Tama’s eLearning Blog

On Tuesday, the students from my Digital Media class, as well a few invited guests and colleagues, enjoyed a screening of the Best 8 Student News Projects from the unit. This project, the first major assignment for the unit, takes place after 4 weeks of workshops which introduce digital video cameras, sound recording and (very) basic lighting, non-linear editing and copyright in media production. It’s a bit of a whirlwind, but the culmination of these workshop is a project in which students, working in groups of 4 or 5, get exactly one week to produce a 3 minute news story on the basis of pre-assigned topics (all of which are based on relevant local issues).

Once the projects are completed, part of the feedback process is not just comments from myself or Christina (who is tutoring half of the classes, I’m tutoring the other half) - although we do give a fair bit of written feedback - but we also have a reflective seminar where the projects completed by the groups in these seminars (there are 4 groups in each seminar) are viewed and the other members of the seminar offer written and verbal feedback. I find this is always a very rewarding process, as students often engage more directly with peer feedback. To top it off, at the end of each seminar (there are 8 ) each seminar votes and the best project, along with the top from the other seminars, become those which make up the Best of Student News screening. While I am a little hesitant to place too much weight on the ‘best’ projects - learning is, after all, not a competition - students nevertheless respond well to this voting process. I suspect the idea of them deciding the best projects rather than the course staff is very appealing! Then, in the Best of Student News screening, the students get to vote once more and select their choice for the Best Student News Project of the year.

I have to say, I think the level at which students produced their projects this year has been outstanding. Even though most of them have learnt their media production skills over 4 one and a half hour workshops, many of these projects can stand up against the work of professionals who’ve had 3 year of training. The Best Project for the year, as selected by their peers, shows that humour - when used properly - really is one of the universally appealing elements of media. So, without any further ado, this year’s Best Student Project takes a comical look at the role of community radio in the era of media conglomeration.

Community Radio

At the screening, there is also a Staff Award given the the project which got the highest overall mark. This award went to the group behind a technically outstanding project which explored whether Australia’s young Olympians are adequately prepared to be thrust into the media spotlight at the Beijing Olympics.

Young Olympians and the Media Spotlight?

There are two other projects from the screening I wanted share: one takes a look at the proposed redevelopment of the Perth inner city foreshore, and the other asks to what extent Earth Hour is a genuine attempt at ecological change.

Perth Foreshore Redevelopment

Earth Hour 2008

One other noteworthy aspect of these projects, and of many others students created for the course, is that after our discussions on copyright, each of the projects above has selected to place their finished work under a Creative Commons license. Among other things, this suggests that far from the end of the conversation, some of these student projects may, indeed, have an interesting life being screened and remixed in different settings.

The students in this unit are now working hard on their second project, which is explores more specifically the affordances of digital video on the web, and I have to say, having just heard their Pitches for these projects, I’m really exciting to see the next projects as they’re completed!

[Cross-posted from my main blog.]

Open-access to scholarly research has been very topical the past few years.  The internet as a means of communication and distribution seems to have led down to paths, increasingly divergent: either academic journals are going open-access, allowing anyone to read the contents; or, they’re becoming part of large corporate conglomerates which charge university libraries (and very few others since they can’t afford it) very large fees for access to all the journals in their catalogue.  Graduate student and social networking guru danah boyd (yes, she spells her name without capital letters) has argued that academics need to form a united front and only publish in open-access journals.  Here’s what boyd proposes:

• Tenured Faculty and Industry Scholars: Publish only in open-access journals. Unlike younger scholars, you don’t need the status markers because you’re tenured or in industry. Use that privilege to help build new journals that are not strapped to broken business models. Help build the reputations of new endeavors so that they can be viable publishing venues for future scholars. Publish in open-access journals, build a personal webpage and add your article there. You will get much more visibility, especially from younger scholars who turn to Google before they go to the library. I understand that a lot of you prefer to flout the rules of these journals and publish your articles on your website anyhow, even when you’re not allowed. The problem is that you’re not helping change the system for future generations.
• Disciplinary associations: Help open-access journals gain traction. Encourage your members to publish in them. Run competitions for best open-access publications and have senior scholars write committee letters for younger scholars whose articles are stupendous but published in non-traditional venues.
• Tenure committees: Recognize alternate venues and help the universities follow. Younger scholars can’t afford to publish in alternate venues until you begin recognizing the value of these publications. Help that process along and encourage your schools to do the same.
• Young punk scholars: Publish only in open-access journals in protest, especially if you’re in a new field. This may cost you advancement or tenure, but you know it’s the right thing to do. If you’re an interdisciplinary scholar or in a new field, there aren’t “respected” journals in your space and so you’re going to have to defend yourself anyhow. You might as well use this opportunity to make the valued journals the open-access ones.
• More conservative young scholars: publish what you need to get tenure and then stop publishing in closed venues immediately upon acquiring tenure. I understand why you feel the need to follow the rules. This is fine, but make a point by stopping this practice the moment you don’t need it.
• All scholars: Start reviewing for open-access journals. Help make them respected. Guest edit to increase the quality. Build their reputations through your involvement. Make these your priority so that the closed journals are the ones struggling to get quality reviewers.
• Libraries: Begin subscribing to open-access journals and adding them to your catalogue. Many of you do this, but not all. Open-access journals are free. Adding them to databases does costs money but it helps scholarship and will help you ween off of expensive journals in the long run.
• Universities: Support your faculty in creating open-access journals on your domains. You are respected institutions. The bandwidth cost of hosting a journal would be much less than allowing your undergrads access YouTube. Support your faculty in creating university-branded journals and work with them to run conferences and do other activities to help build the reputation of such nascent publications. If it goes well, your brand will gain status too.
• Academic publishers: Wake up or get out. Silencing the voices of academics is unacceptable. You’re not helping scholarship or scholars. Find a new business model or leave the journal publishing world. You may be making money now, but your profits will not continue to grow using this current approach. Furthermore, I’d bank on academics shunning you within two generations. If you think more than a quarter ahead, you know that it’s the right thing to do for business as well as for the future of knowledge.

(Read more here.) Personally, I commend boyd for her position.  I must admit, as an early career researcher, I’d be hard pressed to turn down an opportunity to publish in a well-respected journal, even a very locked-down one; academic careers are that hard to build and maintain that lost opportunities are costly.  However, I’d be delighted when we get to the stage that the most respected journals are open-access.  In the meantime, I really hope that boyd’s call is heard by our research leaders - I believe the push for open-access has to be top-led to be successful - and where I have any choice in the matter, open-access will be the way to go for me.

What do you think?  Does open-access matter to you?

A couple of months ago I wrote about Virgin Mobile’s controversial use of CC-Licensed images from Flickr in one of their advertising campaigns.  Things have now taken an odd twist, with on of the teenagers features in the photos suing not just Virgin but Creative Commons as well!  As the Sydney Morning Herald reported:

A Texas family has sued Australia’s Virgin Mobile phone company, claiming it caused their teenage daughter grief and humiliation by plastering her photo on billboards and website advertisements without consent. [...] The picture of 16-year-old Chang flashing a peace sign was taken in April by Alison’s youth counsellor, who posted it that day on his Flickr page, according to Alison’s brother, Damon. In the ad, Virgin Mobile printed one of its campaign slogans, “Dump your pen friend,” over Alison’s picture. The ad also says “Free text virgin to virgin” at the bottom. [...]

The lawsuit, filed in Dallas late yesterday, names Virgin Mobile USA LLC, its Australian counterpart, and Creative Commons Corp, a Massachusetts nonprofit that licenses sharing of Flickr photos, as defendants. [...]

People who post photos on Flickr are asked how they want to license their attribution. The youth counsellor chose a sharing licence from Creative Commons that allows others to reuse work such as photos without violating copyright laws, if they credit the photographer and say where the photo was taken. His Flickr page appears at the bottom of the ad.

Worth reading on this matter are:-

[X] Lawrence Lessig’s post “On the Texas suit against Virgin and Creative Commons” (always thorough, Lessig also links to the actual complaint);
[X] The Slashdot Thread on the lawsuit;
[X] and Joi Ito’s post, in which he notes this complaint is a ”very good example of the complexities of copyright and other rights and the necessity of educating the public and ourselves about what copyright exactly is.”

Personally, I find it hard to credit the complaint against Creative Commons.  I think as an organisation, CC have done more to educate people about copyright than almost any other organisation.  While I admit using certain CC licenses leaves the lay-person ignorant about the complexities of model releases and the different international standards (ie you need people in the photos to grant permission for their image or likeness to be used), the fault lies more with copyright law per se than with Creative Commons.  Of course, given this development, it would seem prudent time for a more detailed guide about using CC licenses on Flickr (and other photos) to be developed.

[Cross-posted from my main blog.]

Despite the increasing number of Creative Commons licensed images out there, many students still seem to resort to a single service like Google’s Image Search since it’s still the easiest way to find images (copyright be damned). I’ve always hoped to find a tool which makes it just as easy to search for images which are freely reusable, via CC (or other) licenses, so I was delighted when I stumbled upon the Picture Sandbox.

The Picture Sandbox lets you search Flickr (and other services), easily restricting searches to any CC license type, as well as a number of other limiting parameters such as data taken, or user. As this screenshot shows, all of these options areon the frontpage as drop-down boxes, making the service very easy to use:

Simply entering ‘Venice’ (for example) into the search window, brings up pages and pages of photos which students could use in projects and media creations, with simple attribution, and then be able to re-use in the future as part of ePortfolios or the like:

This is a fabulously simple tool so I hope it finds its way into media classes across the entire educational spectrum!

Update: If the Sandbox Flickr search doesn’t work (which seems to happen occassionally) try FlickrCC.

One of the restrictions I hate the most is the legal restriction on breaking copyright protection on DVDs (which is so easy to do), despite the fact that playing ripped clips from DVDs is so much easier than have to cue up a DVD in the player before a lecture starts and then hope that the cue doesn’t reset before you get around to playing the clip. Although from the perspective of US law, I found this article from Edgar Huang in the latest Convergence of real value:

A DVD Dilemma: Ripping for Teaching

Edgar Huang

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA, ehuang@iupui.edu

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has made ripping Macrovision- or CSSprotected DVDs illegal, but university instructors and students need accessible videos in a digital format for pedagogical purposes. This legal analysis has compared the DMCA with the TEACH Act and the fair use doctrine in the Copyright Act in an attempt to find a viable solution to this dilemma. The study has provided alternative and creative approaches to DVD ripping while finding it necessary to pursue a legal amendment to the DMCA.

Key Words: copyright • Digital Millennium Copyright Act • DVD ripping • fair use • Macrovision

Of course, at the end of the day Huang’s voice is simply another calling for a better system of fair use, or fair dealing in Australia, that maintains certain protections but which also permits teachers to use media in the best way possible for teaching, not just for copyright. One, I guess, there will be enough voices … I hope.

Next month the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL, where I work) will be launching a new magazine-length publiction called CATLyst which will focus on issues around learning and teaching in higher education. As part of the first issue, I’ve reviewed Open Content Licensing, a new book put out by the Australian arm of the Creative Commons organisation. It’s pitched at a generalist audience (hence half the review really explaining why CC exists), but I thought it might be of interest to some blog reading folks anyway. Here we go…

Brian Fitzgerald (ed.), Open Content Licensing: Cultivating the Creative Commons, Sydney, Sydney University Press, 2007, $A26.95, ISBN: 9781920898519

Issues of copyright, intellectual property, fair dealing (to use the Australian term) or fair use (to use the American term) have huge importance in education and academia. Most academics have a foot in at least two camps, as a producer of intellectual property in the form of articles, software, patented means to produce material goods, and as an educator who needs to display, quote, demonstrate and play work done by others in the processes of teaching and encouraging student learning. Students equally need to have a very clear picture of what they can do with the intellectual property of others – otherwise lack of understanding can lead to plagiarism or copyright violation – but increasingly so, students are also producers of creative and intellectual works, both in print and multi-media forms, which fall under the auspices of copyright control in one shape or another.

It is widely acknowledged that the era of digital media has presented very real challenges to the legal and conceptual understandings of copyright law, exemplified by the debates about the primarily illegal downloading of music and films. However, as educators seek new ways to enhance learning, students are often being asked to create short films, image-laden slide presentations or construct websites. More to the point, students often find that while they can use certain material within an educational context, they cannot use the exact same presentation or production as part of a portfolio when seeking employment, because different copyright rules apply outside of the university context. What, then, is the best way to equip students – and academics – with the tools and understanding about what can and cannot be used in such presentations and productions? The monolith of copyright law tends to have two extremes: full copyright, which allows little re-use, if any; and items in the public domain, regarding which creators have had to relinquish any and all rights. However, in the past few years a number of organisations and initiatives have sought to find a middle path between these two extremes, and the most notable of these in Australia is explored in Open Content Licensing: Cultivating the Creative Commons.

Open Content centres on the Australian arm of the Creative Commons organisation, whose primary purpose is to allow creators to explicate their intended copyright. For example, using a Creative Commons license, creators may explicitly state that a work can be used as long as Attribution of the original authorship is given, and only in a non-commercial manner (this is but one of many possible ‘some rights reserved’ configurations). For educational purposes, such licensing is extremely useful as it means with proper citation these works could be used by students and academics alike both within and beyond educational contexts, without copyright violation (as long as no money is directly made in the process).

Open Content is edited by Brian Fitzgerald, Head of Queensland University of Technology’s Law School, who is also the chair of the Creative Commons organisation in Australia. The collection is based on a late 2005 conference which launched the Australian versions of the Creative Commons licenses and brought together local academics, producers and others, including Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford Law Professor, who began the Creative Commons organisation and, until recently, was also chairperson. The articles in Open Content range from the broad and philosophical, to those with a narrow focus on specific issues in production or distribution. For academics and for students, many articles provide important guidance about laws in Australia and specific ways Creative Commons licensing can be used in education. While it might be odd for many people to hear the head of a Law School talking about videogames, one of the most interesting articles is Brian Fitzgerald talking about ‘machinima’, which entails videos created using the virtual landscapes of videogames rather than the material world. In exploring who owns such productions, and who can share them, Fitzgerald makes a point which, broadly, summarises the issues and the value of Open Content to readers:

By recognising that copyright law should exist not only to protect investment in the production of intellectual property, but also encourage further creativity, innovation and social interaction, a balance can be sought which both protects game developers from piracy, and also protects the rights of players to play, and the ability of players to express themselves, inside and outside of games. [228]

The book is available in hardcopy, but in keeping with the Creative Commons philsophy, indivudual chapters are also available, free of charge, from the University of Sydney’s eScholarship Repository.

Microsoft Australia have a new promotional offer and new website - http://www.itsnotcheating.com.au/ - pitching Office 2007 at Australian university students. As The Age notes:

Microsoft sells the premium version of its new Office 2007 software suite for $1150, but in a new promotion it is offering the package to Australian university students for just $75. The almost 95 per cent discount for Office 2007 Ultimate is offered through a website made specifically for the promotion, itsnotcheating.com.au. It comes as Microsoft’s cash-cow office productivity suite - which has more than 400 million users worldwide and accounts for about 30 per cent of the software giant’s income - is being increasingly threatened by free alternatives. Most notable is OpenOffice, but there are also a number of web-based competitors such as Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets and Zoho Office. [...] When asked why the discount was not being offered to TAFE or non-tertiary students, a Microsoft spokeswoman said: “Microsoft has targeted universities in the roll out of this three month pilot program. If the program is successful, we will look at extending the offer to TAFE students as well as K-12.”

In many ways this is a clever strategic move by Microsoft to ensure that the university students of today - and leaders of tomorrow - are thinking Microsoft when they move out of the universities. It certainly speaks to the competition coming from other options - I must admit I’m musing Google Docs more and more as their export to PDF function makes editing documents intended for the web far faster than using Word and the Acrobat plugin.

Microsoft are also try to tap the web2.0 world of blogging:

Microsoft hopes to spread the word about its offer virally by running a blogging competition, and the first prize is a Vespa GT200 scooter. “All you have to do is mention the word ‘Office’ and the link ‘www.itsnotcheating.com.au’ in your blog,” the website reads. “Winner is judged on creativity of the story.”

Of course, there is real potential for that competition to turn against Microsoft, especially when students find their new spiffy formats of Word aren’t compatible with previous versions. Then again, perhaps someone at Microsoft is either feeling ironic this week - or is rather ignorant about Microsoft’s ongoing anti-piracy war - as this ‘cool’ list appears on the competition page of the It Not Cheating website:

So … “It’s not cheating if … you don’t get caught.” That’s certainly not the message my university wants to send. Nor, I suspect, it is what Microsoft really wants to say. Rather, in the push for blogging credibility, Microsoft haven’t thought through their own campaign! It may be intended as satirical, but I suspect most people will find these attempts at being hip rather ironic!

Update (1.35pm, Tues 6 Mar 07): Long Zheng has a more robust argument about why this Microsoft initiative is a bad idea here. (Of course, all those criticisms aside, I have to admit: were I currently a student without a copy of Office, I’m pretty sure I’d be looking to get myself a $75 legal copy tomorrow!)

[Cross-posted from my brand new personal blog!]

Footnote.com is a new website which allows access to millions of public documents from the US National Archives — as well as documents uploaded by users.  More to the point it allows users to annotate documents with notes, translations and so on.  This seems like an excellent service for finding interesting class projects.  I can easily students annotating historical documents and clarifying difficult handwriting for their own learning while simultaneously contributing to a larger community resource.

Admitedly, there is a registration fee, but it’s not huge and I’d say well worth it for schools and university libraries.

[Via SmartMobs]

According to Bernard Lane in today’s Higher Ed supplement, the ARC has just made shifted Australian research to an Open Access default:

Australia has taken a great leap towards research results being freely available to all, supporters of the open access movement say. The Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council - with total annual grants worth more than $1billion - are about to announce their first open access policies. “An open access sea change is happening,” said Arthur Sale, professor of computing at the University of Tasmania. “It will take about a year to become fully fledged and unmistakable to all, but it is inexorable.” Federal Education, Science and Training Minister Julie Bishop welcomed the new approach as “well balanced”. She said given the scale of public investment, it was reasonable that research results be available to the community and other researchers, thereby maximising the benefits. Although the ARC policy is voluntary, researchers who decide not to use open access repositories in a timely way must explain why in their final report to the agency. The same approach is expected to apply to NHMRC grant programs. “It is a mandatory policy in that it is easier to deposit than write why not,” said open access advocate Colin Steele, former librarian at the Australian National University. Mandatory open access policies are rare and contentious.

Can anyone say ePrint archives Australia?

As James Farmer has been busy upgrading edublogs to the spiffy new full-version of Wordpress-Mu (finally at 1.0), I thought I’d take the opportunity to upgrade the look of this blog as well. Ever since I posted my wonderful graduation iPhinished iPod silhouette I’ve wanted to get around to doing a custom header, so I’ve swapped to the more dynamic Regulus theme, minimised the many links in the blogroll, created a header-image I’m happy with and with any luck will carve out a little more time to blog here in the near future.

The only thing that I couldn’t do (which is a limitation of a mulitple-blog installation like Mu) is edit the template so I could put my Creative Commons license details in the footer. However, I think the ‘Some Rights Reserved’ page-link as part of the header is a reasonable work-around for now.

Also, I realised today that four days ago, Tama’s eLearning Blog celebrated its first birthday! I should really rename this my Flexible Delivery or Mixed Mode blog, but I think I’ll stick with eLearning for now since it sums up where I was coming from in my thinking when the blog started. It’s been a fun journey so far …