Tag: teacher

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Fair use explained for educators

“Fair use” is the doctrine that allows some use of copyrighted material for education purposes without requiring the permission of the copyright holders.

However, confusion about what exactly is allowed has caused many educators and students to either avoid ALL copyrighted materials just to be safe, or to use ANYTHING without regard to copyright laws. According to a report last year from this same organization, teachers’ lack of copyright understanding impairs the teaching of critical thinking and communication skills.

To help everyone understand fair use, The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education was released today by the Center for Social Media in the School of Communication at American University.

The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education outlines five principles, each with limitations:

Educators can, under some circumstances:

  • Make copies of newspaper articles, TV shows, and other copyrighted works, and use them and keep them for educational use.
  • Create curriculum materials and scholarship with copyrighted materials embedded.
  • Share, sell and distribute curriculum materials with copyrighted materials embedded.

Learners can, under some circumstances:

  • Use copyrighted works in creating new material.
  • Distribute their works digitally if they meet the transformativeness standard.

The limitations and circumstances are explained more fully in the report.

Along with reports like this one, the Center website contains some really useful resources for classroom use. Classroom and discussion guides, videos that are perfect to start class discussions and projects, and more.

Thanks to Doug Johnson of the Blue Skunk Blog for the heads-up on this valuable resource!

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Community of interest or community of practice?

I’ve been seeing a lot of talk around the edu-blogs and at conference sessions about online learning communities, or building a personal learning network as part of a educator’s professional development. Often, these are referred to as “Communities of Practice” – a term coming into common use only a few years ago. Many educators were introduced to the term in grad school through the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, who wrote Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation.Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives (Amazon link) in 1985.

Their book explored how natural learning that takes place in apprenticeship situations, and profiled several different Communities of Practice (CoPs) from around the world. The “practice” part of CoP is the work they do, and the learning takes place in context, or situated, in the common work. These groups of people learn to do their work not by lectures, but by everyone working together, from experts to newcomers, and most importantly, by talking about their work together.

The concept of “Legitimate Peripheral Participation” is key to the idea of communities of practice. This is when newcomers learn needed skills by doing work that is on the periphery of the community, and as they prove their competence, being invited into more important roles. The other part of legitimate peripheral participation is how newcomers move into the community through talk. The shared stories of the community, particularly war stories told by experts, are part of the experience. Newcomers learn to participate by learning the traditions and vocabulary of the group, first by listening, then by trying out their new verbal skills within the group, and if their words ring true, by moving from the periphery and becoming more central to the shared expertise of the group.

It’s obvious that this sounds similar to what happens to educators as they break down the walls of their classroom and use new technologies to find and participate in new communities.

I think, however, that we confuse different kinds of communities. Specifically, I think that educators who come together in online communities, or even temporary real life groups, are more often than not, communities of interest, not communities of practice.

I’m not just being picky about semantics here – the problem is that calling any community a “Community of Practice” presumes that it will have similar benefits and impact.

In Second Life, for example, a teacher may meet educators from around the world who are doing similar things in their classroom, have similar hopes about the future of ed tech, and share similar frustrations. They may find the interaction refreshing, educational, and maybe even inspiring. These professional collegial interactions are too often missing from teacher’s lives. And Second Life is just an example. This could be Twitter, or a social network, an online group created for a graduate school class, or even people you meet face to face at a conference.

However, just having similar work doesn’t mean that this is a community of practice. They really aren’t doing the same work. Once this interaction is over, they have to go back to their real place of practice, their classroom and school. The benefits of shared vocabulary, shared experiences, shared stories are all gone. Now these teachers have to sit in meetings where no one is on the same page, frustrated that everyone isn’t seeing the light.

In fact, these outside communities of interest may serve to pull teachers away from their local communities of practice, distancing them from the colleagues whose mindshare would be vital to real local change. It’s an all too convenient place to vent about everyone who “doesn’t get it.”

It’s hard for me to imagine any kind of educational change that doesn’t draw on the participants at the ground level, meaning the people in the school. That’s why I advocate for student participation in education technology initiatives. Changing a community means involving the stakeholders, all the stakeholders, in the process. Building a healthy community of practice in the place of the actual practice is a first step to change.

 

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“I’m the luckiest teacher in Philadelphia”

SLA Teachers Rock!Last month I attended Educon 2.0 in Philadelphia, an “unconference” that grew out of a grass roots movement by many educators who blog and work with Web 2.0 tools. In my opinion, it was a spectacular success, not just because 250 educators showed up on a wintery weekend in Philadelphia, most on their own dime, but because of the showcase it provided for the Science Leadership Academy – especially the teachers and students.

While it was terrific to meet the people behind the avatars and screen names, it was even more impressive to get a chance to see what a well-designed, well-executed progressive school looks like up close.

It looks like teachers.

Sure, I could go on and on about how the principal, Chris Lehmann, has shaped this school based on an “ethic of care” — meaning you teach kids before you teach subjects. The idea is so simple it’s almost startling. Brilliant leaders excel at making the simple, powerful truths concrete. Of course, caring about kids is not a secret, and Chris would be the first to admit that he stands on the shoulders of giants as he guides this school.

And the kids, of course, the kids were fabulous. Smart, friendly, look-you-in-the-eye teens who got up early on a weekend morning to make this event work. And not just help, but participate. SLA studentThese teens waded into discussions and spoke their minds. They facilitated discussions of diverse educational issues, sharing their opinions and experiences with people they’d never met before. It’s obvious these young adults are being listened to and know they can share their voice.

But when I get discouraged about the future of this thing we call school, and whether it can make systemic changes needed to survive and serve our society well, I’m going to have a new vision to call on. And it will be these SLA teachers who painted this picture for me more clearly than ever.

In one session in particular, four SLA teachers presented their experience of their first year. Learning to Teach: First Year Teaching in a Progressive School – SLA teachersJillian Gierke, Melissa Yarborough, Matt Kay, and Kenneth Rochester. They discussed what they learned, what they tried, what worked and what didn’t. It was a fabulous session. There is a video and handouts online, but there would be no way to capture the energy of the room as we moved to various centers, each run by one teacher who shared their classroom experiences with us. We tried our hand at designing a lesson using the Understanding by Design method, and found that 1) it was hard fun and 2) different groups came up with some really interesting yet completely different approaches.

SLA sessionOne teacher shared the lesson he learned over the year – “less is more,” he quietly said. And you could see the conviction in his eyes that this wasn’t the third bullet on a list of rules he’d been handed. He’d lived it and learned it. Another teacher shared how her ongoing discussions with other faculty shaped her classroom style, and how she planned to continue this as new faculty joined the SLA.

But finally, one teacher wrapped it up for me, “I’m the luckiest teacher in Philadelphia,” she said with a smile. She looked around at the chaos of voices, papers, computers, backpacks and jackets littering the room and continued, “I can’t small group discussionimagine being anywhere else.” The ethic of care at this school obviously includes the teachers, and that makes all the difference.

The truth is, great leaders have to do more than lead, they have to transfer their leadership abilities to everyone in their sphere of influence. And everyone has to accept that gift. Kids can, and will do it easily, given encouragement and consistent support. Adults are harder. Their habits are set, their expectations are lower, and their life lessons ring in their ears, drowning out the voice of hope. But it is possible.

Sometimes, when I visit a great school, I wish I was a student there. At SLA, I wished I was a teacher.