Through the Eyes of a Child: Digital Storytelling in the Classroom (Printing:)
February 29th, 2008
These are my notes from a presentation titled “Through the Eyes of a Child: Digital Storytelling in the Classroom” on February 2, 2008, at the Oklahoma 2008 State Superintendent’s Social Studies and Fine Arts Conference. The theme of this year’s conference is, “Revolutionary Matters.” This presentation by Christine Paradise, a 3rd grade teacher at Steed Elementary school in Midwest City (Mid-Del Public Schools) had the following conference program description: Children see things in very unique ways. Capture that special view by allowing them to tell the story. Give them the chance to use photographs, videos, and audio recordings to create projects that will combine art and history, as well as reinforce reading, language arts, and research and technology skills. MY COMMENTS AND THOUGHTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. CHRISTY WAS ONE OF TEN TEACHERS WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE OKLAHOMA DIGITAL CENTENNIAL PROJECT IN MID-DEL SCHOOLS THAT I HELPED WITH LAST FALL. IT IS SO AFFIRMING, EXCITING, AND WONDERFUL TO ME PERSONALLY TO HEAR CHRISTY SHARE ABOUT ALL THE WONDERFUL THINGS HER STUDENTS HAVE CREATED AND LEARNED TOGETHER USING DIGITAL STORYTELLING. Tip from an audience member: Donorschoose.org is a website where teachers propose projects and any donor can support them. - BestBuy and CircuitCity have grants for teachers Equipment used - Macbook lapotop - iPod Nano Video with iMac recorder - Nikon digital camera - digital camera - iTunes, Garageband, iMovie for all pictures in this first demo video, all pictures were taken by Christy or by her students discussion about copyright and fair use [REFERENCE TO COPYRIGHT 101 FOR EDUCATORS] Kids have SO MUCH FUN putting together their stories that they lose track of all the things they are learning - how to use encyclopedias - how to think and write in proper sentences - how to put together complete thoughts this project ranged from lower ability kids to higher ability kids we had to add this project on top of other curriculum - while other classes were watching movies on Friday afternoon, we were creating this video project - my kids are now working on a state project My kids save their work to the computer they are working on - in addition to her MacBook, Christy Christy made a VoiceThread about her educational trip to Jamestown last summer Get permission forms signed by students who are participating in online projects! - our district has a form for this - I explain to my parents about our projects and the importance We don’t use first or last names or student photos it is not what you are using to tell the story, it is getting the stories shared and told these kids don’t know they are learning - they are having fun - they are writing, interviewing people, researching things, and sharing about it My project on DonorsChoose.org is to get some additional digital cameras for my classroom: Through The Eyes Of A Child [THIS IS SO FANTASTIC! WHAT AN AWESOME WAY FOR TEACHERS TO DIRECTLY GET SUPPORT FOR THEIR CLASSROOM PROJECTS - THIS IS DISINTERMEDIATED FUNDRAISING FOR CLASSROOM PROJECTS AND LEARNING!] Students using just by showing the photograph and explaining their thinking, students reveal their understanding - this includes abstract thought getting kids to explain their thinking about how they understand a concept or a fact and represented it with a photograph I print projects at WalGreens, it costs about $5 per project, I don’t have a color printer When students put stories into pictures, into words, into something the students can see and hear - it is hard to - you will be amazed with many of the things they come up with This is not just social studies, we use this for language arts - Example of an assignment: take a picture of something around the school and then write a story - student took a picture of moving swings, and came back and wrote a story about “the ghost of a playground” Students are putting up pictures and their stories there is not instructional time and classtime for these writing assignments: students are doing this on their own World of Adventure program: I have animals that travel around the world You have to be careful when you get outside participation in your photos, Gilbert has been introduced to maragitas and beer at times: My mother works with Congresswoman Fallin - photos of Gilbert with the US Border Patrol - he comes back to them with all these stories - people write in his journal like he is speaking - the amount of information that my kids can get from Gilbert has been traveling for 3 years - has almost met the president 3 times this is a FANTASTIC project like the “flat stanley” project the kids will listen more to what freddie is doing (or Gilbert) than what I am doing half the time what I hear is, “I’m bored. What do we have to learn how to do this. It’s too hard.” I have never heard them say those things with my photography stories. As good a teacher as you are, you can’t come up with the creative things these kids will come up with. I found the acapella version of “Oklahoma Rising” on YouTube Contact: christieparadise [at] aol [dot] com also cparadise [at] mid-del.k12.ok.us Technorati Tags: digitalstorytelling, video, differentiated, instruction, learning, visualliteracy, visual, literacy, oklahoma, innovative, teaching, teacher, nonlinguistic, representation addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.speedofcreativity.org%2F2008%2F02%2F02%2Fthrough-the-eyes-of-a-child-digital-storytelling-in-the-classroom%2F’; addthis_title = ‘Through+the+Eyes+of+a+Child%3A+Digital+Storytelling+in+the+Classroom’; addthis_pub = ‘’;
Source: www.speedofcreativity.org
How To Blog: A Beginner’s Blog Publishing Guide
How to blog is something that a lot of us old hands take for granted, but for the beginner it can seem like a daunting tangle of questions and issues to be resolved. In this guide, I have gathered all of the essential resources you’ll need to get started. Here’s how: Photo credit: Konstantinos Kottinis Gathering a number of resources from both Master New Media and other useful websites, I have tried to answer here the common questions that new bloggers have. While it would be impossible to cover everything, you should find here all of the basics, and more, on how to get your first blog set up, niche-targeted, and read by someone other than your best friend. In short, a simple primer on “how to blog”, that will take you from choosing your subject and blog platform, through to making your blog text stand out and grab your readers’ attention. I answer the following questions:What is a blog? Why should I blog? Which blogging platform should I use? Can I publish from a desktop application? What should I write about? How can I make my blog content stand out? Where can I find free or cheap images to use in my blog? Where can I find more blogging resources So dip in, take what you need, and get yourself on the road to being an independent online publisher. There’s never been a better time to get started. Here are the details: What Is A Blog? You’ve almost certainly heard the word “blog” before and you might have a rough idea of what a blog is, but as you will see opinions may differ a lot, and some time to better understand and clarify what you are about to embark on, is always a time well spent. The word blog is a contraction of “web log”, a phrase not so commonly used these days. In the simplest definition of the term, then, a blog is a log of your thoughts, ideas, useful links, photos, videos, or the latest news. Two years ago, Robin Good asked members of the public, and fellow bloggers “What is a blog?” and collected the replies in a series of videos called The Weblog Project, and opened up the footage for anyone to remix and share. Here is one of Robin’s mixes of the results: Deborah Ng, over at About.com, explains it like this: “Technically, a blog is a series of posts arranged in chronological order. Most agree, however, they’re an important form of expression. Though many modern blogs are personal observances updated on a regular basis, the earliest blogs weren’t rants or observances. They were lists of links maintained by a handful of tech savvy individuals. It wasn’t until the late 1990’s that blogging evolved into what we see today.” A ‘post’ is just another way of saying an entry, like an entry in a diary, or a column in a newspaper. Posts are actually arranged in reverse chronological order, which means that when you visit a blog on the web, the latest story will appear at the top of the website, and the earlier ones will descend in order beneath it, by how recently they were published to the web. Deborah Ng goes on to define some common characteristics of a blog:Posts have a subject or header - just as a newspaper article, or email does They then have a subject or body - the main part of the post, again just like an email They most usually have comments - a way that readers can respond to what’s been said. This is an important part of blogging, which is much more conversational than print media. As soon as you write something, your readers have a chance to respond to it They quite often have a time and date stamp - so that readers know how recent the post is. Commonly people aren’t so interested in reading out of date posts. Blogging is very much an “of the moment” phenomenon, and while you might create “evergreen” content, it’s likely that at least some of your posts will be time sensitive. Over at Problogger.net Darren Rowse has gathered some more definitions of what constitutes a blog. He offers, among others: “A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order” So there you have it - a blog is an easy way of publishing your thoughts to the web, and here are in their own words 100 different people telling you how they personally feel about what a blog really is. Extracted from TheWeblog Project video clips collection, this playlist showcases street people and media pros including Howard Rheingold, Chris Pirillo, Loic LeMeur, Robert Scoble, Marc Canter and many others telling you in their own words “What is a blog?”. Check it out. Why Should I Write A Blog? There is no single reason to write a blog, as it very much depends on your motivation. Nevertheless, blogging can have a number of benefits, whether it is to help boost the presence of your business online, or just to share and debate ideas with like-minded people. Jeremy Wright discusses some of the reasons that people blog in his post Why Blog, Zat Is Ze Qwestion”: “Blogging’s something for anyone and everyone. I can’t think of anyone who can’t benefit from knowing more people, never forgetting a thought again and improving on their thoughts with little or no effort. For some blogging will be like a diary: a historical record of their thoughts at a moment in time. For others it’ll be like speed-networking. You get to know people in a shallow way and then develop a relationship.” So whether you use blogging as you might a photo album, to record your memories, or as a great way of connecting to other people who share the same interests or business goals as you, there are plenty of reasons to give it a shot. Deborah Ng thinks up a good few more, including:Recognition - the chance to develop a following and stand out as a subject area expert Employment opportunities - the opportunity to be discovered by a potential employer, or have a body of work to show off at your next interview Revenue - the very real chance to make money from your online writing, whether directly through advertising or indirectly through spin-off publications, speaking engagements, consultancy and all manner of other revenue generating means For business owners the imperative is even greater. For one thing, search engines favour websites that are updated regularly, and blogging is a great way to make sure that your content is always fresh, and thus regularly checked in on by Google and company. This gives you a much better shot of appearing high in the results of Google search. Another great reason is supplied by Corporateblogging.info: “In a forum where your main objective not is to sell, you’ll have a more personal relationship between you and your customers. Blogs are a fast way to join the customers’ discussions, provide tips and insights or receive feedback.” So whether you want to reach out and communicate with fellow hobbyists, give your customers an opportunity to interact with you, or boost your online presence, blogging is a great way to go about it. Which Blogging Platform Should I Use? A blogging platform is the software you use to publish your content to the web. Just as you might have a choice about which word processor or web browser to use, there are also a range of different blogging platforms available to you. Some are free, while others will cost you a monthly or yearly subscription. Some are hosted online for you, while others require you to host them on your own web server. Some are meant for individual blogging dome others for group publishing o to create small networks of bloggers. So which one is likely to suit you best? Hosted Blogs By far the easiest way to get started is a hosted blogging platform. The most popular choices here are Blogger.com and Wordpress.com. Both of these services are free to use, and you can get started on your blog very easily, with a minimum of setup. Darren Rowse writes about hosted solutions: “This is the type of blog that many bloggers start out with, simply because they are easy and usually quite cheap (if not free). Probably the most popular of these systems is Blogger.com - but there are others like WordPress.com and MSN Spaces. TypePad also runs hosted blogs - although have the option to go with a type of standalone option also through remote hosting.” If you aren’t sure about blogging and want to give it a try first, these are nice solutions that will provide you with plenty of options as to how your blog looks and displays your text. The big downside with these services - Typepad excluded, which is a paid service - is that you can’t use your own domain name. So, instead of having masternewmedia.org, for instance, if you were using blogger, your website address would read masternewmedia.blogspot.com. While this won’t bother some people, and it is possible to hide, professional users might prefer to have their blog hosted at their own domain. Should you decide to go ahead, you’ll find plenty of help in getting started. Here, for instance is a video from Google to get you started with blogger.com: And another for getting a Wordpress.com account, by Chris Pearson: Stand-Alone or Self-Hosted Blogs If you want a greater degree of control over the presentation, modification and location of your blog, stand-alone or self-hosted platforms might be more suitable for your needs. Far and away the two most popular solutions are Wordpress.org, which is open source and free to use, or the subscription based Movable Type. Both platforms are highly extensible allowing you to easily add different “themes”, designs for your blog, as well as “plugins”, which add extra functionality to your blog. Optiniche provide an excellent screencast tutorial on how to get your Wordpress.org blog installed on your own domain. Thankfully the Movable Type team have created a useful screencast video demonstration on their website taking you through the installation process, too. Wordpress is very popular due to the fact that it has an enormous amount of Open Source, free support from its active community, and a huge array of free themes and plugins to enhance your blog with. Movable Type, on the other hand, provides excellent support, as it is a paid service. LeRoy Brown of Blogging Blog also notes: “Movable Type-the top choice to control multiple blogs from one spot. The free version allows unlimited blogs under one login, so you can sure save some headaches if you run several blogs. The bad part? Movable Type is rather difficult to set up.” Nevertheless armed with a good video demonstration of the process, this is not an unmanageable task. Personally I would recommend a self-hosted solution if you are looking to blog professionally or as part of your business, and a hosted solution if you want to blog for fun, or as an experiment to see if you enjoy blogging. Can I Blog From My Desktop? Usually speaking blogging takes place right within your web browser. You log in to your blog, create a new post, just as you might write an email, providing a subject line or title, and then a body of text beneath. The problem with writing online is that browsers can crash, or your web connection can suddenly cut out, leaving you high and dry. One solution to this problem that a lot of people use is a desktop blogging application. This is very much like a word processor or desktop publishing program, only it sends your finished work over to your blog. There are some great free and cheap blog editing applications on the Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, so whichever you are using, you can write (and save) your posts without the need to be online. Windows Blog Editors Brice Dunwoodie reviews some of the Windows options over at CMS Wire, and while he doesn’t get along with these applications 100%, the most promising of the bunch seems to be ecto, which is also a Mac application. Personally, my own favorite Windows-based blog editing application is Windows Live Writer. It’s totally free, works with most blogging platforms, and will even set you up with a Windows Live Spaces blog if you’d like. While much has been added since my video review of last year, you can still get a good idea about what a powerful tool this is by taking a llook: Mac Blog Editors Mac users might want to check out Earl Moore’s review of three desktop blogging clients . His personal favorite, and the one I have personally found best in my own blogging is ecto. The following video from the YouTube user known simply as clbm12 gives you a nice example of how easy it is to blog with ecto: Linux Blog Editors Linux also has its fair share of desktop blog editors available, and the options have been gathered at Terinea Weblog. There are a good five alternatives listed here to get you started, but unfortunately they haven’t been reviewed. Linux users would be very welcome to add their personal recommendations to the comments of this post. What Should I Write About? Quite beyond the technical questions of how to blog, one question that often gets asked by beginner bloggers is what they should write about. While this will obviously depend on why you are blogging in the first place, one piece of advice you should definitely consider is trying to find yourself a niche. Unless you are writing for your family or a couple of friends, the best way to distinguish yourself and build a readership is to focus on a particular niche topic or interest. Whether that’s creating glove puppets or PHP programming, the way people will find your blog most commonly will be through a search engine, and they will be searching for something that they want to know more about. That’s where you come in. Answering the question of what to write about Matt DeAngelis of the Affiliate Blog writes: “Why not start with yourself? Take a moment right now and list your interests. What do you search for on the web? Put that on the list. Think about all of the things that fill your day at work or at home. While you are living your life run stuff through the niche filter in your mind there s always something that you can add to the list. If you don t have something to write it down on, call yourself and leave a voice mail. I ve done it many times. Everyone says I wish there was a [insert something here] on the Internet. Some of us say that a lot. Put it on the list.” It also pays to do a little research in the first instance, as Daniel Vukadinovic points out at Daily Blogging Tips: “Ask yourself, does your blog have potential? Before making any moves go out and learn the competition. Visit as many blogs and websites as possible about the niche you ve chosen and see if there s any room left for you. You don t want to get sucked into a net of gazillion sites about the same thing because chances are you re going to fail. There s no need for ten million blogs about soccer where there are only few of them about baskeball.” With that said, the key is to drill down further. Rather than writing a blog about football or basketball, why not write about your local team, about basketball sneakers, about the lifestyle of a particular football player. That way you are sure to find a niche that doesn’t already have a million competitors. Robin Good points out the role of the blogger as someone that helps their reader to navigate an infinite, ever growing sea of information: “Bloggers sift through and edit the information for the readers, helping the readers find information from around the web in one place, at the same time bloggers become the go to expert. The more people who value or trust what a blogger has to say, the more people will link to and recommend her blog. A blogger navigates readers around the web to find information that is relevant to her niche audience.” There is bound to be something that you are passionate about, that really motivates you, and that is in some way unique to you. That’s where to begin your blog from. How Can I Make My Blog Content Stand Out? So you have a niche, you’ve found somewhere to host your blog, and you’ve set yourself up with a desktop editing application. What’s next? Well, it might be worth thinking about the way that you present your content, and how you can make it truly jump off the screen and grab your readers attention. A lot of beginning bloggers will write something more appropriate to an essay than to a blog post. Here are a few pieces of advice that make sure that you leave a lasting impression on your readers. Perhaps the most important part of any blog post is the title. Why’s that? Because that’s what will make a reader that finds your content through a search engine decide whether to visit your website or not. This is the make or break point that determines whether you get read or passed over in favour of someone else’s content. Robin Good, in his article on How To Write Great Titles And Headlines For The Web notes that: “Do not try to make the title “smart”, by using irony, word play or other “journalistic” approach. The title to be built must be thought as of a label to your article in the unlimited virtual library that the Internet is. Inside newspapers the reader is already captive and searching, within the page, for items of possible interest. On the Internet, headlines are often displayed out of context. The reader is searching for your content and will only get to it, if a most appropriate, serious and well thought out label is attached to it. On the web, readers often don’t get the chance of applying background understanding to the interpretation of the titles they are presented with. Just like in a real library.” This is just one of several essential pieces of advice that Robin gives on titling for the web. Of course you want your titles to be snappy and maybe even funny, but if this is at the expense of ever being read, it makes perfect sense to adopt a more pragmatic approach. Once you have a great title the next thing worth thinking about is what happens when your reader actually arrives at your website. Sure, it would be nice to think that they will read everything you wrote once they’ve clicked through. In actual fact, a lot of readers will disappear from a site in seconds unless they are captivated and encouraged to stay. Muhammad Saleem writes for CopyBlogger that: “Readers will often read content diagonally to determine its usefulness before giving it a proper read. And in order to pass this direct filter test, you need to write for diagonal readers who scan your content from headline to close in a zig zag pattern.” Muhammad suggests that you have ten seconds to convince that reader to continue and dip into your full post. I would say that figure is closer to five seconds. So how do you make your text “scannable”? Robin Good provides some excellent tips on writing for the web in his post Information: Beginners Blog Design. Here Robin points out such techniques as “chunking”: “Chunking is an approach to the formatting of the text that strives to “modularize” contents into the greatest number of meaningful text blocks possible. Similarly to what is done in poetry, each concept and idea is given greater space to be read and understood. There is no packing of paragraphs into long blocks of text that know no pause. There is no saving in having less digital screen space used… … A must-abide to rule to use when wanting to chunk content effectively is the one of never going to the next line after a period. Either you proceed on the same line with the following sentence, or you leave an empty line and start a new paragraph below. ” Robin also suggests that bolding can be used effectively as a means for readers to scan your content: “In order to facilitate readers scanning page contents, it is a great idea to use some “bolding” to highlight the first three or four words of content paragraphs that are particularly important. In contrast then with traditional editorial and formatting approaches where bolding is used in the middle of sentences to emphasize relevant content elements, my personal suggestions is to use bold to again highlight opening words of critical paragraphs.” Robin finally suggests that the use of images in your posts is an all but essential component that will really help to grab your readers attention. But where are you going to find those? Where Can I Find Free or Cheap Images to Use in My Blog Post? With a bit of time on your hands, it’s quite possible to find royalty-free, cheap or free photos and graphics to include in your blog posts. Garr Reynolds, who runs the beautiful looking Presentation Zen website, suggests some of his favourite sources for the images he uses: “I use iStockphoto.com the most (as well as more expensive sites though I do that much less now and high-quality photo discs from Japan). A few people gave links to their favorite free or inexpensive sites as well.” Garr goes on to list both cheap and free resources you might use to track down great looking images. Robin Good has also compiled a very extensive resource of free image websites, with the benefit being that this is updated regularly. At the time of writing there are some sixty-six websites for you to explore. If that still leaves you wanting, which is highly doubtful, you might also check out the pared down version of Robin’s guide over at TechSoup. Where Can I Find More Blogging Resources? Once you have a great looking blog up and running, you might want to start thinking about other things, such as how you can spruce up your design, start making money from your content, or making sure that you promote your content to as many people as possible. To get you started, here are some useful links to take you to the next level:Promoting Your Blog:Robin Good’s RSS 55 is a constantly updates list of directories that you can submit the RSS feed of your blog to, further building your readership Chris Garrett offers some good advice on how to create easy to promote content I wrote this article on how you can use microblogging platform Twitter to publicize your blog Marjolein Hoekstra explains how you can “ping” blog directories every time you post to increase your visibility on the web Monetizing Your Blog - Should you decide to turn your blog into a commercial enterprise, you might want to read the following articles:Darren Rowse’s thoughts on how to earn money from your blog Robin Good’s guide on How To Make Money With Your Website Robin and Livia Iacolare’s have also pulled together this collection of blog monetization options for Master New Media Other Blogging Resources - If you want to continue your blogging journey, you might like some of these links:Problogger “Blogging For Beginners” series Beginning Blogging, over at Entrepreneurs Journey Everything You Need To Begin Blogging, by Deborah Ng of About.com The Blogging Toolbox, a long list of blog resources from Mashable 9 Lessons For Would Be Bloggers from Joshua Porter How to Write a Successfull Blog by Robin Good
Source: www.masternewmedia.org
Dedicated Post & Mother’s Day Giveaway - PRESTO prints emails and photos without a computer
Do you have a family member or friend who is offline and doesn t have a computer or email at home? Or a parent or grandparent you’d love to send digital photos to on the same day you take them, but they don’t have a computer or internet access? We introduced Presto to Popgadget readers a few months ago, highlighting the simplicity of this service, which delivers emails, photos and other content to people who don’t use a computer. Presto enables you to send emails and photos to the Presto recipient, which then automatically pop out of their HP Presto printer (the HP Printing Mailbox) without any action on their part. So, considering Grandma never set up a computer, how is she going to set up her Presto printer and service and learn how to operate it? Not to worry, getting started is a breeze. You can go online and set it up for her so that all she needs to do is plug it in, or she can call the Presto Customer Care toll-free line and get it all set up for her. Then the messages are automatically set to print up to 5 times per day (you or Grandma can set the schedule) through an existing phone line. When you send an email or photo, the printer on the other end produces full color photos and emails without the need to activate anything. Grandma can receive unlimited emails, photos and content from anyone she gives her presto.com email address to. Presto even transforms plain emails with colorful designs. The printer sells for $150 US and the service fee is $10 per month. And, between now and Mother’s Day only, Presto is taking $50 off the cost of the printer, so it’s a good time to pick this up for your disconnected friend, parent, or grandparent. But, of course one of you is getting it all FREE! Presto is giving away an HP Presto printer to a Popgadget reader and including 3 months of service for free (total value of giveaway is $180). The service is only available within the U.S., so this contest is limited to U.S. residents for use by a U.S. resident. To enter for a chance to win a Presto printer with 3 months of free service, send an email to brook.lenox@presto.com with the subject line “popgadget giveaway,” and include in the body of the email your full name and U.S. address. Winners will be selected at random from all valid entries submitted by midnight of Mother’s day, May 13, 2007. See the full Popgadget contest rules. Read what customers are saying about Presto, and view the demo and print styles on the Presto website.
Source: www.popgadget.net
Understanding and respecting copyright a problem for many
I blog fairly often about intellectual property (IP) issues and Creative Commons. My winter 2003 article for the TechEdge, “Copyright 101 for Educators,” is one of the resources I commend frequently to teachers, librarians, and school administrators when questions about copyright and publishing of student media projects come up during my workshops. In all these discussions, I’m quick to point out “I’m not a lawyer” and people should consult a lawyer for actual legal advice regarding copyright, intellectual property, and other issues. I do attempt to stay abreast of copyright and IP issues as they relate to education, students, and multimedia projects, however. As educators, we need accurate and practical guidelines to follow when using and re-using media in student multimedia projects as well as our own. The ideas within this post invite an introductory echo of this disclaimer: Please do not utilize any of the ideas or comments below as actual legal advice. I hope, however, my synthesis and observations about these topics will assist you as you strive to better understand intellectual property laws and how they apply to us all within and outside formal educational settings. Washington Post journalist Monica Hesse’ recent article “Help! I’ve been photonapped by Big Business!” highlights the fact that misunderstandings about copyright and failures to properly adhere to copyright law are not limited to young students posting videos onto YouTube. In several well publicized cases, corporations (including Microsoft and Virgin Mobile Australia) have inappropriately utilized Internet-posted images on their websites and in some large-scale advertising campaigns. After describing several of these cases involving corporations utilizing Flickr-posted images without permission or proper attribution and noting these circumstances require “a crash course in copyright law,” Monica asserts: It’s all doubly muddled online, where images can be thoughtlessly taken with one mouse click, such as when thousands of boys made screensavers out of high-school track star Allison Stokke’s photo and never once asked, “Legal?” If you are not familiar with the case and circumstances surrounding Allison Stokke, an attractive high school track athlete whose images became famous online without her permission or the permission of her parents, read Eli Saslow’s Washington Post article from May 2007, “Teen Tests Internet’s Lewd Track Record: California High Schooler Allison Stokke, 18, Becomes a Victim Of Unwanted Attention After Photo Is Posted on a Sports Blog.” This case is an eye opener and should be on the radar screen of parents as well as educators working with young people. Virtually ANY person, young or old, could become the next Allison Stokke or Alison Chang. While I encourage AWARENESS about these cases, I actively discourage hysteria or the sort of reactionary responses to social networking which we see all too frequently in the mainstream press as well as at PTA/PTO presentations by law enforcement officials about Internet safety. We need to be aware of the risks and issues related to online media sharing, but we don’t need to throw away all our computers and cancel all our Internet access lines as part of a fear-driven, extreme response. With regard to journalist Monica Hesse’s comment about digital technologies “muddying” the ethical waters of media re-mixing and reuse, it is certainly true digital copy-and-paste technologies have made the process of copying an image (with or without permission or proper attribution) much easier. I disagree with Monica’s contention that these situations are “doubly muddled” by digital technologies, however. These cases can be confusing, but I think that “muddiness” stems more from the diversity of copyright law around the world rather than the access to digital technologies which content creators and publishers often share. The complexities involved in intellectual property law, aside from technologies which are used, also add to the confusion. While technologies have made plagiarism as well as copyright violations easier to commit, they have also provided additional options for content creators and re-users/re-mixers. Creative Commons is the most salient and well known example. The YouTube video, “Privacy Issues, Photos, and the Internet,” provides an overview of the Alison Chang / Virgin Mobile Australia case which involved a camp counselor publishing a photo on Flickr and licensing it without permission from the subjects included in the photo. This is one of the cases Hesse briefly describes in her article: CNN also posted a video about this incident in September 2007 as well titled, “Who owns your photos?” Unfortunately users of CNN Video have to watch a 15 second advertisement before seeing the clip, and there does not appear to be a way to embed their video clips directly within a blog post. (To use Twitter parlance, @CNNNewsroom: You’re losing potential viewers because you do not support embedding. This post provides a case in point.) Under U.S. copyright law, permission is required to utilize copyrighted works in circumstances which do not qualify as “fair use.” In case of Alison Chang, several copyright / intellectual property mistakes were made by multiple parties which are worth reviewing. LESSON #1: USE AND REQUIRE “I-FORMS” Alison’s camp counselor apparently did not obtain Alison’s permission or her parent’s permission before web-posting her images to Flickr. In the case of a school organization or camp, media release and publication forms should be required just as medical forms often are. Dr. Tim Tyson described the way he handled (as a middle school principal) issues of Internet publication of student images and videos in his keynote, “Moving from Personal Knowledge to Global Contribution” at the 2007 Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference. (Nod of thanks to podcast publisher Bob Sprankle.) Tim called these “iForms.” Every school and camp should have them. Counselors and campers should be careful when they web-post images of others for whom they do not have permission to post and share their images. With the proliferation of camera phones and the ease with which images can be web-posted to sites like Flickr, situations like this one are sure to recur. It behooves organizational leaders to be aware of these issues and proactive with permission forms. LESSON #2: IF YOU ARE REUSING NEW MEDIA CONTENT ON A CORPORATE WEBSITE OR IN A NATIONAL AD CAMPAIGN, OBTAIN EXPLICIT PERMISSION FROM COPYRIGHT OWNERS AND PHOTO SUBJECTS The biggest mistake made in this case was by the Virgin Mobile Australia marketing team that decided to use this image without permission, from either the Flickr user who posted it (Alison’s camp counselor) or from Alison and her parents, since she is a minor. While it was true the camp counselor published the photo under a Creative Commons license, the Virgin Mobile Australia marketing team failed to meet the most basic requirement of a Creative Commons license: Providing attribution for the source of the photo. When I use Creative Commons licensed images in my presentations, I meet the attribution requirement by including the link to the original photo on each slide. You can see examples of this in my presentation slides for tomorrow’s keynote, “Powerful Tools, Powerful Possibilities.” When I’m including an embedded Flickr CC image in a blog post, I always link the image back to the original Flickr page. Corporate websites and national advertising campaign managers should know better than to use a web-posted image without permission. In my own Flickr-powered public career as a new-media photographer, I’ve been contacted in one instance by the publisher of a Vancouver Travel Guide asking for my explicit permission to let them use a photo I took in Vancouver in their publication. I was honored and said yes in this case, but that is not the larger point. The larger point is that Flickr makes it SO EASY for one user to directly message and contact other users. This feature is called FlickrMail. Why did the Virgin Mobile Australia marketing team not send a message to Alison’s counselor, asking for his permission to use the photo he’d published? Why did the marketing team not, at the very least, include the Flickr username and a CC license reference on the image itself, to at least ATTEMPT compliance of the VERY clear CC license terms? Ignorance and incompetence are the most likely explanations. I’m sure those responsible for this “error” are no longer employed directly or via contract by Virgin Mobile Australia. The opportunities available in our digitally connected infoverse ARE exciting, but in many cases they are also fraught with challenges. I encourage you to read more about the cases referenced in the articles and videos I have linked in this post. There are not simple solutions, but thankfully there ARE more options available to both media publishers and media re-mixers than simply traditional copyright. Josh Wolf penned a post for CNet in September 2007 focusing on this Virgin Mobile Australia case titled, “Suit exposes flaws in Creative Commons.” Rather than flaws in Creative Commons, I think these cases highlight the complexities involved in re-using media, which ALL media producers (yes, that should include students and teachers) need to understand. 1. Get permission from photo publishers. If CC permission is granted and your publication is high-profile, get additional explicit permission. 2. Same exhortation as above, except for photo subjects. I’m sure both of these lessons are included in any Marketing 101 class for business majors. If not, it’s high time they were included. Interestingly, I was not able to find this article by Monica Hesse on the Washington Post’s website, but did find the link above from the Seattle Times. The January 13th print edition of the Manhattan Mecury (of Manhattan, Kansas) included a PARTIAL reprint of the same article, titled “Online bloggers’ images increasingly being used without permission.” The final thirteen paragraphs of the article, starting with the sentence “Or, in total anarchy?” were not included in the Mercury’s printed version, however. Maybe they ran out of print space? Thanks to AHF for bringing this article to my attention. Technorati Tags: copyright, intellectualproperty, lawsuit, alisonchang, creativecommons, allisonstokke , chang, stokke, media, newmedia, flickr, publishing addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.speedofcreativity.org%2F2008%2F01%2F21%2Funderstanding-and-respecting-copyright-a-problem-for-many%2F’; addthis_title = ‘Understanding+and+respecting+copyright+a+problem+for+many’; addthis_pub = ‘’;
Source: www.speedofcreativity.org
Keywords: Printing,Publishing,Graphic Design,Printing,Color Copies,Publishing
