Week 1 Blog Comment #1 - Brian Thomas

My response to Brian Thomas’ blog.

Brian, the points that you highlight in your blog about Copyright were right to the point and sum up what I found to be most important also.

Your points were:

· Copyright is about permission

· The Fair use document is helpful because of the fact that there is no definable amount

· Possibility of artists not going after the big bucks is there but the likelihood is questionable

The concept of permission makes me think of politeness. How polite is our culture when it comes to letting others have the right of way or using our stuff? Two examples that come to mind is when we have to drive on the road or when we ask our kids to share. My experience on the road is the bigger the vehicle the less likely they will give right of way. Disney is a big truck! With my kids the opportunity to share becomes more a time to conduct negotiations. I’m still trying to break them of this tendency.

In the Fair Use ideas, I thought it was interesting that the Judges that are making decisions are looking for direction from people involved to help define what the acceptable practice is. Since there is a lot of a grey area it is good to be proactive and create the documents that guide best practices so that people can follow them and Judges have something to look towards as they make decisions. I wonder if there is any activity in the educational arena to create such a document.

I too wonder if the market culture in America would have the likelihood that people would willingly forgo compensation for the altruistic goal of a better healthier culture. Are people too much about their own gain? Time will tell if a change is coming.

Brian Thomas' blog link and copy of content.

http://briankatiethomas.blogspot.com/

The blog is alive again, and now I’m talking about copyright. Let me start by expressing my surprise to some of the copyright laws:

I didn’t realize that improvisational acts that the actor wanted to make permanent were not copyrightable unless they had a script or had it on video. I suppose I’ll have to start recording my amazing one-man improvisational plays before I get bamboozled.

The belief “If I don’t charge for it, it’s not a violation.” was a good reminder of something that is NOT true with regards to copyright. I didn’t fully understand the legalities of that before these videos. The best reminder for me was the statement: “Copyright is not about usage, it’s about permission.”

The story about Pirate Bay was enlightening. The Swedish interviewee had some interesting points but I think it’s all based on perspective. Had he created something that provided him his major source of income, I wonder how he would feel about others using it and it’s affect on that income. That being said, international piracy seems like an impossible problem because of the lack of international laws against this.

On to the Fair Use discussion:

The part that surprised me the most about fair use was that there was no definable amount that could be reproduced when using copyrighted content. While there is no black or white area here, I do like that some documents about fair usage in documentary films and online video were created to at least give a general guideline. The shocker for me was when I learned that if you can teach the content or subject without the copyrighted material being used, then you don’t really have Fair Use rights to use it, no matter how little you take.

It sounds to me like those that want to be able to use copyrighted content for free have some very impressive arguments. However, ultimately the music belongs to the big music producing companies and as long as there is ANY threat to their bottom line I anticipate they will fight against the free use of their music. I believe a change to copyrighting IS possible but think that it would have to be made by independent artists that become popular through social media sites rather than the big labels. Then they would have to vocally support the free use of their content. All the while ignoring the promises of riches from the big music companies. Possible, yes. Likely…?

Week 1 Reading - Copyright Issues - Creative Commons Solution

Creative Commons Experiment

I am intrigued by the creative commons movement and how one might compare it to the American Revolution and the similarities that can be found within. In Larry Lessig’s TED talk, he mentioned that there is no revolt but rather a movement to extremes in the response to copyright concepts. As in the early days of the American Revolution the extremes were being defined by the loyalists and the patriots but if it were not for the defining document of the Declaration of Independence and the leadership of Washington and other founding fathers the potential of our revolution looking more like the French’s was a possibility much like the lawlessness that we are incubating in our youth with the lack of common sense being applied to the constraints of current copyright practices. The thought I have about the Creative Commons approach is whether it is capable to bringing about the necessary balancing effect to the copyright battleground as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution did to the American Experiment.

How much does the Creative Commons approach depend upon the character of the people involved to relinquish the greed that feeds the current extension of the copyright termination to be extended further and further into the future? Will the involved see the needs of the culture taking precedence over the financial gain they could continue to have if they hold firm to reaping from the current copyright laws. Does the 11 possible choices of Creative Commons structuring allow for an effective strategy to balance the personal gain and preserving the culture for healthy growth in both areas? This is yet to be determined but is worth a try since it is obvious the current status quo is destructive.

BP14_Flash project expands to Dreamweaver

In trying to get a better understanding of how to utilize Flash in the building of my interactive interface of delivering my instructional content to my students so that they have control over the delivery I started to get deeper into the training of Flash by taking the Essential Training. While I was into it just a bit I came across the slide you see to the right and I started to wonder if I need to rethink how I was planning to use Flash. My new understanding is that I should be using Flash to create my instructional content but I should look to Dreamweaver to handle the delivery of that content.

So I looked into how that would happen in Dreamweaver and found that a lot of the controls and management features I was thinking of scripting in Flash are actually built into the Dreamweaver features. This is great because I now can focus on the more basic approach to developing instructional Flash content and then placing that into a website and have versatility in delivering that content. Dreamweaver and Flash were designed with that in mind. Flash is more for content creation and Dreamweaver is more for content delivery. So now I am training myself to learn Dreamweaver once again.

I first learned it about ten years ago when I created my first school website. It was easy to use and it was basic Web 1.0 design. Now as I started to investigate what it can do I am amazed at how much there is to learn. Since the advent of Web 2.0 tools, website design has taken on a whole new dimension in order to incorporate those tools into websites. So my work is cut out for me to create the content in Flash and deliver it through publishing it to HTML using Dreamweaver. This will make it possible to deliver through the web or self contain it on CDs.

I will continue to investigate this but I think it is safe to say that I can start creating content using Flash. Looking forward to the 6th month of FSO when do this. I have to get ready for it.

BP13_Flash Training Update

After completing Lynda.com's course on Flash CS4 Professional Getting Started, I realized there is going to be quite a bit of work involved in setting up a Flash interface to deliver content to my students. Since I only completed the getting started course I first will move onto the essentials course since that will get into far more detail that I will require to develop the interface. However, the overview that I did get of Flash was very helpful in give me some basic ideas to work with. I would like to highlight those ideas and discuss how they will play a part in my interface for the remainder of this blog post.

The first thing I realized is I will have to create some graphics, sound and video to import into the Flash interface. So there will be much assets creation to make this happen. So the biggest focus will be on creating the interface to handle all of them. The areas I need to focus on are symbol creation, buttons and the action script in the timeline in order to make the navigation of the interface easy for students to use.

So with symbol creation I need to create visuals for the subjects that I am offering. I will need to break up the interface into easily identifiable areas that are consistent with all of the subjects I teach so that once the learning curve of using the interface has been mastered, students will be able to learn any subject using it. Also I see the need to create tabs that will offer various methods of instruction so that students have options on how their instruction in delivered to the multiple intelligence that they prefer.

The buttons that I require will be the controls for starting, stopping and moving to a specific area of instruction. Also there will be the selection lists for all the lessons and the problems within the lessons. Once these are worked out then a major part of the interface will be in place.

The most difficult part of the whole project will be writing the action script for managing the navigation for all the versatility that I want to be available to the student. I will need to develop some flow charts to keep this under control and make sure a logical process is developed. Once the logic and structure is designed I can then write the code I will use. I think the use of Gliffy will be helpful at this point.

Overall, I think Flash has a lot to offer but there is a big learning curve. My next post will focus on the beginning look of the interface.

BP12_Practical Experience - Flash

One of the best examples of drill and practice methods of teaching math I have seen is the Teaching Textbook company and their use of neatly designed straight forward delivery of quick math lessons that the student can watch and control by stopping, fast-forwarding, or play again until understanding occurs. They also have plenty of examples along with the complete solutions to all problems worked out. The software they used to make this complete interface is Flash. That is why I want to learn Flash so I can develop an interface and lessons of delivery too. this is what I am going to attempt. If you would like to see for yourself an example of their product just click on this Teaching Textbook link.

BP11_Celtx_OMM

I thought I should put some emphasis on the BP8_Celtx blogpost a few days ago and make an emotional appeal to the thought process I started there. The pictures are all from a CYT stage show of "Narnia the musical" which my children were in. The collection of pictures were taken by parents and all combined into one CD. The music is the "Curtain Call" which comes with Apple's iLife sound effects bundle for iMovie. And the screen shots of Celtx were taken using Screenflow.

Enjoy the commercial!

BP10_Comment on LaDale Jacksons blog

LaDale Jackson blogged on a Web 2.0 tool that captures a website so you can make notes on it. I took a picture of my blog and commented on 3 areas just to try it out. Check out my comments to her blog by following this link