Well I missed the part about adding my del.icio.us tags to my blog! But I've added them now. I guess I need to remember to read the fine print.
Anyway, this PhotoStory assignment is going to require some thought. I guess I could use the pictures that I took in Quebec a year ago and do a sort of "walking tour". That seems a little lame though.
I started becoming active with my Facebook account this week. I set up an account months ago, but never did anything with it. I now have as "friends" all my in-laws in New Hampshire, my daughter in Germany, and some friends both here on campus and back in New Jersey. I'm still waiting to see the benefit, however.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Semantic Web Introducation
This is my first podcast. I found that having a formal script helped a lot. This was a tip that I learned from Mike Jeffries during Adobe Presenter training.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Van Horn - Week 5 - Copyright
Copyright and Fair Use
Jim Van Horn
The founding fathers understood the importance of intellectual property and provided for it in the Constitution.
“To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” (Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution).
They understood that in order to encourage artistic and scientific pursuits, the creators had to be able to derive financial gain from their creations. Copyright is one form of intellectual property .
In short, copyright is “the right to copy”. Copyright protects more than just the creation of a facsimile, however. Copyright provides protection for:
“…original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” (1976 Copyright Law 17 U.S.C. § 102).
In order to have copyright protection the work must first be original. One cannot copyright a piece of work just because no one else has copyright ownership – the work must be original.
Copyright protection no longer requires formal application and registration. Once it is “fixed in any tangible medium” the author has ownership and copyright protection. The legislators allowed for future technological advances by indicating that the medium could be “now known or later developed.”
The copyright law gives the original author the right to reproduce the work, prepare derivatives of the work, distribute copies for sale, perform the work if it is musical or dramatic in nature, and to display a visual work publicly. By granting these exclusive rights to the author, the law disallows these activities to anyone else.
The copyright law attempts to balance the benefits of creators and consumers. The creator has the right to benefit financial or otherwise from his work. This benefit is what fuels the fires or creativity. But the author’s benefit must be weighed against the general publics benefit – access to creative works. How then can teachers use original works?
First the teacher and their students can purchase copies of the work. The school could also purchase a license to make copies of the work. This license can be obtained directly from the copyright holder or through a copyright clearinghouse. Copyright clearinghouses act as brokers between content creators and content consumers. Consumers pay a flat rate and are allowed access to copyrighted materials from multiple content creators who have signed up with the clearinghouse. The teacher can obtain permission to make copies of the work directly from the copyright owner. In some cases no permission is necessary.
No permission is required for materials that are not eligible for copyright protection. These include raw facts or ideas and even works consisting entirely of information that is itself not copyrightable.
Work that is in the “Public Domain” is free to be used by anyone without restrictions. The author may choose to place their work in the public domain in order to allow for maximum exposure. Copyrighted material falls into public domain when the term of the copyright expires. Under the current copyright law a copyright expires 70 years after the death of the last surviving author of the work. If the work is created by an employee of a company, “the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.” (U.S. Copyright Office)
An alternative taken by some creators is to register their works with Creative Commons (creativecommons.org). Creative Commons offers a middle ground between copyright (full restrictions) and public domain (no restrictions). Authors can modify the terms for use. The different CC license conditions are:
Attribution Only requirement is to give credit, attribution.
Share Alike You use it only to the degree that you allow others to use your work
Non-Commercial Limited to non-commercial use
No Derivative Only verbatim copies of your work, not derivativ
Works
There are additional exceptions that are important for educational uses of copyrighted materials.
Fair Use Doctrine (Section 107)
Library Exemption (Section 108)
Classroom Exemption (Section 110)
Distance Learning (TEACH Act 2002)
The Fair Use Doctrine is delineated in Section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act.
fair use of a copyrighted work, including … use … for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching …, scholarship, or research.”
(Section 107 1976 Copyright Act)
Some of the factors used by the courts to determine fair use are the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount of the portion used, and the effect of the use upon the market value of the work. Nonprofit educational purposes are looked upon more favorably than commercial purposes. The court has also recognized the spontaneity of use in some educational settings where time does not allow for obtaining permission before use.
If the copyrighted work was created for educational purposes in the first place, claims of fair use are less likely to be allowed. In any case, the fair use doctrine cannot be used to avoid purchasing the materials. Copying educational materials that would be considered “consumables” would not be covered under the fair use doctrine.
The amount of the work that is copied is not set forth in the law but guidelines have been adopted by several educational organizations. If more that 10% of a work is copied claims of fair use will probably be denied.
Courts also consider the commercial effect of the use upon the value of the work. If sales of the work are lost due to the teacher copying all or part of the work then fair use may not be granted.
When a teacher plans to continue to use copies of works from semester to semester the teacher must seek and obtain permission. The spontaneous use of the material can only be valid for the first semester that the material is used in a course.
Fair use does not remove the requirement to attribute the work to its original author or the need to display the appropriate copyright notice.
The Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act is an extension of the classroom exemption as it applies to distance learning. The intention was to give distance educations the same protection as classroom education. In order for the use of copyrighted materials in distance education to qualify for the TEACH Act exemptions, the following criteria must be met:
- The institution must be an accredited, non-profit educational institution.
The use must be part of mediated instructional activities.
The use must be limited to a specific number of students enrolled in a specific class.
The use must either be for ‘live’ or asynchronous class sessions.
The use must not include the transmission of textbook materials, materials “typically purchased or acquired by students,” or works developed specifically for online uses.
Only “reasonable and limited portions,” such as might be performed or displayed during a typical live classroom session, may be used.
The institution must have developed and publicized its copyright policies, specifically informing students that course content may be covered by copyright, and include a notice of copyright on the online materials.
The institution must implement some technological measures to ensure compliance with these policies. (U.S. Copyright Office)
Educators are granted certain exemptions regarding copyrighted material but they must exercise reasonable caution. Just being on the web does not exempt a work from copyright protection. Fair use only protects reasonable and limited portions and not the entire work. And finally, materials created expressly for e-learning cannot be copied without permission for use in another e-learning course.
Young students can learn about copyright laws by accessing sites like:
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking
Although delicious and other social bookmarking sites are promoted as web 2.0 social networking applications, these sites are also very useful for personal use alone. By storing your bookmarked websites online, they are available from any Internet connected computer. In the past I have struggled with two different sets of "favorites" - one at work and one at home. With a social bookmarking site I can consolidate my home and work favorites lists and have access from anywhere from any computer.
The "social" part of bookmarking is related to establishing networks and sharing bookmarks. If you have friends or co-workers with which you share a common interest you can add them to you bookmarking network. This allows you directly access all of their networks and view sites that they have bookmarked. Once a person is in your network you can easily forward a bookmark that you find interesting directly to them. This creates a collaborative network for finding an sharing websites related to shared interests
Delicious Features
Tags
Another web 2.0 feature of social bookmarking is the creation of new information. This is done using tags and notes which you supply when you bookmark a website. Tags are one word labels that identify the contents in a bookmarked site. In some ways it is like the file folder paradigm in computer file organization. The difference is that a single bookmark can have multiple tags and effectively be in multiple "folders". Like any good organizational tool the question is not "Where can I put this?" but rather, "Where can I find this later?" Tags can be organized into "bundles" which might be compared to file cabinet for tags. Just like a single website may have multiple tags (folders) a tag can be "bundled" into more than one bundle (file cabinet).
Tags also create a kind of classification system or folksonomy. By adding tags the users create metadata that describes the web content. This folksonomy helps other users to efficiently find the information for which they are searching.
When adding bookmarks you also have the opportunity to add your own notes. These notes can not only be helpful to you when you return to a bookmark after several months but can also be helpful to anyone who might view your bookmarks.
Subscriptions
According to the delicious website "Subscriptions are a way to see the recent bookmarks that everybody has saved with the tags that you're interested in. After you add a tag to your subscriptions, the latest bookmarks for that tag will appear on this page. You can subscribe to multiple tags to create an automatically updated list of interesting bookmarks.
"Subscriptions allow you to watch all your favorite tags in one place. After you add a tag to your subscriptions, Delicious watches for everyone's bookmarks saved with that tag and delivers them to your subscriptions page. It's really a "tag aggregator", good for watching what people are bookmarking about a favorite topic or series of topics."
Subscriptions can help keep you up to date on the latest information available concerning topic in which you are interested. Like tag bundles, subscriptions can also be bundled to aid in organization of your information.
People Counter
When viewing bookmarks there is a count of people that have tagged the site already. This number can be helpful for determining the popularity and possible reliability of the site's tag.
Social Bookmarking in Education
Social bookmarking can be used by both educators and students. The organizational structure for storing website favorites is a great boon to anyone needing to find and reference information. Tags and tag bundles allow the user to easily manage a very large catalog of websites.
The following list of educational uses for social bookmarking comes from an article one the Classroom 2.0 wiki.
- Network with other educators around the globe who share your interests.
- Create social bookmark accounts for your school's academic departments. Teachers within the department all contribute to the growing database of web resources.
- Contact other people for professional networking, based on their social bookmarks.
- Allow yourself and your students to share bookmarks on research topics.
- Subscribe to someone's bookmarks via RSS and receive updates whenever they add new websites.
- Collaborate on projects with other schools, sharing bookmarks between all participating communities.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Van Horn Week 3 - Web 2.0
WEB 2.0 and WEB 3.0
Definition
Web 2.0 is an extension of the original web and for the most part uses the existing components available in the original web. The original web had two classes of users – content producers and content consumers. Web developers created content that was then viewed using an internet browser. Web 2.0 blurs that user distinction. Creating web content is a shared activity. Normal users view, create, and modify content.
Some sites are social networking sites for the expressed purpose of meeting new friends or finding old ones. These sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, allow subscribers to share text, images, and video with their online “friends”.
Other sites use the interactivity available through Web 2.0 to engage in collaborative development. A prime example of such a site is Wikipedia. It would be equivalent to Encyclopedia Britannica providing bound books of blank pages on which they encouraged the users to provide the terms to be defined AND their definitions. Wiki books allow teachers or even their students to write textbooks. Other examples of ground-roots development are the folksonomies created by various Web 2.0 sites that allow users to “tag” items. These tags provide a kind of metadata that describes the content item. Web logs (blogs) are a hybrid including both social networking and grassroots website development.
A new Web 2.0 business model has developed where people are able to gain financial rewards for their creations. This is in addition to online auction sites like eBay and Craigslist which is a type of “social marketing”. Photo libraries like Shutterstock and iStockPhoto allow photographers to upload pictures that are then purchased by web designers or other graphic arts consumers. The websites, themselves, provide the online “shelf space” and shopping cart. I will talk further about these types of applications when I discuss my sample applications.
Pros and cons?
Each of the categories of Web 2.0 sites has its positives and negatives. An often mentioned quality of Web 2.0 is its “democratization” of information. There is no longer an information oligarchy that controls the creation and distribution of information derived from its economic and technical position.
Another feature is the real-time updates available online. News no longer needs to wait for the “daily addition” or the nightly television broadcast. Blogs, and various news channels provide immediate coverage and comment on events. Textbooks can be updated with corrections and additions without the time and expense of a new printing or new edition.
With all the flexibility comes a risk. Misinformed or misguided individuals can induce errors into the online information. Social networks can be utilized by predators who can take advantage of the naïve.
Sample Applications
I began my search for Web 2.0 applications at go2web20.net which purports to be “the complete Web2.0 sites directory.” Here are the sites I investigated and how they could be used in a classroom.
1. PicNik – A shared photo editing application.
o Could be used by students creating a project requiring original images
o The onscreen cropping tool includes a grid that aids in using the “rule of thirds”
2. Twitter – Social networking “mini-blogging” tool
o I way of encouraging and tracking student progress toward a learning goal
o Project milestones can be self-reported by students and available for viewing by the teacher “follows” the student
3. EduSlide – A collection of grass-roots learning objects that can be shared
o There are complete courses available to which students can be directed for background information
o Because it is also an online learning management system, an instructor could use it as the delivery method for a course.
What is Web 3.0?
I thought you would never ask! I am actually giving a presentation on Web 3.0/Semantic Web at the TechNet conference in March. The short answer is: “Web 3.0 applies meaning, semantics, to a web application.” One or two paragraphs are not enough space so here are some pictures (that should take the place of a couple of thousand words).
(Tim Berners-Lee 2006)
Tim Berners-Lee presented his vision for a semantic web a decade ago. According to him, “The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.” The “well-defined meaning” is primarily associated with metadata in RDF format. The image on the right is Tim’s “layer cake” showing the semantic web with a foundation of Unicode (that is the way that text is stored in a computer), URI (Uniform Resource Identifier of which URL for website addresses is a subset), and XML (eXtensible Markup Language which uses tags and is the foundation for RSS and other applications). RDF (Resource Description Format) is an extension of XML and is made up of subject-predicate-object triples. An example would be a person’s email. The triple would be Jim(subject) email address(predicate) jdv06820@ucmo.edu (object). Ontologies are graphical representations of the relationships within an area of study and utilizes RDF. A common language for creating an ontology is OWL (Web Ontology Language – the jumbling of the letters in the acronym is a reflection of the influence of Winnie the Pooh on the original developers. You see the owl spelled his name WOL.) In many ways an ontology resembles a concept map with the connecting lines between concepts labeled to indicate relationship such as “is-a” or “is-part-of”. Jim “is-a” human being. Right leg “is-part-of” Jim. These are both triples in the RDF-sense.
The Logic level of Tim’s layer cake will allow computers to compare information in ontologies to discover analogies or synonyms. In a standard web search if you searched on “rock” all you would get back is a list of websites containing the word “rock” or a derivative of “rock”, but you wouldn’t get back websites about stones or pebbles. The meaning, semantics, as well as the syntax must be understood and evaluated.
The Trust level may be manifest using something like the FOAF (Friend of a friend) a “project [which] is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.” FOAF is an ontology.
(captured from: Semantic Universe - Webcast 3: Semantic Web in Use)
Currently pharmaceutical companies are using linked data to discover relationships that can point to additional uses for patented drugs. Web developers are beginning to include micro-formatting in their websites. The microformat tags give specific meaning to metadata such things as name, address, phone, author , and date. Semantics is also being incorporated into many of the more popular search engines.
NASA is using semantic technologies to understand the different vocabularies used by the various disciplines involved in the project to take men to Mars. A single component may have several different names:
- Hardware nomenclature: Flow Control Valve
- Software nomenclature: 3-way Mix Valve
- Telemetry nomenclature: HXB (Heat eXchange Bypass) valve
Monday, February 2, 2009
Van Horn Week 2 - RSS Feeds
What is RSS?
When one asks what RSS stands for a time frame must also be included, for RSS has had three different meanings at different times. Originally RSS stood for “Rich Site Summary”. Later the acronym was changed to mean “RDF Site Summary”. The current meaning “Really Simple Syndication” is associated with RSS 2.0. RSS is based on XML. Formerly, in RSS 1.0, it was based on a specialized form of XML known a RDF, Resource Description Framework. RDF is one of the foundational technologies for the emerging semantic web.
For the consumer of RSS feeds, it is a technology that allows users to “subscribe” to a web resource: blog, wiki, news source, etc. and receive notification of any new entries. In fact an RSS feed is a url (or more accurately a uri) for an xml file that contains information about the associated resource. The xml file utilizes tags defined in the RSS namespace such as: Title, Author, Publish Date, URL, Category, Author, etc. to provide metadata about the resource. The subscriber views this information using an RSS reader. The RSS reader parses and displays the information in an easily readable format. The RSS XML looks like this:
<item>
<title>Equine Training Teleseminar Series - Starting Jan 2009</title>
<link>http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/equine-training-teleseminar-series-starting-jan-2009/12608920/</link>
<description><![CDATA[
<a href='http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/equine-training-teleseminar-series-starting-jan-2009/12608920/'><img src='http://images.mefeedia.com/entries/12608920/video_120.png' width='120' height='95' /></a><br />
From : Metacafe - Today's Videos by Metacafe<br />Join the teachers and visionaries from the movie in a special FREE teleseminar series starting early January 2009. You are invited to join the experts and the maker of the documentary each week for 5 weeks and learn about the latest thinking in horse training and horse human relationships ]]></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:40:12 -0500</pubDate>
</item>
The RSS reader formats the information into something like this:
Issues during the setup/install.
Setting up the RSS readers was pretty straightforward. The main issue for both the online, Google Reader, and installed versions, RSS OWL, was paring down all the delivered feeds. There is just so much data out there in RSS feeds.
With minimal assistance I believe that high school and college students could setup and install either the online or installed reader. Staff, administrators, parents and other adults may need to be assisted and encouraged more, however. I would suggest in a K-12 setting that an RSS reader be part of the standard software image for district computers. Standardizing on one of the RSS readers would help to mitigate many support issues.
Differences between the online and the installed version.
Both versions have there pluses and minuses. Google Reader being part of the Google application suite has the added convenience and can be incorporated into your iGoogle homepage. RSS Owl has the advantage of being accessible even when there is no internet access. I will, however, probable elect Google Reader as my permanent RSS reader.
Interesting RSS links
Inside Higher Education - http://insidehighered.com/
University Business - http://www.universitybusiness.com/dailynewshome.aspx. Although I had already subscribed to the email version, I believe I prefer this one.
Semantic Web blog - http://www.semanticfocus.com/
My son’s photo blog. He is trying to post a new image every day - http://vanhornvisuals.blogspot.com/
How can you use RSS in education
The following list of educational benefits and uses for RSS comes from “The use of blogs, wikis and RSS in education: A conversation of possibilities” (Duffy, Burns 2006).
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/5398/1/5398.pdf
• Lecturers and students can keep track of their favourite websites from one convenient location, without any interface clutter.
• Lecturers and students can be notified of updates from many websites that are relevant to the course topics. This is a very efficient use of time. Whatever the lecture topic, there will be a large number of blogs, wikis, news, research and media sites that are consistently publishing material relevant to the topic; rather than re-visiting all of these sites on a daily basis, using RSS technology learners and teachers can easily track new developments on each of these sites.
• RSS is a better solution than an email list subscription, as it does not require users to give out their email addresses, avoiding the potential for spammers to obtain their email details.
• In using blogs with students, instead of visiting each student’s individual blog teachers can subscribe to an RSS feed that allows them to obtain instant notifications and updates relating to any new content added. This will dramatically reduce their workload. Additionally, students themselves can also subscribe to the feeds of their friends, peers and teachers.
• Lecturers and students can establish RSS feeds relating to assignment topics and areas of research interest. This allows access to up-to-date content on a wide variety of subjects automatically.
• From an administration perspective, higher education portals often offer targeted collections of links for students, staff, parents, visitors, and alumni. Most users start their portal experience with a time sensitive task to accomplish. Users typically ‘pull’ down information from a site. Within the RSS model users can have information ‘pushed’ to them that is customised to their personal interests.
In addition , administrators can keep informed by subscribing to journals such as Inside Higher Education, and University Business.
The London School of Economic and Political Science is using enhanced RSS feeds from each training organization on campus to consolidate all the training available on campus into a common portal. In addition to the standard RSS tags in the feed they have added their own tags such as <location>, <schedule>, and <audience>. (Secker and Fryer 2008) Once a feed is created and accessed, its use is not limited to a standard reader. Applications like the one at LSE can be built to take advantage of the metadata available in the feed.
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