While reading through the DeVoss and Porter article, I kept thinking about the way that my current clinical is run here at NIU. We use the Microsoft software Sharepoint, a bundled addition to Office 2003 and 2007. The software is pretty interesting in the sense that it enables users that have the same login to immediately "publish" or save their work to the website created for the users of that particular setup of Sharepoint. No doubt that this was originally intended for business users. Rather than constantly swapping revised memos and business papers through email (which can become damaged or lost), users can log in to their setup site and edit/review anything anyone else with web access and a login id may have posted to the company's site.
This could easily work its way into education, as well, even at the Middle and High School levels. If students were given access to the same "website" (which really isn't a website, but rather a remote login like they would login at their school's library), they could post ideas on a blog set up through the site and also, their papers and assignments as they were to complete them. Essentially, this is what we're doing for my clinical class. As we complete each assignment and save it, we choose a special extension that automatically links and posts it to the Sharepoint site that our Coordinators have access to, cutting out the need for paper and even for emailing.
Now, I know how everyone feels about Microsoft, but I imagine it will not be long before a competitor creates something similar. In fact, as brought up in a previous class, Google Documents is very similar.
Sorry, this is not completely related; it just kept coming to mind as I read through their article.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Response to DeVoss and Porter
One of the most exciting and eye opening things about the "Napseter" article is the elucidation of Andrea Lunsford's assertion that students need to "own up" to their writing (and to their use of sources), as opposed to "owning" it. For me, this implies that plagerisim as an act is a function of a larger system of ownership of ideas, and that plagerisim and the punitive reactions to it are both products of a system of thought that privideges personal ownership of ideas over practical use. In this sense, I need to ask, as composition teachers, if our philosophy about the way ideas are exchanged are actualy leading to plagiarisim... if students didn't believe that they needed to exclusively own their texts and be responsible for all of their ideas as sole originator, would they be so inclined to pass off ideas and text as their own? (I'm not advocating the immediate removal of all anti-plagerisim safe-guards, but I am suggesting that, just as those safe guards (as they are) will fail to function practically in a composition classroom, the practices they were created to prevent may eventually become equally as irrellevant.)
Monday, February 19, 2007
A defense for the Punishers of Plagiarizers
The DeVoss and Porter article was a fascinating (and terrifying?) exploration of the future of "writing." I need 31 more years under my belt before I'm fully vested in my pension, so I hope I can avoid complete obsolescence. I was particularly interested in their discussion of plagiarism. In my first three years of teaching, we as a staff have revised the section in the student handbook on "academic dishonesty" three times. DeVoss and Porter would probably ask why we focus on "dishonesty" instead of honesty, but I digress. There is no doubt that the scope through which we identify and define plagiarism will need to be revisited and reshaped rather often as the landscape of writing in the most-modern world ceaselessly changes.
Where I think they miss the mark, however, is in their indictment of "most teachers [who] are not building a positive ethic of sharing in their courses, and are instead following the traditional disciplinary (and by disciplinary, we mean discipline and punish) approach to the use of others' work." In their discussion, the authors make reference on more than one occasion to the idea that punishing students for "sharing others' work" is an historically anchored, outdated philosophy. Here's my question to all you teachers out there: Have any of you ever believed that your students who plagiarized were simply trying to share others' work? Of course not. DeVoss and Porter also lend too much credence to the notion that the Punishers of Plagiarizers do so in order to preserve justice for the original authors. I couldn't care less about the original author getting credit for his or her work. What concerns me is my student passing that work off as his or her own. I encourage my students to infuse the ideas and research of others into their own work; original spin can be just as interesting (sometime more) than a seemingly original idea (I sometimes wonder if such a thing exists anymore). The distinction between the "original idea" (from the originating source) and my student's original spin, however, had better be clear.
Where I think they miss the mark, however, is in their indictment of "most teachers [who] are not building a positive ethic of sharing in their courses, and are instead following the traditional disciplinary (and by disciplinary, we mean discipline and punish) approach to the use of others' work." In their discussion, the authors make reference on more than one occasion to the idea that punishing students for "sharing others' work" is an historically anchored, outdated philosophy. Here's my question to all you teachers out there: Have any of you ever believed that your students who plagiarized were simply trying to share others' work? Of course not. DeVoss and Porter also lend too much credence to the notion that the Punishers of Plagiarizers do so in order to preserve justice for the original authors. I couldn't care less about the original author getting credit for his or her work. What concerns me is my student passing that work off as his or her own. I encourage my students to infuse the ideas and research of others into their own work; original spin can be just as interesting (sometime more) than a seemingly original idea (I sometimes wonder if such a thing exists anymore). The distinction between the "original idea" (from the originating source) and my student's original spin, however, had better be clear.
“And so it goes. . .”
So, here we have another case of Big Brother as Big Music or Big Publishers trying to assert its hegemony on us with copyright laws that have become more and more restrictive. This was all really Rock and Roll fun, but I was wondering when the discussion would get to “Writing for Electronic Media” until I got to DeVoss and Porter when they made the connection with their “property” and “fair use” discussion. My next novel will be my first as will my next music cd, but I feel important with the knowledge that my every email, grocery list, and other mundane writings (blogs?) are copyrighted. So, if you read this, the lesson of Napster is that you can download it, but don’t share (upload) it. However, the other side says that Disney got Mickey Mouse in part from Buster Keaton, so they can’t trademark Mickey, but they do. Moreover, they are right in saying that all writing is shared; for example, Shakespeare’s plays came from folk tales and other sources – not completely original. We’ll probably have to wait to see how all this “shakes out” (no pun intended).
Cool image of blog linking...
I still can't upload URLs to this blog. Doesn't seem to work on Mac. You can find the story about how blogs are linked by googling "linkology".
Cheers
DMCG
Google Books & Free Culture
Among the issues addressed in the readings for this week's class include the evolution of copyright laws in the United States and the question of who legitimately can own (and therefore control) information. While the "file-sharing" controversies over music and movies are far from settled, it has been established that we are--to some extent--responsible for what we choose to share with others online, regardless of the grey-areas and loopholes we might be afforded under Fair Use. That is, the RIAA has been successful in holding individuals accountable for the music they have shared with others using P2P programs. We know it's wrong (even as we still do it).
While the dust has yet to settle on the sharing/transfer of music/movies, I worry that a far more important issue is flying low under the public radar. At least to us academics (and--as I would argue--to all literate people with access to the internet), the digitization of books and other texts currently being done by Google and other parties is more culturally significant than whether we ought to pay for the lastest Nelly Furtado single.
I read a fascinating article in the New Yorker a few weeks ago on this subject, and I encourage you check it out. The legality of these projects depend on the Fair Use exceptions of our current copyright laws, but it looks as if Google might settle with the publishing companies who have demanded that they cease and desist. One of the authors we are reading this week weighs in:
But a settlement that serves the parties’ interests does not necessarily benefit the public. “It’s clearly in both sides’ interest to settle,” Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, said. “Businesses in Internet time can’t wait around for years for lawsuits to be resolved. Google wants to be able to get this done, and get permission to resume scanning copyrighted material at all the libraries. For the publishers, if Google gives them anything at all, it creates a practical precedent, if not a legal precedent, that no one has the right to scan this material without their consent. That’s a win for them. The problem is that even though a settlement would be good for Google and good for the publishers, it would be bad for everyone else.”
While I am thrilled to be alive in an age when the world's written information might be organized and accessible to all, the prospect of Google and the publishing industry having a monopoly over it worries me. Might we run into the same issues that currently plague the music industry? That is, would this promote the arts and sciences as the Founding Fathers hoped, or could this be another win for the established content industries and a blow to artists and writers like us?
While the dust has yet to settle on the sharing/transfer of music/movies, I worry that a far more important issue is flying low under the public radar. At least to us academics (and--as I would argue--to all literate people with access to the internet), the digitization of books and other texts currently being done by Google and other parties is more culturally significant than whether we ought to pay for the lastest Nelly Furtado single.
I read a fascinating article in the New Yorker a few weeks ago on this subject, and I encourage you check it out. The legality of these projects depend on the Fair Use exceptions of our current copyright laws, but it looks as if Google might settle with the publishing companies who have demanded that they cease and desist. One of the authors we are reading this week weighs in:
But a settlement that serves the parties’ interests does not necessarily benefit the public. “It’s clearly in both sides’ interest to settle,” Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, said. “Businesses in Internet time can’t wait around for years for lawsuits to be resolved. Google wants to be able to get this done, and get permission to resume scanning copyrighted material at all the libraries. For the publishers, if Google gives them anything at all, it creates a practical precedent, if not a legal precedent, that no one has the right to scan this material without their consent. That’s a win for them. The problem is that even though a settlement would be good for Google and good for the publishers, it would be bad for everyone else.”
While I am thrilled to be alive in an age when the world's written information might be organized and accessible to all, the prospect of Google and the publishing industry having a monopoly over it worries me. Might we run into the same issues that currently plague the music industry? That is, would this promote the arts and sciences as the Founding Fathers hoped, or could this be another win for the established content industries and a blow to artists and writers like us?
Some good news for new web designers
Well... questionably good news.
I get newsletters from an organization called SitePoint.com that keep me relatively updated on what's going on in the land of web design from a webmaster's point of view. They recently posted an interesting blog entry relating that Microsoft's newest release of Outlook is going to use the same engine to render HTML as MS Word. In sending out emails that contain any type of markup language, designers need to cater to the lowest common denominator to ensure that their documents render correctly; this lowest common denominator will shortly be this new version of Outlook. The people at SitePoint.com are understandably irritated at having to curtail all their fancy (and often much more efficient) methods of coding.
So why do I say this is good news for us? If I understand correctly, it means that the basic HTML that we know how to use may be the best thing to use. As writers, we are more likely to be asked to write (and or design) a email communication than to design a whole website (which would be more likely to need advanced coding abilities). For once, there is some small benefit to one of Microsoft's blunders! Hurray!
I get newsletters from an organization called SitePoint.com that keep me relatively updated on what's going on in the land of web design from a webmaster's point of view. They recently posted an interesting blog entry relating that Microsoft's newest release of Outlook is going to use the same engine to render HTML as MS Word. In sending out emails that contain any type of markup language, designers need to cater to the lowest common denominator to ensure that their documents render correctly; this lowest common denominator will shortly be this new version of Outlook. The people at SitePoint.com are understandably irritated at having to curtail all their fancy (and often much more efficient) methods of coding.
So why do I say this is good news for us? If I understand correctly, it means that the basic HTML that we know how to use may be the best thing to use. As writers, we are more likely to be asked to write (and or design) a email communication than to design a whole website (which would be more likely to need advanced coding abilities). For once, there is some small benefit to one of Microsoft's blunders! Hurray!
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