Changing "Authorship" in the 21st Century

In my Learning with Internet course, we were challenged to watch this video and post a response on our discussion board.  My emphasis was on the end of the video, but is thoughtful throughout.  My response is after the vid.



 Digital, hyper, dynamic text is forcing us to re-evaluate our understanding of what is copyright worthy, what is "authorship", and plagarism.  

When anyone can be an author using WYSIWYG web-editing platforms (of which I am also writing right now), and text from anywhere else can be copy and pasted into those platforms, I think plagarism and copyrighted material get a little hairier to find.  Sure, someone who has not also established credibility on a topic is not able to pass someone else's ideas off as their own (for instance, if I were to suddenly have a swath of knowledge about raising thoroughbreds), but someone already known in the field could more easily accomplish the task.  

To quote Dash from The Incredibles, "When everyone is special, no one is."  Can we apply it to 21st century authorship?  "When everyone can be a "credible" author, then no one can?"

On another plagarism thought, I was astounded to find out last spring that I had seniors in my math class who thought they had not "plagarized" because they had not copy and pasted, but rather hand typed the text into a project.  "I wrote it myself," he said.  I think the biggest influence on authorship from video and multimedia on the web is that the mash-up or remix is viewed as a "new" project by many.  Personally, I think this is a Reader's Digest approach to creativity.

"Your Rational Expressions Quiz Will Be Online Today..."

or, "Lessons in Network Management", or, "The Day I Learned NOT to Over-Embed"

These were my words today after spending 5+ hours last night and this morning perfecting my Google Form and handwriting in the rational expressions using my tablet.  With grand plans of going to our math computer lab and having the students enter their answers on my form with different quiz versions on the right-hand side of the page on ppt slides, I anxiously waited for the kids to log on.

And we waited.  And waited.  Then kids were logged in and we waited for the page to load.  And then, we were waiting...

...for this.

After 10 minutes with some kids still waiting for the embedded docs to load, I had to make the mad dash upstairs to photocopy hard copies of the slides (shame on me for not having a back-up plan, I guess :/ ).  During my prep, I thought I got the issues ironed out.  I hesitantly returned with my students to the lab with a prelude of, "It WILL take a long time, just be patient."  This class has more students, so of course, the network was jammed even worse.

My 4th hour was smaller today, so more were able to navigate the page, but I would still rule it a failure.  Thankfully, I'm on lunch now with another pseudo-prep to follow, so I can regroup and re-evaluate my strategies.  Did I embed to much on the page in the spirit of trying to ease navigation?  Is it worth trying to redesign the page?  Does someone around here WANT me to use up the A/V paper supply before the year runs up?

My 3rd hour co-teacher said today, "Man, you'd be in business if you had a school with good, new technology...  ...but then you'd probably go!"  I don't know if that's totally true - I usually like the challenge of trying to make things work here, and I know I'm needed here (and my loans get repaid after 5 years), but I can't say it isn't tempting.

Things I wonder:
If I create a separate page for each doc, would it load faster?
Am I fighting a losing battle?
Can I at least try and use this again next year?

Lessening My Lesson Load

This photo was taken from my camera phone right after 1st hour was over.  I read pieces of a book over Christmas Break called Never Work Harder Than Your Students, and those few pages did a lot to free my time and rethink the priorities of my time in the classroom.  I think it has improved my instruction because I've had to be more creative in order to present my lessons with "less" work.

One factor that significantly contributes to my workload is rewriting notes and homework assignments on a different board when I move between the 3 different classrooms I travel to.  Using the SMARTboard for notes and interactive tools alleviates some of this hourly repetition, but if the computer is down or the server is slow, then I end up having to use the whiteboard and rewriting notes in subsequent classrooms.

The kids give me some trouble over having my cellphone out, but I think it models good mobile device use, which is a good thing.