Category: ED 654

Fair(ish) Use

My understanding of Fair Use comes from years and years of work as a Reserve Technician (job titles, who writes that noise) processing reserves for faculty at a small elite liberal-arts college in an academic library.  Fair Use was my life-blood. A lot of time was spent on educating faculty, and feeling annoyed when librarians would over-ride my use of the four criteria and give the house away. We were processing photocopies when I started and then moved to e-reserves, and then once an administrator I pushed the task back on faculty through their use of Moodle. I encouraged them to link to all the thousands of articles our subscriptions gave them access to linking directly.

As a support staff (read responsible but without power to resist tenured privileges), I relied heavily on the four factors:

  • the purpose and character of your use.
  • the nature of the copyrighted work.
  • the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and.
  • the effect of the use upon the potential market.

I focused on the pedagogic aspects of Fair Use, and even when using film, music, data, I felt pretty good about using materials particularly if we could put it behind a password.  And being a residential campus, even the physical copies were usually withing 500 feet of the library so a different beast than some.

I find myself equally perplexed as the teachers in this video as regards student remix and mashup. 

Less so when what students produce is behind a password or displayed from a physical copy.

The Documentary Filmmaker’s Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use is a tremendous tool for getting to the production side of learning.  I particularly like this resource since our aim again is to get to making stuff not just presenting it.

Turning to the second part of this to think about my online production and my take on Fair Use, and this mainly focused on our Yawp post. My long running blog site Sisyphean Enterprises and my silly attempt at painting strike me as two possible topics for thinking about Fair Use.

The blog is an 8-year long collection of journal entries, some are workouts, some are rants, and some are archives of online resources. First, why on earth would a teacher or student need that support for pedagogy, but that aside. Fair Use, protects scholarly and pedagogic use, so have at it. The work itself is a journal freely accessible online, so, I have always related to it as if it were in the public domain. While my relation to that work remains the same, my thinking especially as discovering content creators making a living through their YouTube channels has changed. I very much understand their concerns, but as regards the substance of that blog I don’t share the concerns. Regarding the amount of the blog used… personally, if someone were to use 90% of that site for some purpose especially making money), and I discovered it I would laugh at their lack of effort and critical thinking, but I wouldn’t rent a lawyer. If I was monetized on that site, and I gave care that might be a different story, so for me, there is no effect on the potential market.

Regarding the painting, because it is a creative rather than factual artifact it would be harder to justify Fair Use. But because it is rubbish, I am way back at why would any right-minded student or instructor use it for anything (even a negative example). I suppose if some bit of it was cropped and selected for instructional purposes (I suspect a how not to do it) that would be better Fair Use. I gave the original away as a gift so if someone stole that image and attempted to make a profit off of it, again that is just laughable, I cannot even finish the statement.

What if I valued the content I created and was monetizing it to make a living? Then perhaps my tune would change regarding copyright and for-profit use of my content. However, we are talking about Fair Use, and for “factual” content I would be hard pressed to make a meaningful fuss. Moreover, if I discovered that a collection of student videos remixing and mashing my content, I would probably link to it and treat it as free promotion and in turn promote those creators. I might reach out to the teacher and as many of the students as possible and create content on their use of my content.

Perhaps, more complicated is my relationship with my final post in the Digital Storytelling class, Mashup/Remix. The heart of the work is Hemingway’s short story Indian Camp which is in the public domain, and that is why I started with it. I would have to appeal to the transformative use of some of the materials to justify their use and because this is a creative rather than documentary use of materials I don’t have recourse to that justification. My primary use of resources is the embedding of whole videos, on the one hand, a failure of the factors regarding amount used. On the contrary, some of these videos are monetized, and so views pay the creator, as well views count as traffic for the creator, so my use pays them if they are setup for that. I counted on the disruption to the flow of the narrative and the differences between the videos as a creative and storytelling element, so my ripping the videos and editing them into some single video would not have the effect for which I aimed. However, if I had done that I could then get into the niggling about amount, purpose, and nature of the copyrighted work.

I am pretty much rubbish for stuff found on the internet.

Collaborate (a Little)

Collaboration (A Little) Heather Marie, Kevin, and Bob

I reached out to these two on Slack to form this group.  We took Digital Storytelling together the last term. I am a bitter vet when it comes to group work in graduate classes so I am fully intentional in selecting collaborators.  Happily, this team gelled immediately and went to work.

I particularly like the document with our comment thread. The conversations were respectful but frank at times. One, in particular, about holding a participant accountable if they drop the ball, was insightful. I was focused on workplace project teams, Heather Marie, and Kevin were coming at it from the point of view of educators, so seeing the topic from another’s eyes was valuable.

I also enjoyed that some natural humor was shared on at least one of the points. Comments like texts can be pithy and unintentionally sharp or humorous so clarifying questions can be an important skill.

The document that contrasts the original and rephrased statements is interesting as well.  In the end, I think we offered a pretty useful set of guidelines.

 

 

Making Sense of Copyright


I recall cassette machines and tapes as a kid. My step-father was a techy and a music aficionado. He set up a multi-cassette recording station and used it to copy the preacher’s Sunday sermon. I guess the idea was that lots of folks would want to hear, or buy the sermon at another time (sardonically I recall this preacher having a personality slightly more tepid than mayonnaise, so demand was weak). I used the system to rip pirated copies of the Surf Punks cassettes.

Probably, if I had purchased the original cassettes, I could have justified making myself a single copy and holding the original as an archive only to be copied again when my first wore out. Nah, it was the point of punk music to steal it.

My recollection of 1976 in no way involves the copyright act. I recall bicentennial quarters and the televised July 4th celebrations, most of which occurred on the East Coast. Being born and bred in Southern California the places and events all seemed otherworldly and surreal. Perhaps the only point of resonance was the parade of “tall ships”  and that because of similar events in the San Diego harbor.

The point of this legislation was two-fold, first to get our laws in line with international laws, and second to extend the duration of copyright protection beyond the life of the author protecting their work even into the lives of their grandchildren. The History of Copyright website mentions opposition to this legislation. Unfortunately, either it was not very compelling opposition or the representation of it here is understated:

Opposition came from radio broadcasters, record manufactures, producers of “talking machines,” two patent attorneys and a publisher because life plus 50 years would make it hard to determine when a work goes into the public domain and who owns it until it does.  Opponents also argued that a longer term would not just benefit the author’s immediate heirs, but great grandchildren as well, and that by lengthening the term, it would prevent “cheap editions” of work from coming out for an additional 30 years.

Interestingly, support came from powerful professional organizations.

The Author’s League of America supported compliance with international standards because authors who produce at an early age might not be protected in their later years and because their return was small.  The Committee on Publications for the Mother Church supported it because it would extend protection for the works of Mary Baker Eddy.  The American Library Association supported life plus 30 years as it would be enough to take care of the author’s family.  Music and film industry interest also supported a longer term and international conformity.

Weirdly, this sounds like the same argument made for the original Statue of Anne legislation in 1710 and that law benefited printers/publishers.  Perhaps the subsequent turn here is that copyright owners (maybe not the author) have an extended monopoly. Weirdly, stimulating innovation, creativity, collaboration, is not a deciding factor.  ElectricLit runs some interesting numbers for us:

Here’s an example: Writer von Author writes My Big Literary Novel and Big Publishing House Press pays her $50,000 dollars as an advance. The cover price of the book is $20 dollars and her royalty rate is 10%. (In reality it would be more like a ~$25 hardcover at 10–15% followed by a ~$15 paperback at 7–10%, but I’m simplifying.) If the publisher sells 10,000 copies of the book, the total sales are $200,000 and the author has earned $20,000 from royalties… except that she was already paid $50,000 so she is actually at negative $30,000. She doesn’t have to pay anyone back either though, the publisher takes the loss. However, if the book sells 25,000 copies, then the author would earn back her advance and at copy twenty-five thousand and one, she would start earning $2 per book sold.

The Steve Laube Agency offers us the insight that the average book sells 10,000 copies. And that rather bluntly puts the lie to either earning back the advance or earning royalties. Accordingly, it seems that copyright only protects a tiny percentage of creative works and it is an open question whether the author retains that copyright and is benefited by 75 years of protection.

I graduated from college in 1988. And the Berne Implementation Act of 1988 which brought US legislation into alignment with twenty-four other countries predominately through standardizing, notice, filing and registration requirements, was passed unnoticed by myself, at least at the time. Instead, I was distracted by moving seven times,  three times across the country and once the length of the west coast. I took the GRE’s and applied to graduate schools. I worked as a roofer in Maine. I got tired of being teased about my education and to shut the crew up carried three bundles of shingles up a ladder to a third story roof — it worked.

However, I have to imagine that copyright owners made millions of dollars based on the fine tuning of US law to be in closer alignment with many other nations.

In 1992, I was between attempts at graduate school. I was married. I was working in the library at an elite liberal arts college in northern New England. However, I had, because of work, begun to be aware of copyright.  Librarians care intensely about the topic, and in higher education also about “fair use, ” and so this was a topic increasingly in my thoughts at least as a professional.

This act provided relief to copyright holders by automatically renewing a work produced between 1964 and 1977.

Congress acted to protect authors from losing their works “irretrievably into the public domain” based on an innocent failure to comply with the formalities of filing of renewal applications.  The Copyright Office, publishers, authors, academics and others “criticized the registration renewal provision for being burdensome and unfair to thousands of copyright holders and their heirs.”  Congress believed that the public domain “should not be enlarged because of an author’s error in recordkeeping, or any other innocent failure to comply with overly technical formalities in the copyright law,”  particularly when such works are “the sole source of income for authors and their families.”  Further, Congress understood that “the domestic laws of most developed countries contain very few formalities conditioning copyright protection” and that such formalities are “antithetical to the major international treaty on copyright relations, the Berne Convention.”

Again that oddly benevolent but inherently deceitful language about who the law(s) benefits. Here I am circling back to the economic realities of book sales and publisher/author business model.

My daughter was born in 1994. Accordingly, my life took a radical turn. I was working on, and nearly completed my Master’s degree. Later that year I changed jobs (awful choice). The Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994 was well covered in the news and so even at the time, I was aware of it. Though I was not aware of the impact, t had on foreign authors in US markets.

Section 514 of the URAA restored copyright protection for the works of foreign authors whose works had fallen into the public domain due to non-compliance of the formalities of US copyright law.

In 1998, much in my life had changed. I was again working in a library at the same elite liberal-arts college. My son, second born, was two-years-old, I had been to North Dakota and back in an attempt to start a Ph.D. program, alas, Grand Forks flooded, and then burned and turned out to be no place to relocate a young family. I was, a freshly minted homeowner, and, we had survived the Ice Storm of 1998.  I was writing HTML for the libraries website and we were aware of the exploding online environment of the internet.

The Copyright Term Extension Act was signed into law and provided even longer terms of protection.

The CTEA implemented the EC directive in the US and was signed into law by President Clinton on October 28, 1998.  It extended the terms of copyright protection by 20 years, so the pre-1978 term of 75 years from the date of publication became 95 years and the term after 1978 of life of the author plus 50 years became 70 years.

The constitutional challenge to the CTEA foreshadows our own struggle with copyright in the online environment.

The CTEA was later challenged as unconstitutional in a lawsuit filed by intellectual property lawyers supported by “rights” activist groups like the Electronic Freedom Foundation.  After seeing an article in the New York Times about Eric Eldred shutting down his online free books website “because the CTEA passed,”

Content creators online have changed the models of production and distribution so radically, and so quickly, that copyright law has been far outstripped. And yet, we see little will among legislators to take on that problem. In part, this inertia reflects that status quo stakeholders are still making plenty of money. And actually, so are content creators who are operating with new entrepreneurial models.  So for the moment there is no will to wrestle with the complexity of an update.

IP, Friend or Foe?

Bobby Munson:
You know my rule: no bud before 9AM.

Jax:
I don’t have that rule.

In drafting this essay, I want to return to my intellectual roots and to think about intellectual property from an outlaw perspective. In the following, I aim to explore thinking about indigenous intellectual property rights. Of course, from an emic perspective, these are not outlaw perspectives rather they are reasonable and formative. But for us here and now at this post-colonial moment, “outlaw” is perhaps not overstated.

Indigenous intellectual property

Alaska Native Knowledge Network Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights

Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples

The scope of these resources precludes anymore than a survey of issues and concepts. However, from the outset, I felt that the conversations were talking past each other. The economics and legal structure of Western societies take for granted and from a privileged site, much that indigenous cultures do not or which is so alien that they cannot.

Nation states across the world have experienced difficulties reconciling local indigenous laws and cultural norms with a predominantly western legal system, in many cases leaving indigenous peoples’ individual and communal intellectual property rights largely unprotected.[6] Therefore, international bodies such as the United Nations have become involved in the issue,[2] making more specific declarations that intellectual property also includes cultural property such as historical sites, artefacts, designs, ceremonies, and performing arts in addition to artwork and literature.[7]    Wikipedia        

Three resolutions from the 2007 UN declaration address what we are calling “intellectual property.” These are articles 11, 24, and 31. Article 11 provides broad protections for cultural knowledge and identity. Article 24 focuses on and protects traditional medicinal practices. Article 31 speaks most directly to areas easily recognizable in Western discussions of “intellectual property.” “They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.” It is precisely this phrasing that demonstrates the slippage between the conversations.

Intellectual property rights include patents, copyright, industrial design rights, trademarks, plant variety rights, trade dress, geographical indications,[15] and in some jurisdictions trade secrets. There are also more specialized or derived varieties of sui generis exclusive rights, such as circuit design rights (called mask work rights in the US) and supplementary protection certificates for pharmaceutical products (after expiry of a patent protecting them) and database rights (in European law). Wikipedia

There appear to be a few points of contact, copyright, design rights, and plant variety rights seem to map most closely across the two conversations. But this far I have reviewed Western documents or representations.  Turning to the Alaska Native Knowledge Network what can we learn about these three facets of intellectual property from a native perspective? The Guidelines for Respecting Cultural Knowledge offers a definition of two terms that may inform a sense of copyright.

Sensitive cultural information: Cultural information or details that are delicate in nature and not meant to be shared with the general public or those outside of that cultural group.

Public information: Information, which no longer belongs to an individual or group, but has become public property and the general public is allowed to use it. Informants and/or members of a cultural group have a right to understand the use that will be made of their contributions before cultural knowledge is shared and allowed to become public information.

Public information seems to entail traces of the “usufruct” still but also traces of anti-colonialism. Usufruct here emphasizing communal ownership and individual use rights.  Sensitive information seems as well to bear stamps of traditional values and cultural abuse. If we recall the spiral logic of elders transmission of knowledge then perhaps sensitive knowledge is at the tightest coil of the spiral and only revealed after a long effort.  But, I do think this might be different from “secret information.” Secrets would seem to privilege individual rights in a way too contradictory to be situated on the same continuum as usufruct. Certainly, “secrets” may be an appropriate reaction to colonialism, but that is different from the sensitive or powerful knowledge that is transmitted after demonstrated maturity and to a proven cultural knowledge bearer. Certainly, this is very different from copyright it does not give ownership to an individual and their heirs. It does make cultural transmission and preservation possible, but it is aimed at knowledge transfer. There is an interesting parallel to some Western tropes about intellecutal property where analogies between physical and intellectual property seem to be made as well.

Returning to the Guidelines for Respecting Cultural Knowledge we see two points for Elders regarding copyright and intellectual property. Certainly, this is a clear charge of responsibility and probably an onerous burden as well.

Seek out information on ways to protect intellectual property rights and retain copyright authority over all local knowledge that is being shared with others for documentation purposes.

Carefully review contracts and release forms to determine who controls the distribution of any publications and associated royalties.

The second section of this statement which seems to have bearing on both intellectual property and cultural innovation is aimed at Artists and Illustrators. Ten points are raised for these creators (and here I am assuming these are aimed at culture members) I present only the four points that are relevant to my topic.

Make it a practice to insure that all cultural content has been acquired under informed consent and has been reviewed for accuracy and appropriateness by knowledgeable local people representative of the culture in question.

Arrange for copyright authority and royalties to be retained or shared by the person or community from which the cultural information originated, and follow local protocols for its approval and distribution.

Insure controlled access for sensitive cultural information that has not been explicitly authorized for general distribution.

Carefully explain the intent and use when obtaining permission to take photographs or videos, and make it clear in publication whether they have been staged as a re-enactment or represent actual events.

Informed consent and intent and use loom large as responsibilities these content creators may have. As I mentioned already controlled access is another important aspect and one that is unclear in the online environment. The final point, however, stops short, it does not entertain the possibility of cultural innovation nor does it anticipate the thorny questions of ownership. While these statements are actually quite helpful I have to wonder how universally shared they are among cultural members. How frequently are conversations had how much training is provided?

Turning to “design rights” I immediately think of form line art in Southeast Alaska. This 1998 article from the Juneau Empire “Whose art?” is quite an impressive representation of the complexity of viewpoints. Even among the native voices, there is little consistency, however near the end of the article one artist mentions treating art for commercial purposes differently from art for cultural uses. Another theme is a call for artists to pay their dues to gain the vocabulary of the style. But, if we turn time back a bit we recall that this art signaled clans, and moites, it connected people with legend and natural environment, and it was very much owned. Perhaps not in an equivalent way to Wester ownership, yet, access and expression were not, shall we say, public information even within the same culture.

Turning to the Intellectual Property Rights and Indigenous Peoples Rights and Obligations we see an interesting discussion of both “design rights” and “plant variety rights” though in a way that sets our Western thinking on end. This paper is written by a Maori and is focused on their concerns. The author outlines in detail The Wai262 Claim to Indigenous Flora and Fauna and Cultural and Intellectual Heritage Rights and Obligations. 

2.1 The claim relates to te tino rangatiratanga o te Iwi Maori in respect of indigenous flora and fauna me o ratou taonga katoa (and all their treasures) including but not limited to matauranga, whakairo, waahi tapu, biodiversity, genetics, Maori symbols and designs and their use and development and associated indigenous, cultural and customary heritage rights in relation to such taonga. Taongaí in this claim refers to all elements of a tribal groupsí estate, both material and non-material, tangible and intangible.

In this, we see that the conceptual architecture of Western notions of intellectual property as irrelevant to this statement. For the Maori plants and animals and the knowledge of them is bound together with symbols and designs. Interestingly, group estate involves both tangible property and intangible, though it is less clear what metaphors inform or exchange meaning between these categories. I am very hesitant to map concepts from the Maori onto Alaska Native cultures. But for the sake of this assignment, I will hold this point as an artifice that moves the conversation along, but which might be falsified and modified.

I want to explore several case studies of Alaska Native participation on YouTube as a way to test and refine these notions and to explore them on the internet. I wonder if the web, Creative Commons, and other modern, Western technology values mask these indigenous values completely or if the outlaw elements survive and display. I offer:

I Sing. You Dance. — Bryon Nicholai

 X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell

Tlingit Music–Past, Present and Future: Ed Littlefield at TEDxSitka

nativejazzlive

We have several different projects going on at these channels, and curiously some overlap in moments of cultural fusion.

Bryon is a young Yup’ik. He has been creating content focused on his traditional singing, dancing, and drumming. He has been recognized in the Alaska and nationally by President Obama as a rising leader. His channel content is changing as he matures and has gone to college. We see him fusing Yup’ik singing with hip-hop rhythms and techniques and also vlogging some of his recent travels.

Lance Twitchell is an assistant professor of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Southeast Alaska. His channel is a rich resource for Tlingit language preservation and instruction. His channel archives 70 recordings of fluent elders speaking. As well he offers extensive content on language instruction.

Ed Littlefield’s TED talk and the nativejazzlive channel push the question of cultural innovation into the conversation. Ed’s thinking about it is more full blown perhaps then Bryon’s, but we see them both exploring in this space. Accordingly, we need to ask questions about the cultural, intellectual property at moments of cultural innovation.

First, we have to assume that all of the knowledge we see on these channels falls into the realm of “public information.” Perhaps, if a content creator were to distribute “sensitive information” that could be challenged through the various social media elements on the channel, comments, and dislikes, perhaps as well some sort of reporting (though likely not successfully copyright).

To begin with how does copyright play out on these channels? I did not check every single video on all these channels, however, everyone that I did showed a “standard youtube license” the terms of that are linked here. Additionally, content creators may select Creative Commons CC-BY license which is an open content license.  I did not find any such licenses on these channels, but again, I did not check every single video.  Turning to our indigenous sense of “copyright” I do not see in the “show more” or about sections of video or channel description any discussion of group ownership and individual use as might arise from a sense of indigenous “copyright.” Both Byron’s and Lance’s channels have strong elements of cultural preservation in their content. This kind of intellectual property would seem to fall into a more traditional approach to intellectual property. Additionally, we do not know how any of these content creators have set their YouTube monetization, however, clearly, that is a concern that arises in the Guidelines for Respecting Cultural Knowledge.

When we enter into cultural innovation fusion of Yup’ik singing and hip-hop or the native jazz fusion that Ed Littlefield explores this opens up a variety of questions about intellectual property. How does the innovation contribute to cultural continuity and coherence? Or, is it more individualistic then the tradition can bear? Personally, I think that this kind of innovation is extremely important for keeping young people involved in their cultures. I hazard as well that it is a way for traditional cultures to be vibrant and relevant.  But it is a very complicated question as well. On one hand, we see climate change rendering vast swaths of vocabulary and specialized knowledge irrelevant (think about sea ice) and yet there still exists many points of relevance and creativity for cultural participants to sustain language, aesthetic and values. 

The videos on the nativejazzlive channel frequently tell a genealogy or site the traditional source of inspiration for the song. So there is still a sense of group ownership that precedes the innovation. The channel builds in the “live” or performance aspect into its name and that likewise seems a gesture towards a shared ownership as well. However, in the end, I cannot see a real self-consciousness about either traditional intellectual property nor a coherent participation in Western intellectual property protections in these examples. Rather, it seems that this YouTube content is being generated in a kind of vacuum and the default of “standard license” is filling the void. While it makes sense that indigenous content creators would be struggling with the same questions about intellectual property that all content creators are struggling with I suspect that perhaps more is at stake for them. 

Who to Follow

Tara Hunt

She not only talks the talk of building community online, she also walks the walk. She is a LinkedIN Influencer, followed by over 110,000 people. Her Slideshare presentations have been viewed over 1.7 million times. She is in the top 5% of Twitter users worldwide with over 51,000 followers.

I first discovered Tara Hunt through her YouTube channel, Truly Social. I found her thinking on social media marketing and content marketing to be spot on. I connected with her on LinkedIn and Twitter, but later I came to understand the span (she was participating in online communities when modems were still dial up (1993)) and scope (where she worked on projects with Google, Facebook, Tripit, Slideshare, and more) of her online presence.

She authored the book, The Whuffie Factor in 2009, where she explores the creation of social capital online.

She recently started up her consulting business Truly Social which has grown exponentially over the last couple of years.            

Part of my reason for recommending her is that we are a bunch of educators who frequently refer to other educators in a self-legitimizing circle. I find occasional breaths of fresh air well off the ranch.         

Bling your Blog

I have been working with WordPress sites since 2009. So, I initially shied away from this extra-credit assignment.  However, I never really liked the orange of my previous theme. I selected it to go with the header picture of fall in Maine. I could have picked a complementary color instead, blue to the orange foliage, and modified that template in that way.

However, I’ve never done much with a left-hand menu, so this theme looked significantly different.  I wanted as well to have a new header image that reflects where I am living. I am a little troubled that the Twitter widget never comes out of the dark bottom part of the image. I did adjust the font color for the menu element to a darker color. I will continue to experiment with that and see if going lighter on the font color works better.

I also installed the plugin Autoptimize — which optimizes your website, concatenating the CSS and JavaScript code, and compressing it. We will see if the site loads any quicker as a result.

 

Essential Elements of Digital Literacy: II

Essential Elements of Digital Literacy: II

by
Tue, Jun 20 2017 01:51:23

Essential Elements of Digital Literacy: II

Rich Reflections

  1. Belshaw, D. (2014). The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. Retrieved from <digitalliteraci.es>
  2. Chapter 6
  3. Treating memes as a case study in digital literacy is a brilliant approach. Moreover, we can now see the elements of ambiguity and the eight elements of information literacy, which Belshaw offers, at play.
  4. Thumbnail for Meme - WikipediaMeme – Wikipedia

    The word is a neologism coined by Richard Dawkins.[3]
    wikipedia

  5. Most digital literacy frameworks are overly prescriptive and have an undue focus upon procedural factors in using design tools, the conceptual understanding of what is involved is equally important, Creating and remixing memes successful forces individuals to understand these conceptual elements while using procedural skills.

  6. Giphy
    ·

    Fri, Jun 19 2015 08:24:08

  7. Indeed, this chapter gives me a great deal of insight into the pedagogy of the ED 654 class for which we are doing this assignment and reading. The speed of creativity, speed of publishing, speed of feedback, (dead meme, or viral) variety of mediums, the complexity of identifying resources and organizing them, of finding and participating in affinity circles, these are well mirrored in the class website. Now, does my discomfort with this necessarily situate me on the visitor:resident continuum as just a dabbler? Does, my lack of interest and participation in some of these "formats" "communities" etc. disqualify me from literacy or citizenship? Alternatively, am I participating in a way and to a degree that is personally adequate and satisfying?
  8. Visitors and Residents: Open Practice

    jiscnetskills
    ·

    Thu, Jun 05 2014 13:54:50

  9. Another question to unpack regards my trying on the alternative self of Instructional Designer. If, I do not have this immersion if I am unaware of what is occurring online then how can I possibly be responsive to teachers and learners in that environment?
  10. Chapter 7
  11. In Digital Storytelling, I engaged in making my first“remix/mashup” online. Moreover, I thoroughly enjoyed the creative process. So, my ears perked up on this chapter.

  12. The central difference between the digital and analog worlds that I have experienced during my lifetime has to do with reverence. There appears to be a finality about analog communication and media that does not translate to the digital world. Part of that may be to do with the ease of manipulating bits and bytes but a great deal of it is attitudinal. Remixing, re-appropriation and riffing off other people’s work just seems to be part of what we do as human beings. Instead of that being hidden, as to some extent was previously, this has been for grounded as a positive thing in the web era.

  13. I like this thought. I do think that Belshaw is onto something. Nevertheless, before we move too quickly, I think it is important to remember analog has a similar experience I think however, it is more ephemeral and hence, may never make it to a medium that can sit beside the “work.”
  14. Yet, I think it is interesting to slow down and think about our analog past, and our canonical past, before we move too quickly. Is it possible that counter-examples do make it into the canon the reverent, at least in public, hold them up as a negative example, perhaps Francois Rabelais and, Jonathan Swift who sit perversely in the Canon?
  15. Thumbnail for François Rabelais - WikipediaFrançois Rabelais – Wikipedia

    Biography[edit]
    wikipedia
  16. Thumbnail for Jonathan Swift - WikipediaJonathan Swift – Wikipedia

    Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish[1] satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.[2]
    wikipedia
  17. Many of the painterly isms from the late 19th and early 20th century might fit here too. We understand fauvism and cubism as masterful and exemplary of modern art at the turn of the last century. But they were in their moment remixing, re-appropriating, and riffing against the canon as it stood at that moment.

  18. wikimedia
    ·

    Sat, Jun 17 2017 22:33:57

  19. Thumbnail for Armory Show - WikipediaArmory Show – Wikipedia

    Among the many exhibitions that have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories, the Armory Show typically refers to the International Exhibition of Modern Art that was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1913, the first large exhibition of modern art in America.
    wikipedia
  20. Certainly, thousands of musical improvisations at drunken after parties riffed off “works.” Song lyrics sang in corner taverns remixed to suit local taste and issues. Ephemeral, but widespread and widely participated in.
  21. The internet leaves traces that previously vanished into time.
  22. I think this is perhaps a more seminal moment again like the insight about the printing press in Chapter 2. We like to talk about the ephemeral nature of the internet, bit rot, and dead links, 404 errors. Indeed, librarians and archivist are concerned with the volume of content and the rate of change. But, online the traces last longer than just last night's sing-along at the corner pub.
  23. Thumbnail for Reflections by Bob Heath - Wiki | The Essential Elements of Digital LiteraciesReflections by Bob Heath – Wiki | The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies

    Belshaw, D. (2014). The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. Retrieved from
    digitalliteraci
  24. Perhaps, like God, the Canon is dead, and the internet killed it/them. Moreover, we all bear witness that they died pecked to death by ducks, remixed, re-appropriated, and riffed off.
  25. Chapter 8
  26. What a fascinating shift from digital literacies to web literacies I was caught by surprise. I was operating as if digital literacy included web literacy. I see and experience the greatest complexity online not in what I can produce on my local machine. The categories he suggests for web literacies “Exploring, Building, and Connecting” are presented as unlike the eight elements of digital literacy, comparing apples and oranges. Alas, in the end, I just disagree, this is an unnecessary proliferation of theory. Those three categories can easily be subsumed into the eight elements. To my way of thinking the web, the larger environment is the most complex and hence the eight elements are best for describing that complexity. So, no I do not find this turn convincing nor compelling.
  27. Turning to coding… I recall in the old days of the internet back in 1997 a person had to learn HTML to make web pages. CSS had not been invented yet, nor JavaScript and certainly not PHP. In the intervening time, we have seen programs that help one code like HTMLKit, and I think even more important content management programs like WordPress, and Drupal, which have rendered knowledge of web coding unnecessary. Oh, occasionally, I will toggle between the HTML editor and text editor and modify the HTML, but that is mostly a conceit. Returning to gaming, many games came with landscape editors and other tools that allowed a person to create scenarios and maps without knowing a“word” of code.
  28. So, I think it is important to be cautious here too. I just want to slow our rush to treat coding as the panacea that it probably is not.That said, I love that I have the skill and that it enriches my experience of the web. Frequently, I will left click and select “view page source” to see how or why something is so. I just want to be more cautious than many folks who uncritically praise the practice of coding. It rankles a bit like the outside in prescriptions and lists of attributes of “netizenship” vitamin pills just because they are good for us.
  29. Chapter 9
  30. I am content with Belshaw’s welcome to the reader to rip and remix his book. Certainly, he offers some summary and an appreciative thank you to the reader for their time.
  31. However, for me his welcome to remake the book is refreshing. I like very much that he authored the book online and in real time taking comments and feedback and that in the end, he returns the content to the internet. I think this casts a very postmodern sense of authorship and is completely fitting. We are past the self-reflective theorizing of the 1990's and instead, postmodernity is taken for granted.

Exploring Digital Citizenship

Given that I am six classes into the program I have encountered examples of online engagement that stand out for me.  I will be recasting two here and introducing a third.  John Seeley Brown is focused on the open, online, and passion centered learning that occurs in online affinity groups. I think this is worth recasting as a facet of digital citizenship.

Online learning as a Digital Citizenship

In the following clip, just the segment about the professional surfer Dusty Paine, Brown describes a fascinating interplay between embodied lives and online lives.

This type of learning is about identity, about curiosity, about real compensation. I think these definitions of online learning and online learning community is substantially different from the online learning in which universities or human resource departments engage. To understand better, the process that Brown describes includes the following elements:

  • Shared passion
  • Face-to-face cohort
  • Practice capture technology
  • Play/practice (elements of gamification)
  • Online cohort
  • Published/peer reviewed (open)
  • Failure has a real cost (injury, financial loss)
  • Practice refinement and improvement (lather, rinse, repeat)
  • Success has potential for compensation/recognition in both real and virtual world

Here learning, and community is learner/passion-centric. Inquiry originates with passionate individuals following their dreams. That is, less frequently, or not at all how we describe school learners. More often in schools, our starting assumption is that learners are deficient in the knowledge we also assume that they need development across a broad curriculum. This approach to learning puts identity, curiosity, and real compensation at the far end of learning.

Online Gaming as a Digitial Citizenship

I have scratched the surface on online gaming and the production of content that surrounds and abounds in that venue.  A particularly fruitful example is DayZ.  The game itself is in development. Customers purchase a beta version through Steam.  The premise is the world after a Zombie Apocalypse. Players are spawned hungry, thirsty, and minimally equipped, and if they are not successful at avoiding Zombies, disease, hypothermia, and gathering equipment, their avatar will die fairly quickly. But beyond that are the other players who may be bandits, heroes, or simply worse off and desperate for survival. Sometimes trust is developed, and players band together trying to survive, and sometimes they fight and die. The game itself is rough and buggy.  However, it is a fascinating environment for social experimentation but more for live streaming. Some players are so successful with their online improvisational storytelling that they have turned gameplay into full-time work.

Accordingly, I offer Brennan at GoldGloveTV and on Twitch as one example. We are broadly familiar with YouTube. Twitch, however, is more of a niche social media and bears some further introduction. Twitch is a platform that allows computer gamers to broadcast live and real-time their game-play.  Frequently there is a social component to the gameplay, either through the game being a massive-multiplayer-online (MMO) or through a co-op element to otherwise single player games. Twitch facilitates the creation of online communities and potentially a revenue stream for successful “hosts.” Content creators can monetize their accounts by permitting advertising and promoting subscriptions.

  • Brennan O’Neill is 25 and has been on YouTube since 2009. Among gamers, he is well known and widely subscribed to as well. He and his information are indiscriminately available online. And, he is well known for his drunken live streaming and his unfiltered, sometimes inappropriate, game commentary. His social media includes Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, and some game related sites. Brennan employs a Video Editor to assist with the creation of videos. He has a cohort of friends with whom he games and creates content.

GolgGloveTV Logo

I am fascinated by the nested communities and the complexity of players digital citizenship. There are the choices and stories that players create in the game environment. Then as they subscribe to and interact with content creation, there is another type of citizenship. And this unlike the previous example is entirely online. Certainly, Brennen, for example, shares aspects of his embodied life but he could just as well not, and nothing would be lost.

Digital Citizenship Proscriptive Pedagogy

As a striking contrast to these previous examples, I offer the website, Digital Citizenship. This website appears to be the project of a single person, Mike Ribble.  The contact page, says this:

Mike has worked both in the education and technology fields.  He has been in both public as well as private educational institutions.  His teaching experience has been from high school students up to university graduate students.  The work on Digital Citizenship was the culmination of a three year dissertation project.  The concepts for Digital Citizenship are geared toward education, but are important for anyone who uses technology. Mike has spoken to school districts and conferences both in the United States and internationally.

I am ok with Ribble’s entrepreneurial hustle and decision to take a dissertation and repackage and publish in this way.  And while this particular bio is pretty useless I was able to quickly locate Ribble on LinkedIn, and with what was presented there I feel more comfortable with him engaging as a thought leader. Alas, clicking through the pages of resources and publications it seems this site is languishing a bit with resources from 2015 being the most current.

So turning to his content, in one of my podcasts I reviewed his nine-elements definition of digital citizenship. He creates a handy mnemonic for remembering his elements, REPs.

Respect

– Etiquette

– Access

– Law

Educate/Connect

– Literacy

– Communication

– Commerce

Protect

-Rights and Responsibility

– Safety (Security)

– Health and Welfare

The only point that annoys me is “Health and Welfare” I am too much an anarchist to accept that others have a claim on my lifestyle choices. Ribble elucidates his meaning this way:

Eye safety, repetitive stress syndrome, and sound ergonomic practices are issues that need to be addressed in a new technological world.  Beyond the physical issues are those of the psychological issues that are becoming more prevalent such as Internet addiction.  Users need to be taught that there are inherent dangers of technology. Digital Citizenship includes a culture where technology users are taught how to protect themselves through education and training.

Nonetheless, it is regarding content, my only hangup. However, I bridle fiercely at his phrasing, “Users need to be taught…”. Indeed, this outside in, and deficiency approach to learning is strikingly out of place when contrasted with the organic and lived examples offered above. What exactly is it that Ribble will teach Brown’s international cohort of surfers or Brennen? Rather, Ribble is teaching parents and educators, even people like myself more a visitor than a resident. His content is good and relevant even for online residents, alas, the approach is flawed for reaching them, I think. The digital citizens described above are organically and improvisationally creating their citizenship, and certainly, we see Ribble’s elements in their activities, but their engagement with them is from the inside out. Ribble’s elements remind me of codes of virtue ethics the Scout Law or the Ten Commandments for examples. Probably this as well has a place in our thinking about digital citizenship, but it feels very different and is challenging to reconcile.

References

Brown, J. S. (Producer). (2013). John Seely Brown on Motivating Learners (Big Thinkers Series). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/41pNX9-yNu4

White, D. [jiscnetskills]. (2014, March 10). Visitors and Residents. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/sPOG3iThmRI.

ZMD, (2005, January 6). Vlogging. In Urban Dictionary. Retrieved September 29, 2016, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vlog