Digital Culture Classroom

I found the neatest article post today while working on my curating and book project. I'm a huge visual learner, so this was fun for me to read through. It's a great visual that displays the healthy and unhealthy directions and outcomes of when children use the internet and technology. It does a great job showing how we can teach our children at a young age, such as preschoolers, to use the internet in healthy ways, based off of what medical experts and psychologists recommend.

While I have been reading through my book, "Grown Up Digital," by Don Tapscott, I really enjoyed the chapter that specifically addresses the net generation as learners and how we should rethink education to adapt to them.

It first references a YouTube video made by Kansas State University to illustrate the challenges students face in the classroom. The chapter's mainly advocating to move from broadcast learning to interactive learning. By doing this, is transitions from "learning about" to "learning to be," and is more collaborative learning instead of individualistic learning. It's a very tailored way of education in order to fit a person and to help a student realize how the content is personally relevant to them and help them learn and create. I thought this was so interesting! As a college student, I can't say that I don't benefit or learn from any class or teacher that doesn't apply interactive learning. I think you learn what you allow yourself to learn.

I read a great article here that came out in June and it reveals the results of a three-year study that shows in a classroom, technology combined with individualized reading instructions result in a higher and better reading proficiency.

I really do agree that education should incorporate more technology and digital methods of creating into the classroom. The digital culture class that I am in right now has been a great proving point for me in understanding how beneficial it is. While the class may not focus primarily on sentence structure or memorizing poems, I have learned so much in this class that I have been able to use to further my career and family goals. Out of all of my classes, it is the one where I feel like I will continue to use what I am learning and to apply it in every aspect of my life and future learning. I think a strong presence of digital culture in a class really does enrich the learning process for students of any age.

The video here focuses on coding, but it's a great example that represents the digital culture as a whole and why and how we can incorporate it into the classroom more:

Curating Digital DIY

Using  Diigo, I have bookmarked many different types of media I have found through Google Blog Search that have helped supplement my reading of Chris Anderson's Makers: A New Industrial Revolution.

Anderson has three key components that make up the Maker Movement and I have curated content to further extend my understanding of the first: Digital DIY.

Digital DIY

In reading a post from Professor Michael MacDonald's blog, it lead me to Mozilla's new platform called Webmaker.

The website is really cool because it advocates, "We're a global community dedicated to teaching digital skills and web literacy. We explore, tinker and create together to build a web that's open and made by everyone."

The whole Digital DIY is focused on remixing content and creating new things and Mozilla's new platform is based on teaching others how to use the web to create.

On this website, I found +Amy Burvall, who is a remix artist that says, "Let’s foster lovely experiences and impromptu creativity on a global scale. Dare to make and share!" I added her on my Google Plus circle and have been looking into a lot of projects she has initiated on Webmaker. 

I also found found that many others are engaging in Digital DIY. The following documentary trailer is sponsored on Kickstarter and has already raised over $30,000. Anderson is featured in the following documentary and its popularity is evident that DIY movement is picking up and it's making some big impacts on the economy as people use available resources to develop ideas.

DIY: The Product of Remix and Copyright

I was reading about remix culture and it was really promoting creativity by using the works of others to create something completely different. At the end of the post, the author posed the question,

"What inspires you, and how will you make something original out of it?"

I thought about that and immediately realized that very concept may be the reason I have been interested in the DIY. The Maker Movement thrives on the desire to share and obviously there is a big controversy regarding the copyright laws involved.

Picture by Dawn Endico

I very much agree with Dr. Burton in his view of the digital world as a sharing-oriented, abundant economy. The maker movement seems to combine the frustration of limiting copyright laws with the idea of remixing content for originality. I'm so excited to keep reading about the impact of the DIY culture and how it combats the issues of copyright and remix.

So to answer his question...

I'm inspired by DIY. It makes me feel good to embody new skills and share the fruits of my labor with others. It makes me want to share what I've created with others. And it makes me feel good to have accomplished something.

The truth is that we really are influenced by everything around us and it's our responsibility to synthesize new, inspiring things from the world around us. The digital world is a constant synthesis of the past and present unifying in a way that reflects our experiences.

We need to be responsible in educating ourselves in copyright law so that we can appropriately use remix culture to express ourselves in a way that everyone can enjoy (insert Dr. Burton's plug for Creative Commons).

Remixing

I was in classes all of Friday afternoon, so unfortunately I couldn't attend the copyright forum, but I am really looking forward to listening to the recording of it. In the mean time, after spending all day researching and studying Copyright laws, I am either more acutely aware.... or more paranoid. This has been a good subject for me to familiarize myself with, because I consider myself to be in the group of people that just use any photo or video that I find online and use to my need.

First and foremost, the one thing that has been very interesting to me is realizing that we are creating all of the time, whether or not we realize we are. While learning about copyrighting, I came across a website that focuses on remixing. I watched every clip on the site - I just found it to be very fascinating to consider. The website is called Everything is a Remix. The author behind it is Kirby Ferguson, a New York filmmaker. In his website he gives a lot of visual examples of songs and movies where a creator/songwriter/filmmaker had borrowed from an earlier product of the same medium without giving credit.

His idea is that we need to just embrace a form of dependent creativity, because we are not inspired from within, but by outside forces and works. I read more of his site and found that he actually gave a TED talk about his idea of nothing being original and the hypocrisy behind copyright lawsuits.

I struggle a little bit with this concept; with brushing aside copyrighting our creations. I think that authors, artists, creators should have the right to protect their own creations. He doesn't explicitly say this, but I got the impression that he just doesn't think intellectual property laws and copyrighting should even be enforced, let alone exist. I do think that IP laws should still exist. If anything, rewritten, but not abolished in their entirety. 

On the other hand, I do think that there is truth to some of what Ferguson is saying. Especially with his idea of how when we want to copy, we're completely justified, but if someone else wants to copy our own work, then we will go at them with full force to ensure they don't. 

The end result: I'm so curious now! Anytime a song has come on in a playlist of mine in iTunes, I begin to consider the possible influences on the song that are not credited, from other artists.

My husband is actually really considering practicing patent law and the whole field of copyright and intellectual property, so this has been interesting for both of us to research together!