did the unlicensed use 'transform' the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a different purpose than that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
  • Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?
According to Peter Jaszi of American University, "Fair use is like a muscle that needs to be exercised, but people can't exercise it in a climate of fear and uncertainty." I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that if we and our students follow a set of "best practices", not unlike what we already do with written work, we are unlikely to be challenged on legal grounds. Based on the 2 legal questions above and our own previous experience with quoting and paraphrasing, our best practices should then be easy to articulate:
  1. The use of the copyrighted work is transformative.
  2. The kind and the amount of the copyrighted work used is appropriate for the assignment.
  3. The author of the copyrighted work is cited.



NECC: Digital Citizenship and ECGC?

This is the last post I plan to write about the sessions from the National Educational Computing Conference, or NECC. The last speaker I saw, Mike Ribble, of Kansas State University, is the author of Digital Citizenship in Schools, which is a forward-thinking work dealing with the ethics and the legality of student behavior on the internet, "emphasizing the positive aspects of technology usage: collaboration, learning and productivity".

Ribble argues that too often we as educators (and parents) provide our students with the latest technological tools without really explaining how to use them properly. We have already witnessed the many abuses under the current laissez-faire system: cyberbullying, illegal downloading, creating websites to complain about teachers, and using cell phones during class. As a response, most schools' Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) tell students what they can't do, but "do not teach students what is appropriate and why" (9). Under this umbrella of digital citizenship, Ribble identifies nine themes (all defined at his website):

Several mobile phones
  1. Digital Etiquette
  2. Digital Communication
  3. Digital Literacy
  4. Digital Access
  5. Digital Commerce
  6. Digital Law>Image via Wikipedia
  7. Digital Rights and Responsibilities
  8. Digital Health and Wellness
  9. Digital Security (self-protection)

As I sat in this session, I immediately thought of New Trier's Strategic Planning initiatives, specifically our Ethical Conduct and Global Citizenship (ECGC) action plans. After the success of the ECGC discussions in Advisery last year, and considering how involved our students are in social networks like Facebook and with technology in general, "digital citizenship" might be the next step in implementing our action plans.

Related reading: Mark Wagner's "Ethical Use of the Read/Write Web".


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Although this blog is authored by New Trier High School (NTHS) staff, the audience is global and the views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of NTHS as an institution.

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