Copyright Issues in K-12 Education

A couple weeks ago, Raeanne led a discussion about the information available to students and the limits placed by copyright laws. Included in the article were suggestions for how to provide students access while still addressing copyright issues. A lot of people seemed to be in favor of K-12 schools partnering with colleges and universities to get access to their databases and other information sources. We also had a discussion about Wikimedia and the push for online textbooks that would take out the middleman of publishing companies and provide textbooks for free. As a former journalism major, I understand the desire for companies like publishers to be concerned about providing books for free, but as a student and someone who is thinking about teaching, I believe in the accessibility of information. The debate is certainly interesting because of the economics involved on both sides of the issue. It's a constant weighing of values, and it leads to the question "What is the price of information?" I think we are getting to a point in technology and society's needs where we are going to have to need a better answer to that question.

Online Curriculum

A couple weeks ago, Ashleigh Rhodes had us thinking about using an online curriculum, particularly the generation of "Curriki." Curriki is an website for teachers to share their lesson plans on various subjects from math to literature, etc. Looking at the website, it seemed pretty cool. What struck me about it was that the lessons posted on the website weren't particularly tech heavy, so the lessons could be accomplished in schools without computers. I think this is one of its great strengths. In the forum, we discussed the costs of an online curriculum and came to the conclusion that with updates and repairs, it could be just as costly. On the other side, we thought that integration between textbooks and technology was a good plan. We also looked at the accuracy of things like Curriki and editing. It proved an interesting discussion considering our transition into the authoring project. Probably if anything, technology and education, particularly when it comes to authoring, proves that people need to be more critical about the things they find and what they take in. Technology does inspire a spirit of learning because there's so much information out there and people have to evaluate it and make it meaningful for themselves, at least that's the ideal. I do hope people go through their evaluation processes...but only time will tell.