Category Archives: Class Discussion

As a former teacher in multimedia, I have remained very aware about copyright issues. Adding to that, moving from the United States to Canada has given me an interesting perspective on two similar but varying copyright laws. Personally I am very torn on modern copyright and think that those people who are in power have abused the original purpose of copyright. So it is definitely an issue that I am conflicted about when teaching. On the one hand, I do not want to tell my students to break the law, however, if you feel a law is unjust, it is our duty to challenge it. Hence why I like to bring up the issues of copyright in my classroom. As teachers, we have a unique opportunity to use copyrighted works for educational purposes and I think that we need to push that as much as we can. I would regularly show a documentary called Good Copy, Bad Copy in my class that touches upon the various copyright laws around the world. It was an excellent discussion starter because it challenged the commonly held belief that without copyright, artists would never make any money. It has made me very upset that with the recent Trans Pacific Partnership, copyright laws that are vastly different than those in North America are being forced upon their citizens without the proper discussions. Unfortunately for our students they will be finding themselves in a world where the idea of public domain is a fantasy. There will always be a corporation that chooses to profit from someone’s old work than to let people enjoy it without restriction. I seriously wonder how these laws are going to affect artists in the future and I think we need to bring these issues to light within our classrooms.

If I had my way, everything would be free. In the old days before recording, musicians would constantly play each others songs, maybe changing the order or altering lyrics slightly, and these would be passed on for generations without any clue as to who might have originally come up with certain musical or lyrical phrase. Almost all music today still borrows from this past.

I’m a musician and songwriter (with a SOCAN membership since 1996, incidentally) and though I’ve always been proud of my originality, I wouldn’t mind at all if someone played one of my songs, as long as they weren’t profiting from it. But that’s the non-commercial part of Creative Commons.

And my music is really at odds with being a public school teacher. Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll need to be quietly hidden away from my elementary-aged students and their parents. All the music stuff I’ve put online predates my teaching career, but with my band just starting to play live again after 11 years, it could come up. It’s still a conundrum for me. I’m hoping my MET degree will enable me to continue working in education but in a capacity where a lyric from a song I might have written in 1999 won’t come back to haunt me.

Copyright issues in a visual arts classroom is often the centre of focus. In my opinion, it is an unreal expectation that student will go out and photograph their own reference images and too often Creative Commons images do not provide students with an mage that is suitable for a particular work. That being said, students are reminded to identify and give credit to any image they use. We use the analogy of a works cited list for a paper – what resource/source imagery have you used in the production of your work of art? Unfortunately, there is no Bibliography that accompanies a work of art.

When we consider the skills that we are teaching students and the tools they use – ones that allow them to easily mix audio and video from different sources, the idea of ownership becomes blurred. When the latest craze is to ‘mash-up’ different songs, videos and images into something new, how do can we speak of intellectual property. YouTube alone is an excellent example – how much of the content on YouTube is original? How much is repurposed or mashed-up? Who is the artist? To whom should the credit be given? Is it the original creator or the individual who took parts of it and transformed it into something new?

I think of Richard Prince, the artist who ‘rephotographed’ hundreds of Instagram selfies and sold them at auctions for $100 000. Prince took images by other people (usually attractive, 20-somethings) added some creative Instagram-like text and emojis and printed them on a large scale. Prince never asked permission from the subjects of the photos to publish them, nor did he compensate any of the individuals. Is this not an infringement on the individual’s privacy? Firstly the images came from accounts that are not private, which means they are viewable by all. Secondly, because Prince added comments and deleted the existing ones, he can argue that his work is ‘transformative’ and under the US Copyright Act he is protected.

In this era of online digital editing tools and Web 2.0 media creation tools, issues of copyright must be re-thought and redefined.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/18/instagram-artist-richard-prince-selfies

On Digital Footprints

I wonder about how we are going to perceive “digital footprints a decade or two from now. I remember begin very concerned over a decade ago about my digital footprint. I tried to be diligent about monitoring what information about me was (easily) available on the web and where I left my overt presence. I realized as I thought about this question, that my perceptions about my digital footprint have shifted. Somewhere along the way, I became less concerned about some aspects of what is available. I think this has to do with the shear challenge of trying to monitor something in the work I do. The recognition of the shift for me makes me wonder about the perceptions and attitudes of younger people today who grew up in a digital world very different from the one I was in for the first 20 years of my life (the first time I used a computer was in my mid-twenties). I venture to guess that the concept of a digital footprint (in the context of what info might be available about them) will mean even less to them a decade from now.

I am still thoughtful about what I say however. I try to imagine if I could defend any online utterance 20 or thirty years from now. I see this a slightly different discussion than the information that is available about me. We are increasingly trying to help students understand that the nature of digital world makes records of our choices in ways that they often to not yet understand. These are important discussions to have. However, there is a sense of loss in this. While it is important to help students understand that we need to be accountable for our actions and words, I wonder about the effect on people when we fear that everything we do or say may come back to haunt us in the future.

On Copyright

This is an apropos topic this week for a few reasons. First, I was talking today with other educators about some samples of student work that was originally intended to be posted onto a BC Ministry of Education website, and how, some great samples couldn’t be used because the students had used images they had taken from the web without proper permissions. It reminded me of how common that is in so many classes and is not something that I have seen talked about in many elementary classrooms I have been in. If we want our students to be thinking more seriously about copyright as adults, we need to begin the conversations early as they are increasingly immersed in the web in earlier and earlier grades.

Second, I have been in numerous conversations this last year about cultural appropriation with respect to First Nations cultures and knowledge. This topic continues to surface as more BC educators integrate First Peoples content into classrooms. It has been an interesting challenge to help some people understand that there are narratives in First Nations families, communities, or nations that are “owned” by the family, community, or nation, and that permission needs to be given before the narratives can be shared. The only way to help explain this has been to compare that ownership to a form of cultural copyright, and that in First Nations perspectives, that protocol has as much validity as a Canadian copyright law.

Third, I was recently reminded of the need to continue the work about issues of ownership and appropriation with our own colleagues. I am working on a resource development project, and last week a colleague in the project sent me a document that had been sent to him. He said it looked interesting and might be useful for our work. I should take a look at it and let him know. To my surprise the document he had sent was about 90% word for word taken from a blog I wrote, with a few other sentences thrown in. Nowhere on the document was there any indication that the information had been taken from my blog. It was an interesting experience to say the least.

Issues involving copyright and privacy represent an ongoing ethical concern that sometimes takes on an imperialist ‘Old vs. New World’ perspective. It seems that the cultural connotations with beliefs on intellectual property are entangled with value associated with culture and nationality. For example, Asian markets appear to be conducive to the proliferation of copyright violations in many different forms, material and otherwise. By imposing our Western/North American values and perspectives on copyright and intellectual property, we fail to recognize and understand the cultural values that exist and fundamentally impact other cultural markets and economies internationally.

There seems to exist a need to understand educational networks not just for academic reasons, but also to develop an understanding of the social and cultural context that leads to the protection (or not) of intellectual property. These contexts are essential in moving forward with our approaches and dealings towards ethics and jurisprudence as related to technology in both commercial and educational terms. It’s important for our students to understand that technology itself isn’t inherently designed in favour of either positive or negative, good or bad functions and uses, but that ongoing trends of technological innovation and use are shaped by social and cultural considerations that are impacted by examples of meaning and practice that vary internationally.

The implications for education and intellectual property are profound and require careful thought and consideration. If we are viewing the creative and distributive functions of online sharing and learning through a Western/North American perspective, then we are applying our belief and value systems to regions of the world that do not necessarily share the same values and priorities. Is this a direct result of the Western domination and English linguistic superiority of the Internet? When applied to the field of education, these considerations need to be recognized and effectively addressed in order to provide opportunities for students to learn in ways that are personally meaningful (socially and culturally) and relevant while allowing for multiple means of expression. In terms of global learning, Western educators must consider the needs of other regions and cultures internationally, and it should not be assumed that the educational values or perspectives on intellectual property developed in North America will effectively match the interests or needs of students outside of the continent.

Without culture-specific material, there is the legitimate concern that different learning styles internationally may not be compatible with Western (primarily American) creations and developments. The perceived need for opportunities to discuss, collaborate, and argue around opinions and ideas may or may not hold real value in all social contexts and cultures around the globe. In a similar manner, the students in our own classrooms approach discussion and collaboration with different attitudes, both positive and negative. When planning instructional tasks for the classroom, we take the diverse and complex needs and values of our students into account, and the development of perspectives on intellectual property and online sharing should likewise be held to the same accountability.

Our students require (and deserve) personal connections and input into their learning, and the success of online learning is dependent upon the incorporation of relevant social and cultural values, as these values will vary widely across the globe. While the potential for online sharing and protection of intellectual property continues to develop, the success of their regulation hinges on the ability to identify with different cultures and nationalities in order to provide value and significance to diverse learning experiences. This will be no small feat, to be sure.

I’ve had the opportunity to travel, live, and work in many places around the world. In doing so, I’ve seen many different interpretations of copyright. In some places, Korea in particular, the idea of copyright doesn’t exist. If it exists, you can copy it. The goes for movies, books, software, products, brands. I think I saw a Shrek branded hair salon once that was definitely not official. As you can imagine, it is difficult to keep students from plagiarizing when the idea of intellectual copyright doesn’t exist. Actually, it’s hard enough to keep them from plagiarizing when it does. It takes significant education on what plagiarism is, why it’s wrong, and how to credit ideas.

I think that with the technologies available today, that there really should be some loosening up of copyright law, or even a reimagining. I like that music streaming pay services, like Apple Music and Spotify, are becoming more popular as they represent an adaption to the digital era. I think it is important to have these discussions with students and see how they feel around the issue in the first place.

I think that because of my thoughts and experiences with copyright, I haven’t really had enough discussion about it with my classes. We talk about it with regards to copying work and citing sources in essays but that is about it. I’m also not as strict as I should be when it comes to citing sources in class work, or small assignments. I tend to deal more with it if there is a problem, It could be a good social justice lesson asking if violating copyright is justifiable in other countries or at home and then debating the results and connecting the discussion to personal copyright of students work and online posts.

With regards to my digital footprint, I was lucky enough to receive my undergrad from UBC and we had a few lectures on this. It was enough to ensure that my social media is always something I would be fine with anyone seeing. I know that nothing is private and I do try to impress this upon students. I also make the choice to not allow students on my social media, unless it is being used specifically for school. I like distance from work and personal life. I think it could be interesting to take a look at copyright and how it pertains to social media. What about the lawsuits Pinterest has faced over their link sharing? What about the sharing of misatribited quotes? There is a lot you could do here and it might provide a fun way to reaaly delve into the ideas around copyright.

The digital footprint has huge implications for medical professionals. There are many instances where a students/residents/staff have posted things on social media sites that clearly demonstrated unprofessional behaviour and have been reprimanded for it. Below are just two examples I know of:

http://globalnews.ca/news/2471465/miami-doctor-suspended-after-being-caught-on-camera-abusing-uber-driver/

http://globalnews.ca/news/1755000/dalhousie-to-make-statement-about-response-to-offensive-facebook-comments/

The above examples are an important reminder that anything we post on the internet, even though it’s “private, or invitation-only” can become public down the road. As professionals in this digital era, we need to maintain professionalism digitally and personally.

Apparently, some medical schools are looking at digital footprints as part of the admissions process. Although this is still quite controversial.

On the flip side, our footprints can have a huge influence on health literacy and dissemination of health information to the public. For example, for the conditions that I deal with such as urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse, many people don’t seek help because they attribute these conditions to “natural aging” and because they are too embarrassed to seek help. It may also be attributed to the lack of knowledge regarding treatment options. But effective use of social media can help us reach patients and given them reliable information.

As far as I know, our medical school does not teach on digital literacy, digital professionalism or topics surrounding digital footprints. I think these are vital topics that I am currently learning “on the fly”. We are definitely NOT doing enough for our students regarding this topic. I hope that we can implement these topics to teach our students to use social media and digital information correctly, responsibly and professionally. I guess I better go make a meeting with our curriculum committee!