New Jersey

 submitted by Jeff Moore, 12.12.2007

In 2003, John Athan of northern New Jersey received an official-looking notice about a class-action lawsuit. He filled out the claim and sent it in. Unfortunately for him, there was no class action lawsuit. Police in Seattle had orchestrated the whole thing. Athan’s saliva on the envelope was enough to tie him to the 1982 rape and murder of a juvenile, even after the envelope made its way through the US Postal Service.

NPR ran a highlight of this story as I drove into work on Wednesday. Athan had been a suspect all along, and apparently got what he deserved. The commentators on NPR, however, ran an extra yard with Athan’s tale. They spoke about the information that we drop all over the place. The DNA you’re leaving behind with that empty soda can in the faculty cafeteria apparently holds an awful lot of private information about you. (Ever see the movie Gattaca?) But who needs DNA? NPR noted that the amount of information you leave behind on the internet is more than enough to facilitate horrendous invasions of your privacy … even if you’re not participating in Facebook, MySpace, etc.

Here, then, are some items to help you explore the issue of online privacy as an educator, parent, and internet user. Many of these resources are suitable for use with students.

· an article from Library Journal titled “Managing Your Online Identity,” which not only discusses the issue but also some services that have cropped up to help you deal with it

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6486511.html

· resources (court cases, news items, tips, etc.) on online privacy from the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF)

http://www.eff.org/issues/privacy

· an interactive introduction to online privacy issues from the Center for Technology & Democracy (CDT)

http://www.cdt.org/privacy/guide/introduction/

· tips from the Federal Trade Commission for protecting the privacy of kids

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/kidsprivacy.shtm

· an audio presentation from Steve Dembo, of Discovery Education Networks, cautioning that the web gives everyone—strangers, prospective employees, colleges—access to a student’s “new permanent record”

http://www.teach42.com/podcasts/permanentrecord.mp3

“Oh brave new world …”

The following is a collection of some of my thoughts in response to Jeff Moore’s tech tidbit #4 (post below this one).

We hear it all the time: Compete, Compete, Compete! 21st Century technology will help educators better prepare our students to compete in the global workplace. And, ever since the dynamic emergence of Web 2.0, we’ve also been hearing and saying (guilty as charged): Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate! The “new” Internet (aka Web 2.0) gives educators and students the opportunity for authentic collaboration with colleagues & peers around the world (i.e. the world is flat again).

Well, which is it? Competition or Collaboration? What are we supposed to be helping our students do? Is the current technological revolution guiding our civilization towards a more truly collaborative & peaceful, “borderless” existence, or is all the buddy, buddy talk just a way to get us to compete with MORE people? You know what I think? YES and YES- So we need to help our students learn to do both!

While it’s true that some technology shapes our evolution, it cannot happen without a HUMAN component. That is, Technology is just a Tool by which we are able to more easily achieve our goals & more heartily fulfill our desires. In other words, Technology helps drive our personal & social economy. If morality, as one could argue, is defined as the way people would like the world to work, then economics can be defined as how it actually does work. All economies are driven by incentive- people will do and use whatever they have to in order to get what they want. Incentives are the cornerstone of life- Understanding them is the key to solving just about any riddle one can imagine. Therefore, if collaborating will help people get what they want, then bring on the Web conferences! If competition will help achieve our goals, then it’s time to start comparing how many hits your blog gets with that of your colleagues’ (nobody really does that, do they? That’s purely an imaginary example- LOL).

So (deep breath), in terms of comparing Competition with Collaboration, I think BOTH are equally important skills to help imbue in our students. And the good news is, there are more than enough technology tools out there to accomplish both! The questions I’m really left grappling with are:

· Does mankind as a whole have a basic, underlying incentive?

· If so, is it simply to Survive?

· What then, given seemingly equal resources, makes different people fulfill that common incentive in such radically different ways (i.e. collaborate vs compete)?

· Does technology simply help us reach our underlying goals, or has it taken on an organic quality and begun to create incentives of its own?

· If so, Who, or better yet What, is running the machine? Do we use technology for different reasons depending on our needs, or are we letting technology itself dictate its purpose and our society’s future (is that even possible?)

· Is Necessity still the Mother of ALL Invention? If not, what is? (One could argue that, YES, of course it is! We’ve just re-defined “Necessity”…)

· Basically, what I really want to know is, Who & What is shaping our future (not a lot to ask, right)?

submitted by Jeff Moore on 12.7.2007

It’s been an important couple of years in technology. New operating systems from Apple and Microsoft, the rise of personal media players, the reinvention of television through TiVo and other “on demand” technologies, hybrid and even fuel cell technology in transportation, next-generation entertainment consoles, the slow but certain mainstreaming of “electronic paper” … and a ton of other things, to be sure. Ten years ago, futurists made all sorts of promises about technology. It’s starting to feel like the technology is actually delivering. (A big qualification, though. A Jetsons fan as a child, and now a Turnpike commuter, I won’t be satisfied until I have a flying car that makes “bubbly” noises as it swoops over grounded traffic.)

One of the biggest innovations, however, isn’t getting a lot of attention in the mainstream media. Some, but not a lot. You may not have even heard of it. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has spent the past several years designing and manufacturing a laptop to put in the hands of every child in the developing world. The laptop was designed to be at the cutting edge of thinking in technology (mesh wireless networking, for example), but also to meet the needs of an environment that is not accustomed to supporting technology. The original design even had a hand crank for power. When you’re done snickering about that, consider how cool (and how “green”) it would be to have one on all of the devices that sit charging from that one overloaded outlet in your kitchen every night.

The laptop was also designed to be cheap. $100. Open source software keeps licensing fees down. Innovative technology also helps. The project also envisioned a quantity of scale that would insure efficient production. Governments of developing countries would buy millions of them, and hand them out like we hand out textbooks.

Challenges have stalled the vision. The resulting laptop actually costs closer to $200 for developing countries. Tough break, there, as everyone in technology circles spent three years calling it the “$100 laptop.” Oops.

More importantly, the OLPC project just isn’t capable of fending off the behemoths poised to jump on the emerging market. The humble, well-intentioned OLPC attracted the attention of Microsoft, Intel, and other technology giants who decided that there were too many potential customers in the developing world to simply roll over and let a little nonprofit run the show. Still, the OLPC hasn’t gone away. And it can certainly claim to have set large chunks of the agenda.

You can even buy one:

                http://www.laptop.org/

$399 buys one for you, and also one for a child in a developing country. Many folks who’ve gotten their hands on one consider it to be a very cool little piece of technology. (I’ve only seen pictures.) And the holidays: just in time for a last-minute tax deduction.

Even if the OLPC fails, however, the revolution is underway. Low-cost, power-efficient laptops for the developing world: imagine what it would mean in those countries. It begs some important questions. If all children in both the United States and, say, Bangladesh went to school on Monday to find laptops waiting for them in homeroom (or in their cubbies, or wherever), would those laptops have different impacts in the two countries? Would it make any difference in either case? Would other things need to be in place first? What would YouTube, Facebook, etc., look like on Tuesday?

One thing we’ve noticed over the past couple of years: we often speak of education (and, by extension, skills in technology) in terms of competition. How often do we cite global competition, competition in college, competition in the workplace, etc., as a context for what we do every day? Developing countries do the same, to be sure, but cooperation and social justice are demonstrably larger in their policy than in ours. For an interesting example of the intersection between social justice and technology in the developing world, check out the National Curriculum of South Africa, posted to the web through innovative software that you’ll probably recognize, under an “alternative” and “open” license (see Tech Tidbit #3).

                http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/South_African_Curriculum

We have to consider the possibility that every child in Uganda may receive a laptop before every child in America has one. Maybe this bothers us. Maybe it doesn’t. (We have to ask why, in both cases.) No matter where we stand on that, we can certainly agree that there are many unanswered questions. Here are a couple of mine:

·         When we teach with technology, are we using that technology to enhance our students’ ability to compete, to give them more tools to cooperate, or simply to better illustrate our content?

·         Thinking one step further about cooperation and competition: are these at odds, or can we teach toward both? Can we, or even should we, attach values to these different motivations?

·         Weren’t we supposed to have flying cars by now?

The following was submitted by Jeff Moore 11.30.2007

I can hear the yawns already. Every so often, somebody looking to grind an ax grabs hold of copyright. The response is always the same. Educators are protected under the “fair use” doctrine.

True, “fair use” provisions in copyright law protect educators to a certain extent (see attached), but perhaps not as much as you think when it comes to new media. And by “new media,” I mean “everything after and including cable television.”

(Heads up, Moodle users. All of those restrictions on posting and reposting content to the Internet pertain to you.)

With today’s students, the issue is even more complicated than the attached chart suggests. We already recognize that students have access to more intellectual property (copyrighted and not) than ever before. The saturation of content, and the unprecedented ability to share it, are both interesting and confounding to educators. Students can find and often contribute information on just about anything. Unfortunately, students are often more adept at transferring and copying that information than they are at dealing with it. I’m not just referring to plagiarism, here. Ask ten of your students for a DVD of a hot new movie that’s still in the theatres or not even released yet. Odds are good that at least half of them will be able to deliver that “bootleg” to you before homeroom the very next day. That’s theft, ladies and gentlemen.

(So, don’t really ask them to do it.)

But the saturation and access facilitated by technology give a little weight to the argument that students don’t know that they’re perpetrating theft. Who taught them? What are the chances that all of the boundary-setting adults in our students’ lives really understand the technology as much as our students understand it? Add “the ethics and responsibilities of consuming intellectual property” to the list of “other” things that we all have to teach.

Let’s consider fair use and the attached chart once again. Instead of worrying about all of the things that you’re not allowed to do, notice all of the things that you are allowed to do that would land regular folks in a heap of trouble. Notice that students have some extra latitude, too. Great news, that.

But there appears to be some tension, here. Are we reinforcing bad habits by allowing students to gussy up their PowerPoint presentations with photos from the web, no questions asked? Fair use allows students to do this in most cases, but there’s no valid object lesson in the rules of the “real world.” And what about our own practice? When we distribute content that we’ve legally copied, should we take the time to explain fair use to our students so that they understand the differences between the educational context and “the street” when it comes to intellectual property? Maybe.

I’ve spoken to several teachers who are beginning to use “alternative licensing” to address this issue with students. We’re all used to seeing the copyright symbol at the bottom of just about everything we read and watch. Some folks, however, are starting notice something new on the web: a “creative commons” statement in place of a copyright symbol.

The creative commons license is an alternative to both traditional copyright and public domain. Creative commons recognizes that technology has forced the need for a more flexible solution. Maybe some information develops more quickly if we’re free to share and build upon it. So, in many cases, content creators use the creative commons license to allow anyone (not just teachers and students) to copy and distribute intellectual property with far fewer restrictions than traditional copyright would impose.

Consider that student PowerPoint. You might tell students that they’re allowed to use images from the web in their PowerPoints, but only if those images are available under a creative commons license that allows consumers to freely distribute those images. Students wouldn’t be breaking the law to do otherwise (usually), but they might not be learning anything about intellectual property.

How would students find creative commons licensed images? Students can actually use the tools that they already use to find any kind of content on the web.

Go to:

http://www.creativecommons.org/

(Copy/paste that link if clicking on it doesn’t work.)

Then, click on the “Search” button at the top of the web page.

Notice that you can now search for creative commons content in Google, Flickr, and other familiar places. Not too long ago, I used this search tool to find a Gregorian chant for a teacher who wanted something more than just a short excerpt for a PowerPoint.

Next step: students publish their own intellectual property under a creative commons license. Or maybe they’d rather choose traditional copyright. Or public domain. Talk about an object lesson in intellectual property!

I used to focus my thoughts on “Text Speak” on the implications it would have on our written language. Is SMS just the natural evolution of language (anyone whose ever had to read Beowulf is probably thankful about how much our language has already changed), or is it “belittling” the written word? After reading the following tidbit, I started thinking about the spoken & socialization aspects of it instead. In one of my Senior classes (24 students) I recently asked, “Have you ever broken up with someone via a text message?” Answers were submitted anonymously on paper. An astounding 13 responded yes!

The following was submitted by Jeff Moore 11.21.2007

Hello, everyone.

Last spring, Cingular/AT&T offered what has become one of my favorite television commercials. The cell phone bill is too high. Mom is scolding her daughter for too much text messaging. The daughter, of course, responds in that strange language:

Mother: Who are you texting 50 times a day?

Daughter: I-d-k. My b-f-f, Jill.

(Subtitle: “I don’t know. My best friend forever, Jill.”)

Mom struggles to drive her point home by attempting to communicate in this youth-tongue. Daughter exits stage right, where we assume she remains unimpressed.

The language that has grown around “short message service” (SMS) on cellular phones, and which has spread to instant messaging and other social tools on the internet, is still foreign to many of us. It’s a polarizing thing. Some of us want to accept it. English, after all, is an ever-evolving thing. Some of us want to reject it.

There is clearly a phenomenon to deal with, here—one that’s not going away any time soon. On one hand, you have to hand it to student ingenuity and flexibility. Your teenaged son/daughter can punch through an entire conversation on a cell phone and stay engaged with a whole bunch of other stimuli (iPod, homework, AOL Instant Messenger, dinner), all while listening (or at least pretending to listen) to you. The shorthand of SMS has evolved to help them multitask. However, while the media has gone way overboard in portraying SMS shorthand as a “youth code” designed to subvert our authority and even our very culture, we are rightfully concerned that our students are losing control over the nuances of rhetoric, persuasion, etc., etc. (A nod, there, to my fifth grade English teacher, the very traditional Mrs. Hornetsnest. She’s smiling on me from heaven right now.)

The larger concern for me, however, isn’t language. (Sorry, Mrs. Hornetsnest.) A recent poll out of AOL and Associated Press has discovered that students use mobile communications devices—and the blunt shorthand that goes with them—to squirm out of uncomfortable situations. They’re avoiding “omg” (“Oh my God!”) moments. They have a tool in hand to deliver all of their social assertions, to fling them off to where they cannot see how those assertions actually impact upon another person. Without a full range of senses, do they really learn how to read and communicate emotion? Does empathy really translate through this shorthand?

dEr john U R a gr8 guy bt I tink we shud jst b frnds! l8r!

Rather than just an evolution of language, then, this may be part of an evolution of expression. And it’s troubling. We have to recognize, however, that millennials need to be conversant in SMS shorthand if they are find success in the highly competitive, fast-moving world that they will enter after they leave us. If you see “cyr ofis,” you’d better call your boss. Maybe it’s nothing important. Maybe it’s a crisis. Who knows? Better call, though.

Not that we need to teach SMS shorthand. No, no, no. We might explore, however, capitalizing on students’ ability to “code switch”—a skill that we’re much more apt to recognize in limited English proficiency students. Treating SMS as a translation tool, for example, may just allow us to explore the meaning of English. A student who can translate the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet into SMS shorthand may send Shakespeare (and Mrs. Hornetsnest) spinning in the grave. However, that student really has to decode and understand the scene.

Romeo: wotz dat lite? itz juliet. she ndz my ;; lIk d morn ndz d nyt.

(“;;” is “sadness.” Look at it again, this time thinking about two eyes with tears. The rest? Well, look to the links at the end of this email for a translation tool.)

Students also need to understand when and how to perform this code switching. Emailing your boss? Writing an essay? Applying to college? Better be formal. Texting friends in the mall? It’s SMS “pRT tym.”

Want to know more? Copy/paste these addresses into your browser. (Clicking on them probably won’t work.)

Read a short article on AP/AOL Poll (from CNN):

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/16/im.poll.ap/

Have fun with this SMS Translator:

http://www.transl8it.com/

In an effort to raise the level of conceptual conversation in my school district, Jeff Moore, Administrative Supervisor for Curriculum & Instruction/ Technology (aka my tech boss), has recently begun sharing some of his thoughts about technology & education.

So that we can spread the conversation, he has graciously agreed to let me post them here as they come- Thanks Jeff!

I feel really strongly that we’re not going see technology use by teachers become routine, as opposed to EVENT-based, unless we can raise the level of conceptual conversation. So….my Christmas wish this year is that my fellow DEN members all make a New Year’s resolution to read the tidbits & participate in the discussion (please )

Here’s the 1st tidbit:

“Good morning, everyone.

The recent realization that my children (2, aged 4yrs and 13 months) will not know a world without TiVo brought me back to an article that, although a couple of years deep in my pile of articles, discusses ideas that still influence a lot of current thinking on how “millenials” approach technology. They’re in control of their stimuli to a degree that is unprecedented in human history. The interesting question to have in the back of your head as you read this is: where does my lesson plan fit into this?

The article’s a little long, but worth a read. Here’s the best part, though:

What ties all these technologies together is the stroking of the ego. When cable television channels began to proliferate in the 1980s, a new type of broadcasting, called “narrowcasting,” emerged—with networks like MTV, CNN, and Court TV catering to specific interests. With the advent of TiVo and iPod, however, we have moved beyond narrowcasting into “egocasting”—a world where we exercise an unparalleled degree of control over what we watch and what we hear. We can consciously avoid ideas, sounds, and images that we don’t agree with or don’t enjoy. As sociologists Walker and Bellamy have noted, “media audiences are seen as frequently selecting material that confirms their beliefs, values, and attitudes, while rejecting media content that conflicts with these cognitions.” Technologies like TiVo and iPod enable unprecedented degrees of selective avoidance. The more control we can exercise over what we see and hear, the less prepared we are to be surprised.

TiVo, iPod, and other technologies of personalization are conditioning us to be the kind of consumers who are, as Joseph Wood Krutch warned long ago, “incapable of anything except habit and prejudice,” with our needs always preemptively satisfied. But it is worth asking how forceful we want this divining of our tastes to become. Already, you cannot order a book from Amazon.com without a half-dozen DVD, appliance, and CD recommendations fan-dancing before you. And as our technologies become more perceptive about our tastes, the products we are encouraged to consume change as well. A story in the Wall Street Journal recently noted that broadcasting companies such as Viacom are branching out into book publishing. A spokesman for Viacom’s imprint, which targets 18-34 year olds, told the Journal, “Our readers are addicted to at least one reality TV show, they own one iPod, and they are in love with their TiVo.” Companies are capitalizing on this knowledge by merging their products. Viacom’s contribution to literature are books that spin off of television shows: He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys, written by a former Sex and the City writer, and America (The Book), by The Daily Show’s faux-naïf anchorman, Jon Stewart, for example.

University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein engaged this dilemma in his book, Republic.com. Sunstein argues that our technologies—especially the Internet—are encouraging group polarization: “As the customization of our communications universe increases, society is in danger of fragmenting, shared communities in danger of dissolving.” Borrowing the idea of “the daily me” from M.I.T. technologist Nicholas Negroponte, Sunstein describes a world where “you need not come across topics and views that you have not sought out. Without any difficulty, you are able to see exactly what you want to see, no more and no less.” Sunstein is concerned about the possible negative effects this will have on deliberative democratic discourse, and he urges websites to include links to sites that carry alternative views. Although his solutions bear a trace of impractical ivory tower earnestness—you can lead a rabid partisan to water, after all, but you can’t make him drink—his diagnosis of the problem is compelling. “People should be exposed to materials that they would not have chosen in advance,” he notes. “Unplanned, unanticipated encounters are central to democracy itself.”

Sunstein’s insights have lessons beyond politics. If these technologies facilitate polarization in politics, what influence are they exerting over art, literature, and music? In our haste to find the quickest, most convenient, and most easily individualized way of getting what we want, are we creating eclectic personal theaters or sophisticated echo chambers? Are we promoting a creative individualism or a narrow individualism? An expansion of choices or a deadening of taste?”

-Jeff

What do you think?