I found this embedded on Karl Fischs’ wonderful blog “The Fischbowl” and it pertains to side conversations we’re having in our district.
What’s interesting is that our conversations have focused more on the question of “who owns the content”? That is, who owns, who can copyright, content developed by teachers and used with their students? This is a particularly salient question as we move more of our classes online and, consequently, develop most (nearly all) our material in the electronic (ie “easy to distribute, cheap to distribute”) medium. Might we be starting with the view that the material we create is of the same vain as material created by artists and thus we deserve monetary compensation?
But perhaps we’re operating under the assumption, the paradigm, that Copyright as a means of profit is the only way to view copyright.
Lawrence Lessig (personal hero) argues that we, educators and scientists, need to stop this assumption. Because if we go with this assumption, we are doing more hurt than good.
The presentation is long – a good 60 minutes – but loaded with good thoughts and ideas.