Two days ago my students told me about the Jabbawockeez. This is the sort of talent Sir Ken talks about.
Put a pillow on your lap. Your jaw is about to drop.
WHAT'S THE ISSUE?
First a little context, and then why I think this is an important issue, not just for Canadian educators, but educators everywhere.
SOME CONTEXT
Michael Geist, a Canadian lawyer and professor of law, has been blogging about this issue full on for a while now. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, one of our two national media outlets) has a regular podcast called Search Engine (Clarence turned me on to this, I am now an avid subscriber. They talk each week about the intersection between the evolution of the internet and the society in which we live.). Search Engine has been podcasting about the new copyright bill for the last few weeks. The most recent 27 minute episode devotes the first 15 minutes to:
• summarizing the debate so far.
• articulating some of the controversy surrounding Minister Prentice's apparent lack of willingness to answer the concerns surrounding this legislation by the Canadian public.
• and the role Facebook played in starting a rally at the Minister's offices in Calgary last week. It includes some audio of the event and an interview with the rally organizer.
The good news is that the bill has been delayed until at least late January. Up until now, it has seemed as though the Minister was trying to rush the bill through parliament. The delay allows the government to take a more thoughtful and "technologically mature" (more about this below) approach to this legislation. More importantly, Canada, late to the "new copyright legislation" game internationally, has a real opportunity to play a leadership role illustrating how a technologically sophisticated society can try to find a balance between copyright holders and copyright users in the digital age.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO EDUCATORS EVERYWHERE?
My students are currently working on their Developing Expert Voices projects. (Last year's projects are here.) They are creating content, at the uppermost limit of their understanding, that educates an interested learner. They have to publish this content online. Mine is only one of many classes around the globe publishing their content online. Some of that content is remixed copyrighted material. Canada's copyright legislation doesn't include a fair use clause, that's an American legal concept; we have a fair dealing clause, it's a little more restrictive. Reading it won't lead to a straightforward answer to the question: "Can I use short video clips from a TV program in my project?" The current legislation doesn't even mention digital media of any sort, only print media. It needs to be updated.
The internet has made this a world without borders. When we publish content online it is distributed, within seconds, around the world. Copyright holders have rights. In Canada, so do copyright users. Exactly what those rights are is very murky, although Laura Murry (Queens U.) and Sam Trusow (U. of Western Ontario) have written a book to try and help clear it up a bit. Here is an excerpt:
As the Supreme Court declared in Théberge v. Galerie d’Art du Petit Champlain (2002), “Excessive control by holders of copyrights and other forms of intellectual property may unduly limit the ability of the public domain to incorporate and embellish creative innovation in the long-term interests of society as a whole, or create practical obstacles to proper utilization.” The court also noted, “Once an authorized copy of a work is sold to a member of the public, it is generally for the purchaser, not the author, to determine what happens to it.” In 2004, in CCH v. Law Society of Upper Canada, the Supreme Court was even more explicit about the importance of users’ rights.
Many teachers and parents have kids who are publishing work online. Work they can and should be proud of. The content they remix can come from anywhere, across any border. The read/write web is not just a computer geek phenomenon, it has impacted all cultures across the planet. This cultural shift, sometimes described as participatory culture, needs to be included in a modern approach to copyright legislation. The public, or copyright users, effected by this legislation span the globe.
If there is any doubt about the impact that participatory culture is having on our society listen to that episode of Search Engine. At 10 min. 43 sec. there is an audio excerpt from a recent sitting of the House of Commons (our national legislature). In particular listen to the comments made by one of the opposition Members of Parliament made at the 12 min. 23 sec. mark. When the significance of Facebook is referenced in political debate in the legislature it has clearly evolved into something more than a pastime for kids. (There is a group on Facebook, which today has over 26 000 members, called Fair Copyright for Canada.)
Kids should be able to share their learning in creative ways; they should be able to say what they've learned, differently. Their creativity should be encouraged and nurtured as they make positive contributions to the participatory culture in which we live. Copyright legislation that doesn't take this into account, from the perspective of the copyright user, will stifle creativity in our culture, our society and our children. No one says this more eloquently than Larry Lessig in his recently published TED Talk: 3 Stories and An Argument. If you haven't seen it, here it is:
WHAT (30 THINGS) CAN YOU DO?
Watch the video below, or read this. If you're not Canadian, don't let that stop you from expressing your opinion too. This issue will effect you; either as a user of Canadian copyrighted materials or when your nation's legislators begin to draft their modern copyright legislation. They'll look around at Canada, and other countries for guidance on how to draft it. What do you hope they'll see when they look over here?
Last Tuesday I shared it with all the teachers in my department at our monthly professional development meeting. We've been developing projects at the grade 10 and grade 11 levels for our Consumer Math courses similar to the projects students have to do in the grade 12 provincial standards test. The provincial assessment uses a rubric for grading that is very dense and difficult for students to understand. The teacher who tested the grade 11 project we developed shared back with us that she felt the rubric needed a little work to be a more effective guide for the students work. This lead to me sharing how I approach rubric design and how I've tried to incorporate creativity into the rubrics I use to assess students project work.
This presentation from TED by Sir Ken Robinson was a major influence on my thinking. Sir Ken says a lot of very provocative things for educators. Maybe that's why the discussion following the video was so ... strained(?) ...
Some of these comments aren't new to me. They've been discussed in depth in the edublogosphere in the past couple of years. Some of the teachers in my department may have been hearing these ideas for the first time ... I can see how that might be intimidating.
Here are some of Sir Ken's best lines. He delivers them better than they read. He'll make you laugh and he'll make you think ... the best way to learn something is with a little laughter. ;-)
Click on the picture to watch. (20 minutes, 3 seconds)
All kids have tremendous talents and we squander them ... pretty ruthlessly.
This comment reminded me of the song Flowers are Red by Harry Chapin.
Creativity is now as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status.
I'm sympathetic to this sentiment yet ... how do you teach creativity? I suspect Sir Ken would reply that you don't have to teach it (see below). OK then, but how do you assess it?
[Young] kids will take a chance. If they don't know they'll have a go. They're not afraid to be wrong.
I think this is true. Little kids love to learn new things. Especially if they have big words attached to them. They like to look smart. What happens to them as they get older? Why is it that "looking smart" in a high school classroom isn't "cool?" -- then again, it is becoming cool to be a nerd. I recently saw this written on a young lady's t-shirt: Talk Nerdy To Me.
If you're not prepared to be wrong then you will never come up with anything original.
Reminds me of Isaac Asimov. He was asked, more than once, "how do you come up with so many crazy ideas?" This is in an old book of his called Fact and Fancy (1962) in an article called Those Crazy Ideas. He suggests 5 criteria for what he calls scientific creativity:
- » The creative person must possess as many "bits" of information as possible, falling into as wide a variety of types as possible; i.e. he must be broadly educated.
- » The creative person must be able to combine "bits" with facility and recognize the combinations he has formed; i.e. he must be intelligent.
- » The creative person must be able to see, with as little delay as possible, the consequences of the new combinations of "bits" which he has formed; i.e. he must be intuitive.
- » The creative person must possess courage (and to the general public may, in consequence, seem a crackpot).
- » A creative person must be lucky.
We stigmatize mistakes. We're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.
I think there's some truth to this. The thing is, making mistakes is an important part of learning.
No one has a clue what the world will look like in five years and yet we're educating [kids] for it.
Yup.
We are educating people out of their creative capacities.
Ouch.
We don't grow into creativity we grow out of it, or rather, we get educated out of it.
See above.
As children grow up we start to educate them from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads; and slightly to one side.
Hmmm ... we've come a long way from ancient Greece where the curriculum consisted of mathematics, philosophy and gymnastics. This also bangs up against the ideas in Dan Pink's recent book A Whole New Mind.
The whole purpose of public education, throughout the world, is to produce university professors.
How many successful people do you know with a PhD? Later, Sir Ken says that intelligence is diverse. Isaac said creative people should be broadly educated. Personally, I want my kids to get a good eduction in phys. ed., music, drama and the traditional academic subjects. Knowing something about music and philosophy has made me a better math teacher.
[Our education system] came into being to meet the needs of industrialism.
David Warlick has commented many times that we have never done a better job than we do today of educating kids for the industrial revolution. [Picture: classroom with desks arranged in rows and columns.]
Intelligence is made up of three things, it's diverse ... dynamic ... and distinct.
Creativity: The process of having original ideas that have value; comes about by the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.
<When talking about dancers and the prevalence of ADHD today> [Some people] have to move to think.
There are four fundamental learning styles, VARK: Visual, Auditory, Read/Write and Kinesthetic. By far, that last one is the hardest for me to work into the teaching of mathematics. The comment about ADHD struck a chord with me. Is it so prevalent and severe today that it merits the presecription of ritalin in so many kids? Or is it really about the need of some adults to have kids be quiet; seen but not heard? Can you imagine Robin Williams being as successful today as he is if someone had prescribed ritalin for him when he was a child? It's interesting to me that many of the rambunctious (undesirable?) behaviours seen in some kids, when manifested in adults, are considered positive traits.
Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we have strip mined the earth for a particular commodity, and for the future, it won't service.
I'm Darren Kuropatwa
- I love learning; and I like to teach.
