Month: June 2008

Associated Press and “Fair Use”

Saul Hansell in a NY Times article reports that the Associated Press is reacting to what the AP considers excesses quoting by bloggers and is attempting to set guidelines.

The Times article states:

Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

It did occur to me that the quote I provide above may be an example of the violation described. Hmm …

As the article indicates, Fair Use is a “vague doctrine.” My own understanding has been that assumptions about fair use that educators typically understand do not extend to web publication (e.g., blog entries). As I tell my students, the existence of the TEACH act (UTSystem summary) argues that Congress saw the need to address fair use in the online environment and did so under restrictions limiting online access to students in a course and behind a sign-in system. What you commonly see online does not involve a course or a limited audience.

I am not certain the use of brief quotes would even be a “fair use” issue. If the Times analysis provides all necessary details, the use of short quotes in the writing of all professional writers would be suspect. I am guessing more on this issue will follow.

(my extended comments on the TEACH act, text of TEACH act)

Related post from BuzzMachine.

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Family Update

Our kids have had quite a week so for those with an interest in our family here is the news.

Our first grandson (two previous granddaughters) arrived early Wednesday morning. Preston Reid Tanner. Preston, mom, dad, and big sister Addison are all doing fine.

Todd called us last evening. He was in New York with colleagues for the daytime Emmy awards and the science education show he works on, Dragonfly TV, received an Emmy.

I checked the DragonflyTV site this morning – no mention of the award. Perhaps they thought the middle school audience would not be impressed.

Sent to us via Todd’s camera phone.

Finally, daughter Kim called this morning from Ketchikan. She and boyfried Jim are spending the summer working on a whale watching boat. Her MacBook boots to a white screen and there are no Apple Stores with a genious bar in Ketchikan. She called mom – close to the same thing. No boot CD. No dongle to plug in a monitor (may be a bad screen). No firewire to firewire cable to target drive computer to see if harddrive is available. No backups of a great image collection. What did we teach these kids? I am going to miss the blog posts and living vicariously through the images.  We are going to have to figure something out – perhaps a loaner is in order.

Way to go kids! Can’t wait to see what happens next week.

Dad

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Global Warming 101

Our first grandson, Preston, was born yesterday. I arrived in Minneapolis today to say hello. On the way down I heard a Minnesota Public Radio interview with polar explorer and Minnesota native Will Steger. The interview mainly addressed global warming and the effects that are visible in the arctic. Mr. Steger described his foundation and the educational web site Global Warming 101. I took a look at the site and found that the interview was available on the front page (at least when this was written). Steger emphasizes the role of education and our need to seriously consider the state of the world we will pass on to future generations. Not a bad message for today.

NPR page

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Online Apps Expand

The available options for doing traditional desktop applications online has expanded again. Adobe (Acrobat.com) recently allowed access to a suite of services including Buzzword (word processing) and ConnectNow (online conferencing and white board). Our distance education ventures at UND use Adobe Connect so it is interesting to see a similar free product with the same capabilities I use every week.

For the time being online apps (Google Docs, Zoho) are free, but have other significant advantages. I like the the opportunity to connect from anywhere and any machine. These features seem perfectly suited to the educational environment in which students work from home and school and may connect from different machines in the same lab or library. No more excuses about forgetting your homework.

What is often missed when exploring educational possibilities is the collaborative opportunities providers have added to their web-based applications. I must say I have not used Zoho tools for some time and cannot remember what capabilities are included. I use Google docs a lot and share documents with colleagues for the purpose of collaborative editing. I have yet to use the new Adobe site for actual work, but I have spent some time exploring the features of the word processing program. My first impressions were very positive. Adobe also recently released the online Adobe Photoshop Express. These products are not accessible as a suite at present, but unless Adobe has some plan for a subscription service for some but not all products in mind, it would make sense to see common access for these products/services in the future.

The limitations for the Acrobat site appear to be 5 gigs of storage and 3 participants in a conferencing session.

ReadWriteWeb provides a nice review of Acrobat.com.

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TNT Presentation

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The following is a screencast of my TNT presentations. Be patient it takes about a minute to to download.

[QUICKTIME http://studytools.psych.und.nodak.edu/wordpress/wp-content/tntpresent08.mov 331 288]

The presentation was recorded using a program called Screenflick and the mike built in to my MacBook Pro. The system seems to work reasonably well as long as I remember not to pace while I talk.

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Teaching and Technology Conference (ND)

I am presenting at the North Dakota Teaching and Technology Conference on Tuesday. I am using the conference to discuss a new project that consists of a resource I have written (Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web) and a portal (Participants’ Portal) intended to encourage and organize the contributions of teachers and other educational professionals.

I have been interested in the participatory web as a tool for professional development for several years and have been trying to find a way to facilitate the sharing of resources. Cindy and I have been involved with pre-service and professional development activities for years as authors, classroom instructors, workshop facilitators, and project collaborators. If you keep your eyes open while engaged in these activities and afterwards, you have the opportunity to see a number of great ideas implemented in classrooms. The ideas come from all levels – some interesting ideas from undergraduates who have yet to teach, but are comfortable with technology and great ideas emerging from the long-term experiences of practicing teachers and sometimes shaped by exposure to a new technology tool. The participatory web should offer ways to share these ideas.

The reality is that it is challenging to create a mechanism for sharing. It would seem that one part of the problem is “the launch”. Why would anyone bother to contribute time and creativity to a site that is only a promise? The world is filled with good ideas, but someone must take the first step (and perhaps the second and third). We have decided to go first. We have created a resource we hope is helpful to educators. We are offering this resource and access to a portal to ND teachers. The site offers more than a promise and we hope we can interest some teachers in sharing their experiences in response.

Within the last couple of weeks, I have written several posts focused on textbook costs and suggested I thought it was time to try some new ideas. The project I describe here is related to a broader agenda. We are trying to imagine teacher development and support in a broad and interrelated way. Sharing resources can occur in many ways as long as it understood that we should not expect to receive something for nothing. Sometimes it may be most appropriate to share money in order to receive assistance from someone else willing to contribute time and greater professional experience. Perhaps there may be some other mechanisms through which useful examples and resources can be traded to buy down the costs of the entire development and in-service system. After we have had the opportunity to introduce our project and see what response we can generate, we will offer additional comments.

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