Investigations and Ruminations

When I began to (re)view the “readings” for this week, I asked myself “How on earth were these related, so I could coherently talk about the Did you know? 4.0 video and the Creative Commons: What every Educator needs to know slideshow"? Rodd Lucier, the creator of the latter piece and an edublogger himself, drives home the point that educators need to model responsible use of material so that students are responsible consumers and producers themselves. This includes not only educating students on how to correctly attribute others' ‘intellectual property’, but also to make sure they learn to demand that their ideas be treated as valued properties deserving of attribution and compensation ($) too. Show them the money! Put in another way, the service helps students be responsible producers because it is an easy way for them to get copyright. It also enables them to authentically deal with authentic audiences and consumers. Given current discussions about the new 'knowledge' economy , it seems reasonable that educators arm students with the abilities to protect and determine the use of their knowledge.For edubloggers, Creative Commons(CC) also allows teachers to be credited for their work as producers – just any author is .

The idea of ‘educator as producer’ was then my portal from Lucier’s piece to the Did you know? 4.0 piece. From what I can gather, Karl Firsh, an educator himself, created the Did you know? series for his High School in an attempt to stress the importance of valuing and enhancing students multiliteracy skills within the education system. The Powerpoint presentations he created ‘went viral’ and XPlane, a “visual thinking and communications services” company, “voluntarily donated their time” to make the presentation more appealing and appetizing to a broader audience. Therefore, Did you Know 2.0 is still very much education and student centred. But low and behold 4 versions later, we get this slick, monetarily-focused reincarnation of the original, which is of little surprise given the purpose and producers of the piece.

If one scrolls down the video’s description, the contributors are credited to XPlane first, which in 2010 was bought by the Dachis Group, a company that markets itself as helping commoditize “ social conversations and influencer types” to create “ social brand engagement programs” . The second contributor is no other than The Economist who tags a promotion at the end of the video for its Third Annual Media Convergence Forum. The forum’s explicit mandate is to “examine how marketing executives can produce a return on their investments using strategies that involve content distribution and branding across multiple platforms”. In other words, how can they make money on content producers such as students, teachers and everyone else? Show the marketers the money!

But surely I am not suggesting that we are living in a zero-sum world in which commerce and education must or ever have been mutually exclusive. Karl Firsh and others do great work and should be credited and compensated accordingly. It would seem educators like Karl, must navigate the murky waters of copyright, corporate interests and accountability in the same ways, but to a greater extent, we as individuals must all engage the 21st century media landscape. These intrepid edubloggers are themselves modelling what it means to be agents and literate in the internet age. They are literally and metaphorically their own literary agents; protecting, publishing and promoting their own words and works. But I guess if I'm uncertain and weary of the terrain, I should anticipate how treacherous the navigation can be for our students and youth. This is not to say that I can personally teach students all they need to know about multiliteracy and how to be critical consumers and producers, but I sure hope I can help. Here's hoping!

You've been Surveyed!

Obviously knowing students is important to all teachers. As I am anticipating my next practicum to be in a History class, my survey is interested in how students view History as a part of their lives. This is my attempt to understand students’ prior knowledge and my hinting at the fact that History shapes the very lives we all live. I also ask them to discuss their learning strengths and needs as a student overall or within History since strengths aren’t often restricted to certain subjects and since learning skills can be transferred into many subjects. I hear a mantra coming along: We don’t teach subjects, we are teaching people. Moving away from the academics, my survey is also interested in the student as a whole person so I asked about their interests and what they do for fun. Personally, athletics was integral in my continuation in education. To understand that ‘play’ and ‘work’ aren’t mutually exclusive is to understand how most people engage with the world around them and gear their ‘play’ into careers. Just think of all our beloved Youtube gurus who have parlayed their genuine interests or specialized expertise into lucrative partnerships with advertising agencies and sponsors. This is a brave new world!