Thoughts from Alan November (part 1)

Alan November keynote
12 July 2005

Lessons he learned from teaching on the island prison
– taught oceanography and algebra
– subtexts are important
– if your students are desperate for the information you are teaching, they will pay attention and “get it”
– my students always asked me more interesting questions after hours, in the dorm, than in class

I am convinced that a classroom my design is socially flawed
– it is a bad model
– warning:

Got into an argument yesterday: whether the knowledge of the masses will become more important than the knowledge of a few educated scholars
– argument about WikiPedia
– Alan’s point: your kids should be contributing to WikiPedia

in old days, you copied
– we are in an age where students can write the encyclopedia for all the world to see

was in Hawaii and students there were adding to the pages on Hawaiian culture
– you should ALL encourage students to contribute to wikipedia

Alan is very influenced by Lawrence Lessig’s book “The Future of Ideas”
– got invited to Apple to meet with Lawrence Lessig
– partner was there, agreed to present with Alan tonight to make it more empowering and enabling for students to publish knowledge products

If you want the lecture, Alan has a webcast of a lecture that he did recently
– www.ali.com/anovember

I have been traveling around, this connects with my own 2 kids
– took them to south africa, in a township of 1.5 million people
– people borrowing electricity from the lines
– at one school, all the kids agreed to attend school all week during the spring vacation

I have a dilemma as a father
– some day my children need to move out and get their own place
– big question I have is not about technology
– kids in this country have more technology than kids anywhere else on the planet (iPods, video games, etc)

Convinced that the overall impact of technology is a distraction to learning
Penultimate question for Alan:
– are we producting students who are going to be globally competitive?

OPINION piece today from NYT:
– by an Indian female author, wondering if her children will have to go back to India
– 1 in 10 technology jobs will leave the United States this year
– we have so much overcapacity of telecommunications in this country that we can move people
– she contends we have incredibly low expectations for students in this country

it is my belief that we are producing students that are NOT globally competitive

too much of the technology we are using in our schools is a distraction from the very serious academic work that we must be doing

Now I would like to invite Neru up here

Now Neeru Paharia is going to give an overview about Creative Commons, and discuss different technology tools
– first, showing 5 min movie about creative commons

“it can be that easy when you skip the intermediaries”

BIG C means “all rights reserved” and “ask permission”
“all without asking permission, because permission has already been granted”

First a little about copyright
– have copyright on one end
– bundle of rights: make derivatives, perform, display, copy, distribute and sell
– applies to audio, literary works, video, paintings/images, computer programs
– was no way to give some or all your rights away before creative commons

Copyright lasts for life + 70 years
Public Domain: The Scarlet Letter, Hamlet, Moby Dick, Cinderella, Beetoven’s 5th

All culture is derivative
– blues
– folk
– storytelling
– education

tension between copyright and informal culture practice

Internet sets up the culture we are in now
– sets up instant online distribution to the entire world
– media authoring tools: anyone can make stuff (empowered to create content and share it with the world, almost for free)

Each creative commons license lets you keep your copyright, but share one or more rights
– can require attribution
– can permit commercial use
– no derivative works
– share alike

license is a 3 layer document
– human readable form
– lawyer readable form
– machine readable form

Yahoo now has a creative commons search beta tool
– looking for an image you can legally use on your school website

On Flickr alone, there are now over 1.5 million images that you can use noncommercially and reuse

Soundclick is a music website, about 140,000 songs on the website that have CC commpons

Prelinger Archives has collection of video
– movie “The Corporation” using 40-50% of content from the Prelinger Archives

“creativity always builds on the past”

share today, shape tomorrow
– Creative commons

this is remix culture

New technology tools that empowers creators
– doing a lot of technology development

ccPublisher for audio and video
– tries to remove financial and technical barriers to sharing your content online
– internet archive offers free hosting for anything that has a CC license

ccPublisher is an application that directly uploads to the Internet Archive
– that is where your song lives forever

Also extended to support images and text
– CCmixer is something that will make a challenge out of tonight
– started with Wired Magazine last year, all the tracks were licensed under CC licenses

created content management system called ccMixter

like friendster but for content creators
– can look for people with the same interests
– most interesting part, you can see how content is related to each other
– can see everyone else who sampled that song, end up getting a web of remixed content to see how people are remixing and reusing each other’s content

Can comment on songs, visit other artist’s pages
– are releasing ccMixter soon
– it will support PDF, flash, video, images, audio, etc

Setup Lesson Plan Mixter
– enter tags when you upload

Other cool features, tagging system like Flickr
– one tag is copyright
– can also use a newsreader to subscribe to an RSS feed to get anything that includes the tag copyright

All Mixter sites are connected

Kids’ Commons
– what would a kids’ commons look like
– it would be great to get this deployed in schools

Artists for Literacy
– promote a book called “House of Mirth”

Our challenge to you: Setup a mixter site in your community to help kids thinking about copyright, remixing content
– whole point is to get people to create their own culture, not just consuming it
– remixing each other’s ideas
neeru@creativecommons.org

Alan’s presentation: “Fearless Learners and Courageous Teachers

keynote speaker who used a false photo of a nuclear submarine from the Smithsonian institution
-we not only have to be literate in print, in our RSS and remixing culture: we can fool most of the people most of the time
– this whole idea of critical thinking about information is an absolutely essential skill

Award winner for best website for student engagement
– www.stormfront.org
– Alan wants us to find a website more engaging

How many of you have podcasting off your school’s website

I think schools should let kids download french lessons, spanish lessons, etc.

This stormfront site is a blog: interactive
– most school websites are NOT interactive, they are one way communication

This website is a community building website
– I think that these creators have studied kids

I don’t think it is right that a white supremist website is more engaging and utilizes more technology

Award features for your school’s website
– web radio
– birthdays today
– active online listing
– blogging
– podcasting
– collecting important personal information

So with ccMixter, you can also watch how your work spins around the world

Global Benchmarking
– How do you know if your students are globally competitive?
— how would you know?
— what would you have to observe, measure, etc
— should your classrooms be connected with children all over the world?

I worry that we are teaching children only to produce work by themselves or with children in the same classrooms where they are
– purpose of the classroom is to be GLOBALLY LITERATE students (we need teachers)

So that is job 1: figure out how to benchmark and produce globally competitive students

#2: Learning capacity for every family
– British have decided to take the research that says the family is the #1 teacher very seriously
– now trying to figure out how to engage families as the center of learning, not the school

Example: town north of London, rampant unemployment
– many students in school will never work
– these are dire conditions
– school went from the bottom of their testing in writing to the top in 1 year
– Alan went to this school

What they did was built a lab, got word processors, didn’t help
– then read research on family involvement
– made a videotape for parents about how to teach writing
– #1 technology in that community is the color TV and the VCR
– apparently all the parents watched the video

They were using technology to make the family the center of learning
– we need to empower every family to be the center of learning
– we have the

Every family should have a blog, all those connected to the teacher’s blog
– as soon as work is connected on a teacher’s blog

half the room here has a blog

My blog is a compendium of all the writing my students publish
– my students now teach each other more than I can teach them
– I cannot do that without blogs and RSS

In K-12 all families need a learning portal

We should teach children to add knowledge to the world
– all the little assignments that go to the teacher and get corrected is left over from the industrial revolution and the world of paper
– “if kids are going to do all that work, they might as well add value to the world”

Sad to see the rise of cyberbullying
– video was made by kids in England that talked about a suicide caused by cyberbullying

Kids should understand they can have an impact on the world beyond their classrom

#4 Innovation Management
– I have been working overseas for a long time, since 1985
– am in England a lot, about 9 trips per year, week at a time
– do same workshops there that he does here
– there are 3 or 4 of us that do this

The capacity for a British administrator to adapt an innovation and implement it is way beyond what a US administrator can do here
– “it is embarrassing to be an American now”
– we are falling short on the systemic application level
– in all of the UK

In the UK, the role of the principal is so critical, they have defined leadership in education in a different way than we have
– what is leadership? “managing change”

Alan uses Skype a lot
– have you used it in language classes
– who has any kids skyping with other students

it is the APPLICATION that makes the difference

www.skype.com

anyone who has a skype account can share info, files, IM, talk on the phone

What is the most important lesson of WWII?
– we should ask students to find out what the points of view are in others countries

can exchange and engage with students all over the world

Could have parents actually read from their homes with Skype
– the technology is not the point

THE POINT IS TO USE TECHNOLOGY CREATIVELY TO DO THINGS WE HAVE NEVER DONE BEFORE

There are 4 critical problems this country is facing, we need

1- how do we prepare students to be globally competitive?
2- how do we engage students in the fulltime production of creative products
3- how do we engage the family
4- how do we redefine leadership, so we have people at the help who understand how to manage change