I thought this session about the new medium of discourse that is a blog importantly started that discussion with a discussion and comparison of oral speech and written speech as they compare to each other and to the various media of discourse available online. Blogs tend towards the biases and nature of written communication while threaded discussions tend toward the nature of oral communication.
With the pioneering efforts of MIT’s Open Courseware initiative it will be interesting to see what happens to academic conversation as various universities publish their courses openly – which MIT hopes they will do and which some are starting to do. Already OCW reports that 1 in 7 visitors is a teacher/professor trying to improve, augment or check their own material to improve their own teaching of subjects.
Interesting session at the Instructional Technology Institute at Utah State about copyright issues. Larry Lessig from the Stanford Law School gave a little history lesson on the way copyright law has changed since it’s inception. It started as an opt-in program where work was only copyrighted if the creator of intellectual property registered it and marked it. Unless they renewed it the copyrights only lasted 17 years. In 1976 it became an opt-out system where every creative work was copyrighted by default unless otherwise stated and it lasts much longer than 17 years. I think it is easy to see that that is in direct conflict with current technology which makes creative works much easier to produce and thus much more numerous. I liked the way Larry differentiated between original creation and remix creativity. Those derivative works are a large portion of what gets people into copyright trouble today and they make up a large portion of the creative work being churned out today.
I found it extremely ironic that the courts use case law all the time where they look at and reference previous opinions – sometimes to agree and sometimes to disagree – as the basis of the opinions in new cases. These are the people that have consistently ruled that there should be severe restrictions on reference and repackaging of creative works.
I am attending the instructional technology institute this week and I will be blogging things that I think during sessions. This will not be notes on the sessions so much as thoughts elicited by sessions.
I had an immediate reaction when this Slashdot post about an “independent” study that resulted in Newham and Microsoft signing a 10 year deal for Microsoft providing IT support for the city of Newham.
It really caught my attention when it was revealed that the study had been funded by Microsoft. It looks a whole lot like our practice in the United States of having pharmecutical companies doing all the drug research and then having the FDA approve or reject the drugs without the FDA having the power to publish the results of the studies the public cannot be confident that any impartial information has been disseminated. All we know is that there is a pretty good chance that the new drugs that get approved are not likely to cause widespread negative side-effects.
It’s just further proof of the need for unbiased study as the root of any problem-solving endeavor such as I suggested for the education system. All this was on my mind because I heard an interview on NPR about giving impartial information to doctors so they could make their decisions based on more than glossy photos and free lunches.
Alan has a good point about the Irony of always leaning on the experts whenever we do things. I am one of the regular bloggers with little to no readership that Alan contrasts the experts against. One of the reasons that I blog is that I would like to get some ideas out in public and hear some feedback on those ideas.
From what I have experienced the world or practice of blogging has the potential to “[break] down traditional power structures” but until it becomes more accepted in mainstream culture as a valuable resource for ideas and discourse there will still be very little voice for those of us “little guys” who are trying to find a voice through their blogs.
I found it interesting to see the results of the first comparison between charter schools and public schools which founds that the Education > Nation’s Charter Schools Lagging Behind, U.S. Test Scores Reveal” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/17/education/17charter.html?hp”>Nation’s Charter Schools Lagging Behind the public schools.
I have nothing against charter schools and nothing against “No Child Left Behind.” The only thing I am interested in is improving our education system in the United States. I don’t know how to do that right now, but I have an idea of how to find out some answers.
We need two very broad studies an our education system. One study should be a widespread inspection of those schools and districts which have consistently performed well above the national average. The study should take special note of those schools which have been performing above average which have the lowest budgets both overall and per student. The second study should be a study of students who have performed individually well above average again making sure to look closely at those from underpriveledged backgrounds.
Neither of these studies should look at a particular aspect of the schools or the students. It should be a matter of gathering as much information as possible and trying to find some commonalities that might suggest the causes for their success. Then we could look at ways to foster in less successful schools and students any common traits found in in the successful schools and students.
I would honestly be very surprised if I were the first person to think of this. Perhaps I am not reading the right sources to know who is doing this work already. If that is the case I would be very grateful if anyone could point me to the work of people who are doing this type of study.