Reflections on Teaching

This was a day that did not start off well. Folks going to EdubloggerCon have largely had the place to ourselves up until now, but today the hordes arrived. I’m hearing figures anywhere from 13,000 to 20,000 for projected attendance. I arrived at a time that I thought was early, 8ish for a session starting at 8:30. The BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop) sessions were clustered together at the adjacent Hyatt. Not only was my choice on videos full, every darn session there was full, and due to concerns about the fire marshal, they were not letting anyone in who didn’t have a chair. I was advised to arrive 1 hour before a session to make sure I got in. I then trotted back through the morass of people hopeless going to the Hyatt, and up to the Bloggers’ Café. The hallways were jam packed, it and I were miserable. As I arrived Kristen Hansen was leaving to set up an UnPlugged session at another lounge area, so I followed her. My notes from each session follow. The links in the title will take you to my live blogs for each of them.

Copyright and Fair Use in Education with Kristen Hansen

This was a very well presented, and thought out session on copyright and fair use in education. The thesis was that teachers have very little common understanding of copy right and fair use issues in the classroom. We all know rules of thumb, but some of them contradict each other. She shared an insight that had been given to her that fair use (the use of copyrighted materials) is conceptually more like a floor (the base of your right to use it), rather than the ceiling.

The next concept she discussed was whether the use was transformative. This is term is usually not simply “misunderstood” by educators, but not even known. This was a discussion that I had when I interviewed copyright lawyer, Amiee Bissonette on It’s Elementary. We did a “case study” on a use of copyrighted materials that my class had used to create a podcast. That led to a discussion of derivation vs. transformation.

Kristen asked us to discuss ideas among ourselves, then talked about the pertinent law. This is part of an ongoing effort to devise guidelines for Fair Use that Kristen has been working with Temple University’s School of Communications on. They are concerned that because of ignorance, and confusion, teachers are being over cautious about using copyrighted materials in the classroom and on the Web.

This will be useful to me in my lab because we are often creating multimedia projects, and commons, and public domain materials may not always be as good as copy righted materials. Having a better idea of fair use will help me make good decisions about how and when to use materials, and when to seek permission.

The only problems with the presentation were the venue. It was in a lounge located just outside the exhibit hall on the first day of the conference, as it was being open. It was insane just before the session started with literally thousands of people lining up and milling around the immediate area, and there was no mic for Kristen to use, so she had to invoke her teacher voice.