Just an option that one might consider, quick, effective and free security over personal work. Total security over one's work might not always necessarily be a best option. Please see the CC video and should get new opinions on copyright
I have my reservations regarding the use of copyright over teaching material. Personally I try to include in my lesson material examples and instances from the working experience which I acquired during a number of years working in industry. One may argue that this is personal material and should not be perused by third persons without prior permission.
I personally feel that the mission of a teacher is to propagate knowledge. This mission would, in my opinion, definitely be hampered by copyright.
This seems to be an interesting concept, although I am a bit hesitant about it. Within the software industry the disgust with commercial software brought about a similar movement of Open Source Software. you do not purchase, you use, modify, but you still have to acknowledge authorship and cannot resell
Then you have what is called a CPL Commercial Public License. The main aim is to share knowledge and propagate it. In the Software Industry this has worked, it may work in teching too.
I think that it is not a good idea to copy someone else's work, but in the case of teaching resources I think that when one uses someone else's resources and adapts them in order to suit the needs of his/her students it is a good idea becuse it is as if these resources are being recycled for the benefit of the students. I also think that teaching resources are created for the students, rather than for the teacher, so sharing and reusing these resources will benefit the students.
This is quite an interesting comment. More so because my personal experience and views with a number of academics who are involved in Higher Education, sharing of resources and copyright is a very sensitive issue. Unfortunately at a recent meeting the topic came up, whereby an academic expressed the wish that the work which he compiled and edited is not shared with anyone else. This is not a singular mentality. We come across a number of people, and sometimes unfortunately, educators who develop a kind of attachement to the resources they develop, are therefore very unwilling to part with the exclusivity they hold over the material. I think that at one point I did hold similar views, however I have to say that some time ago I tried changing perceptions. I have tried out myself the practicalities of sharing and collaboration whereas the material produced initially by myself, is offered to others to be able to alter at will and improve upon. Open source software has been born from this idea and it is what makes such software so popular, ultimately because it offers a much better option than most vendor-based software. I think that collaboration is one of the key words when it comes to the future of Education, but it is heavily dependant on people's perspectives and visions when it comes to copyright, work and intellectual property rights. One has to weigh options and priorities - are we in search of glory for our own work, or are we in search of contributing to the expansion of knowledge?
Copyright alone sets quite a lot of boundaries for the perusual of other's material. With the advent of new sites, including stock images, footage and audio, the sharing of other's (and my) work is very limited. I totally agree with the Creative Commons concept, which is a more flexible approach. Ideas can easily be shared on integrated in others projects. If the world wide web and killer apps like Facebook use users' content in order to build a community of ideas, why not use others' texts (including photos, videos, audio...)? Our Media students greatly appreciate the use whole or in part of audio snippets, and images. Rather than going out there and record or reproduce a thing has has already been done, why not recycling it? It also includes the sharing of ideas, the merging of new ones, and physical distance won't hinder such. I believe that CC is a new approach to protecting the individual from being creative and sharing his products with the world.
I believe that through the ubiquitous access to information today via the Internet, RSS Feeds, blogs etc., students expect information at their fingertips. Most people want to be able to take content from other people and mix it in new creative ways. In fact, originality and creativity is mostly viewed as a remix nowadays. Therefore, I believe that in this context the role of the teacher is not to provide access to information but access to knowledge i.e. making meaning out of information through an interactive process as also mentioned by Doreen. With this view in mind, I believe the focus of the teacher should not be on securing access to content but perhaps on having limited property rights on the way they express their ideas. Creative Commons mentioned by Ian would suit this purpose.
I completely agree with such a concept. I'm very much into Open Source software and agree with what 3M said, this is a concept has worked in software. If you take a look at http://sourceforge.net, there are huge amounts of software which one can download. You can download source code with out being considered as a copyright infringement; as long as you do not use the software commercially and do not take credit of what you didn't do. The best thing of open source is that you can improve, modify or extend the software and put it back online to share with others. The same thing can happen in teaching. Around the globe there are hundreds of schools teaching the same subject and it would be very interesting to have an online application where teacher can pool their notes, activities and resources and each member can download, modify and improve and put them back online. http://teachershare.scholastic.com/ is an online site where teacher can share classroom resources.
Its true what James said. Infact I found such websites very helpful when in a project I had. It would be ideal to have a network for all teachers, ideally around the world, sharing the knowledge together.
Also it would be interesting to have such a network for students as well. That way it is not only the teachers who pool the lessons plans, notes etc.
The problem with such a network is abuse. From an emotional perspective, a lot of teachers would not like it because there will be people who do not contribute to the system but only use the other's work.
After viewing this clip, I do have my doubts about adopting copyright for teaching material. I usually give a pack of notes for every topic, which I write myself to give to students. These are there to be used by the students and it is very difficult for me to control how these notes are being used or whether these notes are being given to other students. Taking it from the other point of sharing resources with colleagues, I do agree that I should share examples, books and notes with other teachers who teach the same subject as I did at times, however it is very difficult for everyone to accept as Ms. Camilleri explained above.
The aim of creative commons is not particularly aimed for lecturing notes as such. It could be used for teaching material however it is more designed to protect students' works. However CC focuses on just artistic works for now but how about similar approach to IP rights would be put on works that have different forms of creative intellectual matter such as architecture and software or mechanical engineering? Looking forward to see what you think. Ian
I agree with sharing notes but with who and for what reason? Although i shall not discuss CC and Copyright, I want to raise an other issue, that is, sharing of notes. I don't have any problem to share any personal material provided that they are not used against me... Having said that, I‘ll explain better what I mean.
Personal Material To students: In my opinion it is crucial for mcast students to development better to be provided with the teachers’ material. The teacher usually creates notes and other material based on the needs of his students. These notes are created with only one thing in mind: the student.
Personal Material to Colleagues: Again, here it is a problem of sharing. As VEE said, I think it is a problem of “perceptions”. I don’t have any problem to share my material given that there is a common framework of sharing material and resources.
I don't have any problems with sharing notes either with colleagues or with students, as long as they are used wisely. And in this regard I mean sharing notes/presentations to further increase the knowledge and skill involved. Personmally, I think that we should refine not re-invent the wheel.
I thought that this blog was exhausted, but I would like to take the opportunity to question the existence of teacher`s notes in the first place.
I have been teaching for the past 14 years at post-secondary level and I can state with certainty that 90% of my notes have found their way lock stock and barrel in the students` assignments as a cut and paste job.
What the students have actually learnt remains doubtful : perhaps they have learnt to perfect their cut and paste skills?
There is another aspect to consider : creating a common database for use by teachers and students can be dangerous for both : teachers might decrease or stop researching and use other people`s work as a cut and paste job, whilst students will just not do any research except for such database and perfect further their cut and paste skills!
I am of the view that Creative Commons has no place in the Maltese educational culture. Copying other people`s work is already bad. Why make it worse?
I think that some might confuse sampling from plagiarism. Education can be very problematic when it comes to sharing of material. Sampling is a method of recycling material, making use of already existing content and shape it within new contexts applicable to new audiences. In musical terms what's the use of a cover version? Cheap? Easy? Safe? Lazy? would like to se your views on this. Ian
As has been said above sharing resources between colleagues is often very helpful. At our institute it is very often that when a lecturer is teaching a new unit others who have relevant material hand over copies of this. The thing is that when one goes through resources prepared by others it is very rare that these are appropriate for your class - therefore copying material off other lecturers is not really possible if you want this material to be useful for your class.
As a teacher I don't find anything wrong with having a book that fits in your course needs and using it to model out your examples and notes. And if sentences and explanations are really well laid out... why should we warp them in our own words? I don't term this laziness, but more efficiency. Why re-invent the wheel by creating my notes if there are books that do the same job, and sometimes in a better way.
Here we need to make a difference between the creator of the curriculum material and the teacher. They are two separate roles, however at MCAST we usually assume this under one role. If the teacher uses a ready made resource to base his course upon, this would actually give him more time to research and polish the course material.
After all whether this is right or wrong, this is not just happening at MCAST as I have scores of photocopied books that teachers at Junior College and University had given us to photocopy!... and no, I daresay not too much polishing has been done to the material.
I have my reservations as how much available should our teaching material be. We all know that collating teaching material requires a lot of time. This might not be just the institution time but even our own free time. It is also no hidden secret that not all individuals input the same amount of work in any project. Personally I do not enjoy giving out teaching material freely. As regards copyright, the law states that if your employer pays you to create learning material, the intellectual property becomes of the employer. Unfortunately sometime us mortals end up working on teaching material even in our own free time.
I am totally against copyrights on teaching materiIal. It is true that we spend a lot of time praparing notes and worksheets but I still think that sharing resources with other teachers is of utmost importance. We tend to learn from one another.
There were times when I gave out notes to students I didn't teach. In addition I think it is only fair to pass on your material to new teachers as this should not be viewed as laziness from the new teacher's part. It is a question of sharing ideas and concepts in which only students would benefit from.
Just an option that one might consider, quick, effective and free security over personal work. Total security over one's work might not always necessarily be a best option. Please see the CC video and should get new opinions on copyright
ReplyDeleteI have my reservations regarding the use of copyright over teaching material. Personally I try to include in my lesson material examples and instances from the working experience which I acquired during a number of years working in industry. One may argue that this is personal material and should not be perused by third persons without prior permission.
ReplyDeleteI personally feel that the mission of a teacher is to propagate knowledge. This mission would, in my opinion, definitely be hampered by copyright.
This seems to be an interesting concept, although I am a bit hesitant about it. Within the software industry the disgust with commercial software brought about a similar movement of Open Source Software. you do not purchase, you use, modify, but you still have to acknowledge authorship and cannot resell
ReplyDeleteThen you have what is called a CPL Commercial Public License. The main aim is to share knowledge and propagate it. In the Software Industry this has worked, it may work in teching too.
I think that it is not a good idea to copy someone else's work, but in the case of teaching resources I think that when one uses someone else's resources and adapts them in order to suit the needs of his/her students it is a good idea becuse it is as if these resources are being recycled for the benefit of the students. I also think that teaching resources are created for the students, rather than for the teacher, so sharing and reusing these resources will benefit the students.
ReplyDeleteThis is quite an interesting comment. More so because my personal experience and views with a number of academics who are involved in Higher Education, sharing of resources and copyright is a very sensitive issue.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately at a recent meeting the topic came up, whereby an academic expressed the wish that the work which he compiled and edited is not shared with anyone else. This is not a singular mentality. We come across a number of people, and sometimes unfortunately, educators who develop a kind of attachement to the resources they develop, are therefore very unwilling to part with the exclusivity they hold over the material. I think that at one point I did hold similar views, however I have to say that some time ago I tried changing perceptions. I have tried out myself the practicalities of sharing and collaboration whereas the material produced initially by myself, is offered to others to be able to alter at will and improve upon. Open source software has been born from this idea and it is what makes such software so popular, ultimately because it offers a much better option than most vendor-based software.
I think that collaboration is one of the key words when it comes to the future of Education, but it is heavily dependant on people's perspectives and visions when it comes to copyright, work and intellectual property rights.
One has to weigh options and priorities - are we in search of glory for our own work, or are we in search of contributing to the expansion of knowledge?
Copyright alone sets quite a lot of boundaries for the perusual of other's material. With the advent of new sites, including stock images, footage and audio, the sharing of other's (and my) work is very limited. I totally agree with the Creative Commons concept, which is a more flexible approach. Ideas can easily be shared on integrated in others projects. If the world wide web and killer apps like Facebook use users' content in order to build a community of ideas, why not use others' texts (including photos, videos, audio...)? Our Media students greatly appreciate the use whole or in part of audio snippets, and images. Rather than going out there and record or reproduce a thing has has already been done, why not recycling it? It also includes the sharing of ideas, the merging of new ones, and physical distance won't hinder such. I believe that CC is a new approach to protecting the individual from being creative and sharing his products with the world.
ReplyDeleteI believe that through the ubiquitous access to information today via the Internet, RSS Feeds, blogs etc., students expect information at their fingertips. Most people want to be able to take content from other people and mix it in new creative ways. In fact, originality and creativity is mostly viewed as a remix nowadays. Therefore, I believe that in this context the role of the teacher is not to provide access to information but access to knowledge i.e. making meaning out of information through an interactive process as also mentioned by Doreen. With this view in mind, I believe the focus of the teacher should not be on securing access to content but perhaps on having limited property rights on the way they express their ideas. Creative Commons mentioned by Ian would suit this purpose.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with such a concept. I'm very much into Open Source software and agree with what 3M said, this is a concept has worked in software. If you take a look at http://sourceforge.net, there are huge amounts of software which one can download. You can download source code with out being considered as a copyright infringement; as long as you do not use the software commercially and do not take credit of what you didn't do. The best thing of open source is that you can improve, modify or extend the software and put it back online to share with others.
ReplyDeleteThe same thing can happen in teaching. Around the globe there are hundreds of schools teaching the same subject and it would be very interesting to have an online application where teacher can pool their notes, activities and resources and each member can download, modify and improve and put them back online. http://teachershare.scholastic.com/ is an online site where teacher can share classroom resources.
Its true what James said. Infact I found such websites very helpful when in a project I had. It would be ideal to have a network for all teachers, ideally around the world, sharing the knowledge together.
ReplyDeleteAlso it would be interesting to have such a network for students as well. That way it is not only the teachers who pool the lessons plans, notes etc.
The problem with such a network is abuse. From an emotional perspective, a lot of teachers would not like it because there will be people who do not contribute to the system but only use the other's work.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAfter viewing this clip, I do have my doubts about adopting copyright for teaching material. I usually give a pack of notes for every topic, which I write myself to give to students. These are there to be used by the students and it is very difficult for me to control how these notes are being used or whether these notes are being given to other students.
ReplyDeleteTaking it from the other point of sharing resources with colleagues, I do agree that I should share examples, books and notes with other teachers who teach the same subject as I did at times, however it is very difficult for everyone to accept as Ms. Camilleri explained above.
The aim of creative commons is not particularly aimed for lecturing notes as such. It could be used for teaching material however it is more designed to protect students' works. However CC focuses on just artistic works for now but how about similar approach to IP rights would be put on works that have different forms of creative intellectual matter such as architecture and software or mechanical engineering? Looking forward to see what you think. Ian
ReplyDeleteI agree with sharing notes but with who and for what reason? Although i shall not discuss CC and Copyright, I want to raise an other issue, that is, sharing of notes. I don't have any problem to share any personal material provided that they are not used against me... Having said that, I‘ll explain better what I mean.
ReplyDeletePersonal Material To students: In my opinion it is crucial for mcast students to development better to be provided with the teachers’ material. The teacher usually creates notes and other material based on the needs of his students. These notes are created with only one thing in mind: the student.
Personal Material to Colleagues: Again, here it is a problem of sharing. As VEE said, I think it is a problem of “perceptions”. I don’t have any problem to share my material given that there is a common framework of sharing material and resources.
Personal Material to Administration: No Chance!
I don't have any problems with sharing notes either with colleagues or with students, as long as they are used wisely. And in this regard I mean sharing notes/presentations to further increase the knowledge and skill involved. Personmally, I think that we should refine not re-invent the wheel.
ReplyDeleteI thought that this blog was exhausted, but I would like to take the opportunity to question the existence of teacher`s notes in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI have been teaching for the past 14 years at post-secondary level and I can state with certainty that 90% of my notes have found their way lock stock and barrel in the students` assignments as a cut and paste job.
What the students have actually learnt remains doubtful : perhaps they have learnt to perfect their cut and paste skills?
There is another aspect to consider : creating a common database for use by teachers and students can be dangerous for both : teachers might decrease or stop researching and use other people`s work as a cut and paste job, whilst students will just not do any research except for such database and perfect further their cut and paste skills!
I am of the view that Creative Commons has no place in the Maltese educational culture. Copying other people`s work is already bad. Why make it worse?
I think that some might confuse sampling from plagiarism. Education can be very problematic when it comes to sharing of material. Sampling is a method of recycling material, making use of already existing content and shape it within new contexts applicable to new audiences. In musical terms what's the use of a cover version? Cheap? Easy? Safe? Lazy? would like to se your views on this. Ian
ReplyDeleteAs has been said above sharing resources between colleagues is often very helpful. At our institute it is very often that when a lecturer is teaching a new unit others who have relevant material hand over copies of this. The thing is that when one goes through resources prepared by others it is very rare that these are appropriate for your class - therefore copying material off other lecturers is not really possible if you want this material to be useful for your class.
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher I don't find anything wrong with having a book that fits in your course needs and using it to model out your examples and notes. And if sentences and explanations are really well laid out... why should we warp them in our own words? I don't term this laziness, but more efficiency. Why re-invent the wheel by creating my notes if there are books that do the same job, and sometimes in a better way.
ReplyDeleteHere we need to make a difference between the creator of the curriculum material and the teacher. They are two separate roles, however at MCAST we usually assume this under one role. If the teacher uses a ready made resource to base his course upon, this would actually give him more time to research and polish the course material.
After all whether this is right or wrong, this is not just happening at MCAST as I have scores of photocopied books that teachers at Junior College and University had given us to photocopy!... and no, I daresay not too much polishing has been done to the material.
I have my reservations as how much available should our teaching material be. We all know that collating teaching material requires a lot of time. This might not be just the institution time but even our own free time. It is also no hidden secret that not all individuals input the same amount of work in any project. Personally I do not enjoy giving out teaching material freely. As regards copyright, the law states that if your employer pays you to create learning material, the intellectual property becomes of the employer. Unfortunately sometime us mortals end up working on teaching material even in our own free time.
ReplyDeleteI am totally against copyrights on teaching materiIal. It is true that we spend a lot of time praparing notes and worksheets but I still think that sharing resources with other teachers is of utmost importance. We tend to learn from one another.
ReplyDeleteThere were times when I gave out notes to students I didn't teach. In addition I think it is only fair to pass on your material to new teachers as this should not be viewed as laziness from the new teacher's part. It is a question of sharing ideas and concepts in which only students would benefit from.