As part of the second course of our COETAIL program, our challenge was to review our school's Acceptable Use Policy for technology and make any improvement that we deemed necessary. As we have a fairly large contingent of NIST staff participating in the course, we had to balance the "many hands make light work" with the "too many cooks in the kitchen" to come up with what turned out to be an interesting project and definite improvement on the existing policy.
With our current document being a combination of a waiver form and an acceptable use policy with straightforward bullet points like, "don’t do bad things to/with your data/account or school computer," there was room for improvement. Ultimately, to address the needs of our 1:1 program, we decided to separate the damage waiver and created more positive statements under the categories of "general use;" "use in class;" "online behaviour;" and "health." Below you will find a copy of the document we propose to be implemented next school year which students will need to sign at the beginning of the school year.
In our brainstorming for this policy, our group of NIST educators came up with the idea of making things more visual and Adrian Watts and Jago Gazendam really ran with the idea, scouring the net for fantastic Creative Commons images to support the plain text AUP. The idea is that these can be printed and displayed around the school or can be viewed as a presentation (as seen below) to promote discussion with the students (and, quite possibly, staff).
Monday 26 September 2011
Wednesday 21 September 2011
Picking a Side of Your Line
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About ten days ago, an unknown number rang through on my mobile phone (thankfully on silent at the time) during my houseroom. I ignored it and it rang again. My complete lack of desire to answer this call, from a local mobile number, wasn't seeming to sink in for whoever was on the other end of the phone as no matter how much I ignored it, they ignored my ignoring and persisted to call me. Eventually, with my students not in any dire need of my attention at the time, I apologized to the class, relented and answered the phone. There was a recorded message with the voice of an American sounding woman which, part way through the message, got spliced with an Australian sounding woman. The general gist of the message was that they wanted me to push '1' to pay 60baht (~$2) to hear something or press '2' to decline. I pressed the red button on my screen and hung up.
The calls stopped for a little while but later that day started back up. I ignored it again and again and by the time I had gotten home, I had about 17 missed calls from this unknown solicitor. It was astoundingly frustrating. I had even spent about a half an hour trying to call the mobile phone company's customer service to see if there was a way to block calls from that number. Every time I called, the line was busy. Right as I was going to sleep, the number started ringing again. The harassment was driving me crazy. I turned my phone off and went to sleep, hoping that it would cease. The next morning, I had gotten an email back from the mobile phone company with a way to block the number. Annoyingly, there was a nominal fee (30 baht per month) but I decided to try to subscribe to the number blocking service. All attempts to activate this failed. The calls continued for a few days but grew less frequent and it has been a few days now since they've tried calling. I'm hoping that this means it has ended but time will tell.
The reason I recount this story is because I grew up in a time before mobile phones or internet were available everywhere and anywhere. I'm on the cusp of Generation 'Y' and Generation 'X' so I'm old enough to remember times without technology but have still been around it enough to have a pretty reasonable understanding of it. One thing I thankfully never had to put up with when I as growing up was cyberbullying but this situation gave me a timely experience with how it might feel; unwanted solicitations from an unknown person or entity. My recent experience is admittedly pretty light in terms of seriousness but I was amazed how worked up I was getting over this unrelenting caller. If such a reasonably insignificant, non-personal act could wind a person up so much, it got me thinking about how traumatizing cyberbullying must be for a student when the attacks are more directed and vicious.
As part of my CoETaIL course, I've been keeping my eyes open for thoughts, opinions and news with regards to cyberbullying. I've spoken with teachers and counselors from my school and from other schools around South-East Asia and, from what I've found, cyberbullying seems to be something that many teachers have heard of happening in their schools but few have had personal experiences with. During an unconference discussion at the Learning 2.011, one of the consensuses we reached was that schools need to be proactive in defining what exactly entails cyberbullying and what role does the school play in cases of cyberbullying. If there is no policy in place, then it will be quite difficult to respond effectively when an incident inevitably occurs.
Some NIST faculty, not coincidentally also members of our COETAIL cohort, have been looking over our school's Acceptable Use Policy recently and we've found some interesting things. One glaringly obvious thing is that procedures with regards to cyberbullying are not very clearly addressed within the policy or in other school policies. I will take a closer look at our acceptable use policy and other technology oriented safety policies in another blog post later this week. For now, I will leave you with some very clever wordplay in this award winning spoken word performance about how to be safe and responsible online...
About ten days ago, an unknown number rang through on my mobile phone (thankfully on silent at the time) during my houseroom. I ignored it and it rang again. My complete lack of desire to answer this call, from a local mobile number, wasn't seeming to sink in for whoever was on the other end of the phone as no matter how much I ignored it, they ignored my ignoring and persisted to call me. Eventually, with my students not in any dire need of my attention at the time, I apologized to the class, relented and answered the phone. There was a recorded message with the voice of an American sounding woman which, part way through the message, got spliced with an Australian sounding woman. The general gist of the message was that they wanted me to push '1' to pay 60baht (~$2) to hear something or press '2' to decline. I pressed the red button on my screen and hung up.
The calls stopped for a little while but later that day started back up. I ignored it again and again and by the time I had gotten home, I had about 17 missed calls from this unknown solicitor. It was astoundingly frustrating. I had even spent about a half an hour trying to call the mobile phone company's customer service to see if there was a way to block calls from that number. Every time I called, the line was busy. Right as I was going to sleep, the number started ringing again. The harassment was driving me crazy. I turned my phone off and went to sleep, hoping that it would cease. The next morning, I had gotten an email back from the mobile phone company with a way to block the number. Annoyingly, there was a nominal fee (30 baht per month) but I decided to try to subscribe to the number blocking service. All attempts to activate this failed. The calls continued for a few days but grew less frequent and it has been a few days now since they've tried calling. I'm hoping that this means it has ended but time will tell.
The reason I recount this story is because I grew up in a time before mobile phones or internet were available everywhere and anywhere. I'm on the cusp of Generation 'Y' and Generation 'X' so I'm old enough to remember times without technology but have still been around it enough to have a pretty reasonable understanding of it. One thing I thankfully never had to put up with when I as growing up was cyberbullying but this situation gave me a timely experience with how it might feel; unwanted solicitations from an unknown person or entity. My recent experience is admittedly pretty light in terms of seriousness but I was amazed how worked up I was getting over this unrelenting caller. If such a reasonably insignificant, non-personal act could wind a person up so much, it got me thinking about how traumatizing cyberbullying must be for a student when the attacks are more directed and vicious.
As part of my CoETaIL course, I've been keeping my eyes open for thoughts, opinions and news with regards to cyberbullying. I've spoken with teachers and counselors from my school and from other schools around South-East Asia and, from what I've found, cyberbullying seems to be something that many teachers have heard of happening in their schools but few have had personal experiences with. During an unconference discussion at the Learning 2.011, one of the consensuses we reached was that schools need to be proactive in defining what exactly entails cyberbullying and what role does the school play in cases of cyberbullying. If there is no policy in place, then it will be quite difficult to respond effectively when an incident inevitably occurs.
Some NIST faculty, not coincidentally also members of our COETAIL cohort, have been looking over our school's Acceptable Use Policy recently and we've found some interesting things. One glaringly obvious thing is that procedures with regards to cyberbullying are not very clearly addressed within the policy or in other school policies. I will take a closer look at our acceptable use policy and other technology oriented safety policies in another blog post later this week. For now, I will leave you with some very clever wordplay in this award winning spoken word performance about how to be safe and responsible online...
Thursday 15 September 2011
Why Wait!?
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As a quick follow up to yesterday's post 'Free to Take? Free to Give!', I wasted no time in plugging the idea of Creative Commons (CC) in my classroom. With both a Year 9 and a Year 7 class, I asked them if they knew anything about Creative Commons and, if so, what did they know. There were some interesting responses like, "Isn't that the 'CC' at the bottom of a YouTube video?" but, perhaps most unusual was that there were more Year 7s that were not only aware of CC but also familiar with what it meant; at least to some degree. I suspect that if I looked closely at which class those students were in in Year 6, many of them would have been in Sam Sherratt's classroom. Whether my hunch is correct or not, kudos to the NIST elementary staff for their efforts in emphasizing this in the curriculum.
The conversations with each class were interesting and I introduced them both to the CC image search engine, compfight.com. Most promising though was in my discussion with the Year 9 class. When we started, very few were familiar with the concept of CC, let alone interested in taking part but after about 20 minutes, I would say that most students seemed to see the value in not only the taking of photos/information but, more importantly, the value in sharing your own creations. Once I felt I had most students at least understanding the value of sharing through CC, if not ready to jump on board, I ended the discussion with an example shown to me by Alec Couros at Learning 2.011 in Shanghai this past weekend.
Alec is a big supporter of CC and shares many, many things online through CC licensing including information, pictures and videos. One video he took of him helping his daughter to ride her bike for the first time caught the eye of the makers of this Nokia advertisement in the UK and they asked him for permission to use his video in their commercial. When I explained to my students that he was able to put a bit of money into his daughter's college fund just because he decided to share openly online, I think that spark a little more interest.
Anyway, I have more classes to bring on board but so far, so good. I'm starting with a strategy of using existing CC content with an appreciation for why it's there with a more long term goal of getting them to make informed decisions about whether they want to be a part of this movement and perhaps become contributors themselves.
As a quick follow up to yesterday's post 'Free to Take? Free to Give!', I wasted no time in plugging the idea of Creative Commons (CC) in my classroom. With both a Year 9 and a Year 7 class, I asked them if they knew anything about Creative Commons and, if so, what did they know. There were some interesting responses like, "Isn't that the 'CC' at the bottom of a YouTube video?" but, perhaps most unusual was that there were more Year 7s that were not only aware of CC but also familiar with what it meant; at least to some degree. I suspect that if I looked closely at which class those students were in in Year 6, many of them would have been in Sam Sherratt's classroom. Whether my hunch is correct or not, kudos to the NIST elementary staff for their efforts in emphasizing this in the curriculum.
The conversations with each class were interesting and I introduced them both to the CC image search engine, compfight.com. Most promising though was in my discussion with the Year 9 class. When we started, very few were familiar with the concept of CC, let alone interested in taking part but after about 20 minutes, I would say that most students seemed to see the value in not only the taking of photos/information but, more importantly, the value in sharing your own creations. Once I felt I had most students at least understanding the value of sharing through CC, if not ready to jump on board, I ended the discussion with an example shown to me by Alec Couros at Learning 2.011 in Shanghai this past weekend.
Alec is a big supporter of CC and shares many, many things online through CC licensing including information, pictures and videos. One video he took of him helping his daughter to ride her bike for the first time caught the eye of the makers of this Nokia advertisement in the UK and they asked him for permission to use his video in their commercial. When I explained to my students that he was able to put a bit of money into his daughter's college fund just because he decided to share openly online, I think that spark a little more interest.
Anyway, I have more classes to bring on board but so far, so good. I'm starting with a strategy of using existing CC content with an appreciation for why it's there with a more long term goal of getting them to make informed decisions about whether they want to be a part of this movement and perhaps become contributors themselves.
Wednesday 14 September 2011
Free To Take? Free To Give!
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Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization based out of California, founded in 2001. They have been the catalysts behind a movement to freely share creativity, especially through digital means like the internet. In internet years, this is practically an ancient ideology and yet, it still seems to be having trouble gaining traction in the general population.
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of taking part in the Learning 2.011 conference in Shanghai, China. The Learning 2.011 conference is a gathering of educators that share and discuss effective use of technology in teaching and, more importantly, learning. One things that struck me about the people at this conference is that they are not normal. Before any of you in attendance take offense, please know that I actually mean this as a sincere compliment. While it was certainly not normal that about 75% of those in attendance at the conference were using Mac computers (compared with about 12% of typical households), it's also not normal to see so many quality professionals give up the rights to their creative efforts. So this begs the question, "Why isn't this the norm?" and "What prevents people from sharing their creative efforts for free?"
The quick, easy answer that jumps to mind is 'greed.' When people put effort into the creation of something, traditionally, the expect to be compensated. This makes sense, as people do need to feed themselves and their families. But this is definitely an evolving concept. There is an iconic slogan used by technology activists that goes, "Information wants to be free." And while this slogan is embraced by this particular group, it is actually used somewhat out of context from the original quote from Stewart Brand which says, "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." As you can see, there's quite a bit of context to the quote that changes the meaning but, in his book 'Free,' Chris Anderson summed it up nicely by saying that common information wants to be free and rare information wants to be expensive.
The idea being that the cost of publishing information on the internet, be it a blog, a photograph, a video or anything else you can think of is quite an inexpensive endeavour but the cost of having a blogger or a photographer or videographer come and produce a custom tailored presentation or product for you is very specialized and thus a more valuable endeavour for the content provider. In this case, there is still a monetary valuation of the person's work however the stream from which the money comes has just shifted from many people paying a small sum for more general information to fewer people paying larger sums for more specialized and tailored information.
Some rights reserved by ryancr
To bring this back to an educational point of view, I must admit that while I have been familiar with Creative Commons for quite a long time, I have been hit and miss in my enforcement in it and it really comes down to laziness on my part. I can make all the excuses in the world (my favourite tending to be that I'm so pressed for time with the constraints of trying to fit all the MYP Technology criteria into just a trimester that I don't have time to teach creative commons properly) but really, I'm doing my students a disservice and I'm going to be putting a much bigger emphasis on CC and sharing or information within (and, in turn, outside of) my classroom.
I have made an effort so far this year to include more skill building (such as online searching, assessment of website reliability, etc.) but it has felt a little bit tacked on and not quite organically part of our units. If anyone reading this has had success with fitting in skill building seamlessly into the MYP Design Cycle, I'd love to hear more about it.
Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization based out of California, founded in 2001. They have been the catalysts behind a movement to freely share creativity, especially through digital means like the internet. In internet years, this is practically an ancient ideology and yet, it still seems to be having trouble gaining traction in the general population.
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of taking part in the Learning 2.011 conference in Shanghai, China. The Learning 2.011 conference is a gathering of educators that share and discuss effective use of technology in teaching and, more importantly, learning. One things that struck me about the people at this conference is that they are not normal. Before any of you in attendance take offense, please know that I actually mean this as a sincere compliment. While it was certainly not normal that about 75% of those in attendance at the conference were using Mac computers (compared with about 12% of typical households), it's also not normal to see so many quality professionals give up the rights to their creative efforts. So this begs the question, "Why isn't this the norm?" and "What prevents people from sharing their creative efforts for free?"
The quick, easy answer that jumps to mind is 'greed.' When people put effort into the creation of something, traditionally, the expect to be compensated. This makes sense, as people do need to feed themselves and their families. But this is definitely an evolving concept. There is an iconic slogan used by technology activists that goes, "Information wants to be free." And while this slogan is embraced by this particular group, it is actually used somewhat out of context from the original quote from Stewart Brand which says, "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." As you can see, there's quite a bit of context to the quote that changes the meaning but, in his book 'Free,' Chris Anderson summed it up nicely by saying that common information wants to be free and rare information wants to be expensive.
The idea being that the cost of publishing information on the internet, be it a blog, a photograph, a video or anything else you can think of is quite an inexpensive endeavour but the cost of having a blogger or a photographer or videographer come and produce a custom tailored presentation or product for you is very specialized and thus a more valuable endeavour for the content provider. In this case, there is still a monetary valuation of the person's work however the stream from which the money comes has just shifted from many people paying a small sum for more general information to fewer people paying larger sums for more specialized and tailored information.
Some rights reserved by ryancrTo bring this back to an educational point of view, I must admit that while I have been familiar with Creative Commons for quite a long time, I have been hit and miss in my enforcement in it and it really comes down to laziness on my part. I can make all the excuses in the world (my favourite tending to be that I'm so pressed for time with the constraints of trying to fit all the MYP Technology criteria into just a trimester that I don't have time to teach creative commons properly) but really, I'm doing my students a disservice and I'm going to be putting a much bigger emphasis on CC and sharing or information within (and, in turn, outside of) my classroom.
I have made an effort so far this year to include more skill building (such as online searching, assessment of website reliability, etc.) but it has felt a little bit tacked on and not quite organically part of our units. If anyone reading this has had success with fitting in skill building seamlessly into the MYP Design Cycle, I'd love to hear more about it.
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