One thing that struck me from our first class was an interesting issue that was brought up by our group discussion of the standards for use of technology in the classroom. The goal of training your students to respect copyright law seems problematic to me. While I don't want to encourage my students to be criminals, I view that vast majority of copyright law to be fundamentally immoral. Many of the laws for the Internet were created for print media and then were poorly adapted to digital media. This struck me as a very grey area in these standards.
Another aspect of our discussion that I was more in agreement with was the focus on viewing technology open attitude toward it's usefulness. The point that was made to the class that technology is not automatically appropriate or productive in every situation was a good one. I am a very pro technology person in general and in my teaching but I realize that technology should not always be mandated just for the sake of using it. I try to think critically about how useful technology could be in the context I am considering using it. I think this openness with help with an objective presentation of the potential uses of different blogs, wikis, and other technology uses in this class.
The standard about copyrighting and such was interesting and I cant say I'm in complete agreement myself, but I think its important for kids to know that the law is out there and to be aware of it; also, I think that standard spoke out to the fact that even though much of what happens on the internet and such is anonymous, we need to learn to respect people and their rights nonetheless. Just a couple thoughts.
ReplyDeleteHi Kiwi!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the creepy feeling of the copyright laws, but we may not have much of a choice, especially if our mentor teacher or school feels differently. They're afraid of getting sued, and in order to minimize risk, go all out in the other direction. I hope we can find a back door or way to use what we need in classes.
First, let me say that I essentially agree with you about the copyright laws, but I'm not going to get into that here, as I might not stop typing for a while...
ReplyDeleteI like your comments about having to think critically about when to use technology in teaching. I think a lot of the impressions that students, parents, and others get that using technology to teach is just a lame gimmick comes from the fact that it's not being used intelligently, in ways that actually compliment what's being taught.
Kiwi, I never really thought that much about the creepiness of the copyright laws issue. But I could see that maybe that part is in the standards because the lawyers said to include ..... kind of a CYA thing.
ReplyDeleteOn your second point, I think I need a whole lot more definition and understanding around what are the effective implementations of ed tech. I'm assuming one of the goals of this course will be to help us identify effective uses of technology. I hope so because I don't want to be like my HS government teacher who showed videos just about every day, instead of lecturing, and probably thought he was being creative by doing so.
I don't know much about copyright laws...but immoral? Why?
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