Dear Faculty,
As you head off to your second day of regular classes, I want to write my weekly post. I have two topics: intellectual property & High Noon.
When I left New Hampton in August, I asked Jen B for what she wanted me to ask about as I visited international schools. Her two questions were: how are they handling math? (Some parts of the world are moving much faster in math than other parts of the world.), and what are they doing with academic honesty? I will save math for later as academic honesty came up in the book I just finished.
Jen’s question referred to how students can easily copy and paste and send information around on the internet, as we have encountered as well. She also mentioned of how a person cannot cite Apps when NHS uses iPads in its classes. One app allows a student to simulate a dissection, but there is no way to cite an App. It is not treated like intellectual property. Her point connected to one of the 20 global problems identified by High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. The protection, and definition, of intellectual property rights has become a bigger issue with the IT networked new economy. There are two parts to the issue. One, information is so easily copied and moved; and so much of the new technology is not private property. We see that a lot at school. Two, a key value of the internet is to share information for free. An example of that value is Linux. Millions of computers use Linux as an operating system, yet it is an open system. Thousands of people go in and improve it on a regular basis. It’s not “owned” like the Microsoft operating systems. The ease of transfer of information and an emerging value that favors open systems, such as Apps, will push educators to redefine academic honesty. I offer no suggestions here; I just raise the issue.
Why did I read High Noon? I will leave that for the next post. Please share any thoughts you have from this one.
I have started a blog at www.jorymacomber.com where you can comment on this post there. The blog is weak right now, but I hope to improve it. My brother, John, is the only one to comment so far. He’s been carrying me for many years now.
Jory
Mont Blanc from a bike ride
It’s more like I noticed how much of a difference Jory and his colleagues were making in kids’ lives. Parents come up to me and compliment me on how much Jory has meant to their child. So I figured I would try to become a teacher. Following in my brother’s footsteps. Carrying is mutual.
From a content point of view, and tying to one of your previous posts, having students do work in teams to address particular problems can be a good way to get original work. It’s hard to lift a full set of team responses including self-evaluations prepackaged somewhere in the cloud. Doesn’t solve the citation issue but does lead to the kind of problem solving skills (vs research skills) to which you referred.
Andrew is reading The Power of Pull, a business book focused on the redirection that must take place in business in order to capitalize on changes that in a big part are the result of the internet. The thinking that seems critical to the whole process is the necessity to shift from ownership of knowledge(“property rights”) toward flow of knowledge. So where does that leave intellectual rights?
This could be one example: Some music bands give away their music for free online so that people will come to their concerts. They make their money of the concerts and merchandising. The free songs on the internet are like frees songs on the old radio.