Tama’s eLearning Blog

As it’s the Creative Commons movement celebrates a birthday this week, I thought I’d take the opportunity to reflect on my year in CC terms, as well as showing off some very impressive CC-licensed work by my honours students.  It has already been a pretty big year in Creative Commons terms for me and the students I teach; in the first semester my Digital Media class experimented with Creative Commons licenses on a lot of their output, including many of their Student News reports and almost all of their outstanding Digital Media Projects; I’ve also enjoyed being part of an education panel at the Building an Australasian Commons conference in July, as well as presenting on my talk ‘Building Open Education Resources from the Bottom Up’ at the Open Education Resources Free Seminar today in Brisbane in September.

As the year’s drawing to a close, I’m delighted to highlight one last effort, this time from the honours students in my iGeneration: Digital Communication and Participatory Culture course.  The course, as in past years, has been a collaborative effort between the students and myself; I’ve provided the framing narrative and opening and closing weeks, while the students, in consultation, have written the central seminars in the course.  Moreover, all course content from the seminars to the curriculum, from the students’ audio podcasts to their amazing remix videos, has been released under a Creative Commons license as both an exemplar of their fine work and an Open Educational Resource which, hopefully, will be something other teachers, students and creative citizens can draw upon for their own purposes. Moreover, given that I first ran iGeneration in 2005, this year’s students already built upon the work of that first cohort, learning from their peers and, hopefully, sharing so future peers can build on this work, too.

I also thought I’d take this opportunity to showcase some of the specific media projects created this year.  The first is a really impressive podcast by Kiri Falls which looked at the Babelswarm art installation in Second Life …

Babelswarm MP3

[Full Sources & Exegesis] [CC BY NC SA]
Kiri’s final project for the unit, this time a remix video, takes quite literally the idea that creativity builds upon the past, with this enjoyable video which mashes together a plenitude of videos and photographs …

[Full Sources & Exegesis] [CC BY NC SA]

The second remix project I wanted to showcase is by Alex Pond; Alex has created a short but very poignant  video which takes issue with the monolith that is copyright law, but celebrates the freedoms which are shared via the Creative Commons …

[Full Sources & Exegesis] [CC BY NC SA]

The final remix I wanted to highlight is a bit different.  This one, by Chris Ardley, includes art and music from creators who’ve explicitly given Chris permission to re-use their work and share it under a CC license.  This animation, created in Flash, explores remix more metaphorically, and tells a tale of worldly creation …

[Full Sources & Exegesis] [CC BY NC SA]

I think all of these projects are quite impressive, and I was delighted at how seriously this year’s students took the idea of remix and how many of them embraced everything that the Creative Commons has to offer, as well as giving back something of their own.  I’ve also finally written iGeneration up as an educational example in the CC Case Studies Wiki, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while!

So, Happy 6th Birthday to the Creative Commons! In the next six years, I hope you’ll consider sharing work under a CC license if you haven’t already, but a shared culture can help us all be a lot more creative.  I know my students have benefitted from the generosity of the Creative Commons, and have, in turn, added a few quite impressive ideas and artefacts back in the creative stream.

[Cross-posted from Tama Leaver dot Net]

As most people in Australia would now be aware, one of the most important developments in terms of civil rights and the Australian internet has now gone before the courts as a consortium, led by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) is suing ISP iiNet for refusing to cut off customers for alleged (not proven!) copyright infringement in terms of bittorent media downloads. From the Age:

The Australian film and television industry has launched a major legal action against one of Australia’s largest internet service providers for allegedly allowing its users to download pirated movies and TV shows. The action against iiNet was filed in the Federal Court today by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Disney and the Seven Network. Mark White, iiNet’s chief operating officer, said the company did not support piracy in any form but it could not disconnect customers just because the movie industry claimed they engaged in illegal downloading. Adrianne Pecotic, executive director of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), said the action followed a five-month investigation by the industry.

There are also arguments made that peer to peer networks should simply be blocked (although that argument hasn’t been in quit those terms just yet in this case) but that serves as a good opportunity to remember that p2p and, yes, even bittorent, are not intrinsically for distribution of ‘pirated’ media; there are plenty of things, including feature films, being distributed via peer to peer networks which are entirely legal!

One thing this case should, hopefully, achieve, is to test the extent to which recently imported ‘safe harbour’ provisions actually stand up in an Australian court:

"This is a very important test case for the internet industry in Australia," said Peter Coroneos, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association. "It will test the effect of the safe harbour provisions that were introduced with the US free trade agreement, which provides immunity for ISPs in certain circumstances such as transmission, hosting, caching and referencing activities."

However, as this article from Michael Sainsbury and Fran Foo in Australian IT notes, the lawsuit seems to stand on pretty thin legal grounds (disclaimer: I ain’t no lawyer!):

iiNet managing director Michael Malone said when it received AFACT’s complaints, they were forwarded to the Police. "But AFACT refused to talk to the Police," Mr Malone said. Ms Pecotic brushed aside Mr Malone’s explanation, saying: "The law is clear and iiNet knows that. They cannot pass the buck … it is their responsibility." "There were many things that iiNet could have done and at the very least, issue a warning to the customers involved but they did nothing," she said. Unlike a number of other major jurisdictions such as the United States and Britain, Australia does not have blanket agreement between content companies and broadband providers about file swapping. An Optus spokesperson said that under Australian law there are remedies available to copyright holders, including taking action directly against those alleged to be infringing rights. "It is unfortunate that the rights holders are targeting an ISP because under Australian law, internet service providers may generally be considered conduits which provide carriage services, and as such are not responsible for copyright infringements carried out by customers using their internet services,” the spokesperson said. This position is reflected in sections 39 (B) and 112 (E) of the Copyright Act 1968 (Com), and in the safe harbours set out in Division 2AA, which were introduced protect ISPs from being onerously required to enforce intellectual property rights where they are merely providing carriage services.

On the smaller screen front, TV Tonight notes that Channel 7 is part of the group attacking iiNet, although reading the comments on the TV Tonight post, this action seems to have focused even more people’s feeling that they are downloading television shows because local networks simply aren’t providing the goods in a timely or consistent fashion!

iiNet’s own response seems the most sensible part of this whole debacle:

iiNet’s Managing Director Michael Malone said iiNet does not in any way support or encourage breaches of the law, including infringement of copyright. “In reality, iiNet has been leading the industry in making content available legally through our Media Lounge, including agreements with iTunes, ABC iView, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Cruizin’, Macquarie Digital TV, NASA Television, Barclays Premier League football, Drift Racing 2007 and classic highlights of golf’s four Majors,” Mr Malone said. Mr Malone said iiNet had not breached any laws and had repeatedly passed on copyright holders’ complaints to law enforcement agencies for investigation. He said iiNet had advised the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) that their complaints had been forwarded to law enforcement agencies and that they should follow the matter up with them. iiNet’s Customer Relations Agreement clearly spells out that customers must comply with the law and that our service must not be used “to commit an offence or to infringe another person’s rights”. “iiNet cannot disconnect a customer’s phone line based on an allegation. The alleged offence needs to be pursued by the police and proven in courts. iiNet would then be able to disconnect the service as it had been proven that the customer had breached our Customer Relations Agreement,” Mr Malone said.

Relying on the idea that customers are innocent until proven guilty?  Whatever is iiNet thinking?

At the same time this lawsuit was announced, AFACT released the following ‘resource’ – Nothing beats the real thing! How copyright, creativity and citizenship shape our society (subtitle: Film Piracy – Your Actions Can Make a Difference) – which has been mailed on DVD and hardcopy to every secondary school in Australia. The ‘resource’ is structured around addressing film piracy; the ‘civics lessons’ here are, at best, tailored to a very specific commercial aim and, at worst, an advertising campaign trying to make relevant copyright laws which have long since been dismissed as out of touch by the most teenagers.  More to the point, a genuine civics lesson on copyright would spend considerable time discussing fair dealing, the public domain and the Creative Commons (and other copyleft licenses) as a channel for personal and political creativity and expression (to be fair, both of these things are mentioned in the ‘resource’, but a single paragraph hardly does the Creative Commons justice, especially when it spend half the time emphasising that CC licenses are complex: “There are lots of different types of ‘Creative Commons’ licences, so make sure you always read the terms and conditions of these before applying them to your work or using material licensed under such a licence.”). How central is film piracy to these civics lessons?  The lesson structure:

Is the ‘resource’ balanced?  I’ll leave you take a look for yourself (6Mb PDF), but I’ve never read an educational resource before which feels the need to include this disclaimer (p. 4.):

The resource is not a propaganda exercise. It does make clear to students that there are harmful consequences from film piracy, but it does so through educationally valid processes. It is an educational approach that allows students to face a significant civics and citizenship issue: their role in a society where many of them and their peers are breaking the law.

All I can say is I’d be really, really disappointed if this was the only resource secondary school teachers were provided when integrating lessons which combine copyright, creativity and civics in the classroom.

[Photo: ‘ars electronica linz 2008’ by Mike from Zurich CC BY (Edited)] [Cross-posted]

Update: Kim Weatherall has a detailed legal (and possibly more balanced) look at the case here. [Via Peter Black]

Check out this articulate, straight-forward and succinct little video highlighting the key skills which are part of digital literacy (or, as the producers prefer, new media literacies):

[Via Howard Rheingold @ Smartmobs] [Cross-posted.]

I just stumbled across this excellent anti-cyberbullying ad from the US Adcouncil and had to share:

It’s simple, straight-forward and extremely effective. Show your kids.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot this semester has been the way my teaching does – or doesn’t – encourage my students to develop that elusive, highly ambiguous but universally sought-after quality of creativity. I’ve been running two units – Digital Media, which is a relatively large second year unit (about 140 students) with a fairly hefty hands-on component; and a far smaller honours unit called Creative Selves which is specifically about exploring the way creativity is thought about, situated and can ultimately be harnessed in the world of work (or, at least, the world outside of formal education).

Even though creativity is often associated with the romantic ideal of the lone creative genius, one of the contradictions I’ve been quite aware of, and something that has come up in both units, is that both individual and group creativity is often meaningfully enhanced and provoked when students are thinking about the audience that might ultimately view/experience/interact with their creative work. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise since over the last 4 years I’ve often encouraged (and occasionally mandated) that students blog their work for just that reason. In so many cases, when the potential audience for a work – written, audio, video or whatever else – stops being just the marker or examiner and starts being a potentially global community, students tend to push themselves to work that little bit harder. Occasionally one or two students have suggested this is unnecessarily stressful, but 99% of the time when students are faced with the large potential audience that the internet provides, they step up to the challenge.  There are other clear advantages of getting students to create in the public sphere, too, such as those outlined by Jason Mittell:

One of my pet peeves about teaching is that often you get wonderful student work that is, by design, written for an audience of one, and has no lingering presence beyond the semester. By asking students to blog, share, and otherwise publish their work, it both raises the bar for their own sense of engaging a community with their ideas, as well as offers an opportunity for faculty to publicize their excellent work.

Mittell has written a series of posts showcasing some of the impressive work students have made as part of his Media Technology course this past semester.  They range from podcasts which interrogate something specific about audio, to video-games based shorts (sort of machinima, but not in the Red Vs Blue sense – more videos which mix and match game footage in different ways to highlight a particular critical or creative point).  One assignment I particularly liked was the use of video remixes, or mashups, which included one student effort which remixed current blockbuster trailers – and a ubiquitous iPhone ad – to create an overhyped trailer for technological convergence itself:

Another student collaboration I’ve come across recently is Shake Girl, The Graphic Novel.  This graphic novel was a collaboration between 17 Stanford creative writing, art and design students who’ve produced a moving and provocative story which ultimately ends up being a heart-wrenching tale highlighting the terrible phenomenon of acid attacks on women in Cambodia.  This is no two-dimensional moral rant, though: it’s a thoroughly engaging story, with sophisticated characterisation which envelops the reader in the story only to shock them with the protagonist’s fate.  In their About section, one note rang particularly true for me, regarding the challenges but also the substantial rewards which come from successful creative collaborations between students:

The process of collaboration – we think all of our students will agree – was both one of the most frustrating and exciting experiences of our lives. A lot of the first in the first two weeks, much of the second in the last four. Those of us writing the script seemed to trip over one another in the early stages. We wrote, researched, rewrote, tossed drafts aside, argued, yelled sometimes, tossed our hands up in the air, and then started over. The illustrators waited patiently, until patience ran out, and we were finally left with this mission statement: 1. We want to get this project completed, and 2. We want to make everyone moderately happy.

And with that, we made the jump to light speed. How many late-night hours did we draw, redraw, rewrite, design, redesign, and mostly… really enjoy each others company, efforts, and camaraderie?

All I can say is that Shake Girl definitely highlights an impressively successful student collaboration! [Via BBoing]

This graphic novel also reminds me on one idea for a small-scale creative project I’ve always wanted to do especially with a large first-year class.  Many of you will recall the fabulous Theory.org.uk Theorist Trading Cards, which were essentially bubblegum cards featuring well-known cultural theorists.  In a large first-year class where new theorists, ideas and concepts are introduced for the first time, I suspect that if students generated their own cards as part of tutorial presentations, this would be a great way to creatively get them reading and thinking about the main features, and differences, between the writers and works they encounter.  As an added bonus, these trading cards could be collated online and serve, to some extent, as useful prompts when students are revising for exams.

For a few more examples of engaging creative work, Siva Vaidhyanathan has posted two nifty videos created by students in his Introduction to Digital Media course: Restricted Knowledge? University Bandwidth Regulation and Facebook World.

Along a similar line, this week my Digital Media students are presenting a pitch, outlining an idea for a short video which will critically explore some aspect of digital culture loosely based on arguments about either convergence or citizen journalism, so I hope I’ll be able to post a few of the results in a few weeks time.

Until then, I wanted to end this post by pointing to the very cool and very virally popular video Apple Mac Music Video by Dennis Liu.  While not really student work (Lui has just finished formal education, but has been working professionally for a while; read an interview here) this is video is inspirational.  It’s a brilliant reminder that under the hood of an Apple Mac (or even a decent PC) is more than enough power to make some truly inspiring and amazing creative work …

[Cross-posted from my main blog.]

Those researchers and report-writers at Pew have released a short but important paper ‘Teens and Online Stranger Contact’.  The details:

Fully 32% of online teens have been contacted by someone with no connection to them or any of their friends, and 7% of online teens say they have felt scared or uncomfortable as a result of contact by an online stranger. Several behaviors are associated with high levels of online stranger contact, including social networking profile ownership, posting photos online and using social networking sites to flirt. Although several factors are linked with increased levels of stranger contact in general, gender is the only variable with a consistent association with contact that is scary or uncomfortable–girls are much more likely to report scary or uncomfortable contact than boys.

It’s well worth thinking about, especially in terms of how we educate young people. Also notable that gender remains an important factor. Read the full report here.

[Via New Literacy, New Audiences]

Michael Wesch and his 200 students in ANTH 200: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, Spring 2007 collaborated in exploring what exactly a student does these days. Their results make a fascinating video and a timely reminder of the way (some) student experiences are changing:

Some of the noteworthy results from 133 of the students survey included:

• “My average class size is 115.”
• “18% of my teachers know my name.”
• I complete 49% of the readings assigned to me. Only 26% … relative to my life
• I will read 8 books this year.” “2300 web pages” “and 1281 facebook profiles”
• “I will write 42 pages for class this semester.” “And over 500 pages of email”

Given how many times Wesch’s first video, ‘The Machine is Us/ing Us’, has been used to discuss Web 2.0, I suspect this video may very well find itself as part of the conversations we have in rethinking student engagement in the twenty-first century.

[88Mb .wmv version downloadable here.]

Sometimes I find it hard to get the time to explain certain concepts – RSS, for example – which both have enough information and avoid boring to death those who already know things. Thankfully, those folk over at CommonCraft do really, really good introductory explanations of Web2.0-type tools. Here’s their take on social bookmarking:

After that you’ll also want to check out RSS in Plain English; Wikis in Plain English; Google Docs in Plain English; and Social Networking in Plain English. Watch the show for future useful episodes. I’m sure these clips will find some use in my teaching!

Insight #3: If ePortfolios and other forms of electronic presence are going to be (or are) a core part of the way graduates ‘sell’ themselves to employers, then identity management needs to be taught at all levels of education. Identity management includes those aspects of identity which we intend employers to see, and those we don’t want seen. If a basic search online for someone’s full name reveals drunken party pictures on Flickr or YouTube clips of bullying antics in their youth, then that is just as likely to be viewed by employers as the intended ePortfolios or other material. Identity management clearly is something of a challenge, especially as many educators aren’t fully aware of how much students can put online (or how to temper that), but the Internet never forgets and we need students to be able to understand that for all sorts of reasons, and future employability is clearly one of them.

Insight #4:The unconference model only works when all the participants have a strong sense of what they are intending to pull apart or critique in advance. If half of a conference is populated by people trying to get a basic understanding of something – in this case Web 2.0 – then the unconference model of primarily relying on informed participants leading all the conference sessions themselves, directed by their conversations and thinking, to the exclusion of traditional papers or presentations, is doomed to disappoint a lot of people attending that form of conference. (This, incidentally, is not a personal gripe, but a clearly articulated sense from a number of my fellow conference delegates).

[Cross-posted from my main blog.]

I’m at the Learning Futures Symposium today and tomorrow.  I’m not blogging summaries of sessions because, to be fair, that’s often quite dull.  However, I thought I’d take the opportunity to take the conference discussions to springboard some observations or thoughts that occurred during these interactions…

Insight #1: There is a reasonable amount of critical distance in terms of the ‘digital natives/digital immigrants’ rhetoric, but the same critical perspective doesn’t stretch to critiquing the idea of ‘web 2.0’.  Whereas ideas which supposedly encompass an entire generation are easy enough to pull apart, many educators seem wary of software and claims made about software as they acutely feel that this is one of the few areas in which students know more about this area than they do.  I suspect that if the same educators were dipping their toes in a little more they’d realise something commonsensical which seems to have entirely escaped these kind of conversations: that while there are many types of web 2.0 software, there are generic skills to be found in using these tools and platforms.  The reason that people can move from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook so easily, for example, is that at a basic level there is a lot of similarity between the way these platforms operate and the skills needed to use them.  Sure, the rate of new names of software can be overwhelming, but if we remember that a large section of the skills learnt using one social software platform are viable for the next, super-duper, upcoming must-have web 2.0 tool are transferable, that makes taking the time to learn and teach them a whole lot more important and palatable.  And social software platforms are just one example; skills in blogging, using wikis and many other forms of ‘web 2.0’ tools are similarly transferable and, at some level, generic.  Perhaps we should be focusing more on what those skills are.

Insight #2: Often the people in the driving position for educational policy aren’t confident to make decisions about ICT – nor should they be!

[Cross-posted from my main blog.]