This week centred around sharing and how it can encourage and improve learning around the world. This blog is based on the following resources:
It never ceases to amaze me how people continue to develop rules and regulations to protect something while encouraging creativity. In general, the endless number of patents, copyrights, regulations, and moderation is actually stifling creativity by discouraging people to create something out of fear of being sued or accused of stealing. We continue to create wonderful to share and learn from each other, and then promptly put up barriers to their effective use.
In 'Sharing: The Moral Imperative', Dean Shareski (great name for the topic!) suggest that is our moral obligation to share our learning with the world. I definitely support the thought of sharing ideas. If nobody shared their ideas, we would not be where we are today. In some ways one could say that if we shared everything, then the Internet would be cluttered with useless information and it would be that much harder to find quality content.
The second source 'Obvious to You: Amazing to Others' somewhat discredits the cluttering idea. What to me might be useless clutter, might be exactly the information someone else needed to confirm or complete their learning. At the same time, someone might be waiting for and need the information I have that seems obvious to me but if I do not share it, something important might never be developed or be significantly delayed, as in the case of Penicillin.
There are many ways of sharing our learning, but the most popular methods today seem to be blogging or vlogs. People are willing to share almost anything online from reviews, to tutorials, to performances. We can all learn from these freely and easily to our heart's content.
If sharing contributes to learning, and learning is a result of many hours of thought, research, and experience, then why do we put some of the biggest discoveries and learning behind barriers of cost and copyright. Having to pay up to hundreds of dollars for access to a single article in a journal is prohibitively expensive when you consider that good research will require the use of hundreds of articles.
So where does this leave me? Well, I am admittedly a consumer and not much of a producer. I like to acquire knowledge and learn new things, but I rarely share in any tangible form online. Other than through courses like this where sharing and reflection is required, my sharing is usually limited to conversations with colleagues and friends. I love to share and have conversations face-to-face, on the phone, or through chat mediums, but find it hard to sit down and share through writing. I know there were others in our cohort that had previously expressed the same uneasiness when they stared using the Google+ communities. It was very much related to the 'Obvious to you' idea. I still haven't gotten into the Facebook, Twitter, Diigo, trends. While I have accounts, I rarely use them.
For one of my undergraduate projects, a classmate and I created a website to share lesson plans with fellow teachers. As we were all developing lessons for the BC curriculum and using the VIU lesson plan template, we figured it would be a great way to share resources and save preparation time. All that was needed was to email the lesson plan to us and we would post it in the correct category. Nearly everyone in the program thought it was a great idea and promised to contribute. What we found, however, was that although we were required to email our lesson plans to our sponsor teachers, almost nobody contributed to the site. The simple act of CCing the email to our site was extra work in their already busy lives.
I feel the same way often in that I have a moment when I make an important connection and by the time I actually get home or to a place where I can share about it, I have either forgotten to do so or am to tired to do so. I suppose I need to make a more concerted effort to make my learning visible.
On a side note, I am curious to know if George Couros is related to Alec! (if he didn't already say so)
- Sharing: The Moral Imperative
- Obvious to You: Amazing to Others
- When Student Writers Learn They Must Make Their Audience Care
- How Successful Networks Nurture Good Ideas
- Where Good Ideas Come From
- Blogging in the Classroom
- True Stories of Openness
- Boycott locked-down academic journals
It never ceases to amaze me how people continue to develop rules and regulations to protect something while encouraging creativity. In general, the endless number of patents, copyrights, regulations, and moderation is actually stifling creativity by discouraging people to create something out of fear of being sued or accused of stealing. We continue to create wonderful to share and learn from each other, and then promptly put up barriers to their effective use.
In 'Sharing: The Moral Imperative', Dean Shareski (great name for the topic!) suggest that is our moral obligation to share our learning with the world. I definitely support the thought of sharing ideas. If nobody shared their ideas, we would not be where we are today. In some ways one could say that if we shared everything, then the Internet would be cluttered with useless information and it would be that much harder to find quality content.
The second source 'Obvious to You: Amazing to Others' somewhat discredits the cluttering idea. What to me might be useless clutter, might be exactly the information someone else needed to confirm or complete their learning. At the same time, someone might be waiting for and need the information I have that seems obvious to me but if I do not share it, something important might never be developed or be significantly delayed, as in the case of Penicillin.
There are many ways of sharing our learning, but the most popular methods today seem to be blogging or vlogs. People are willing to share almost anything online from reviews, to tutorials, to performances. We can all learn from these freely and easily to our heart's content.
If sharing contributes to learning, and learning is a result of many hours of thought, research, and experience, then why do we put some of the biggest discoveries and learning behind barriers of cost and copyright. Having to pay up to hundreds of dollars for access to a single article in a journal is prohibitively expensive when you consider that good research will require the use of hundreds of articles.
So where does this leave me? Well, I am admittedly a consumer and not much of a producer. I like to acquire knowledge and learn new things, but I rarely share in any tangible form online. Other than through courses like this where sharing and reflection is required, my sharing is usually limited to conversations with colleagues and friends. I love to share and have conversations face-to-face, on the phone, or through chat mediums, but find it hard to sit down and share through writing. I know there were others in our cohort that had previously expressed the same uneasiness when they stared using the Google+ communities. It was very much related to the 'Obvious to you' idea. I still haven't gotten into the Facebook, Twitter, Diigo, trends. While I have accounts, I rarely use them.
For one of my undergraduate projects, a classmate and I created a website to share lesson plans with fellow teachers. As we were all developing lessons for the BC curriculum and using the VIU lesson plan template, we figured it would be a great way to share resources and save preparation time. All that was needed was to email the lesson plan to us and we would post it in the correct category. Nearly everyone in the program thought it was a great idea and promised to contribute. What we found, however, was that although we were required to email our lesson plans to our sponsor teachers, almost nobody contributed to the site. The simple act of CCing the email to our site was extra work in their already busy lives.
I feel the same way often in that I have a moment when I make an important connection and by the time I actually get home or to a place where I can share about it, I have either forgotten to do so or am to tired to do so. I suppose I need to make a more concerted effort to make my learning visible.
On a side note, I am curious to know if George Couros is related to Alec! (if he didn't already say so)