Skip to main content

If I Knew Then...

Learning more about the intellectual property and the creative commons this week and looking through the tools has been enlightening and to be honest a little frustrating. LOL!

I was looking through the Merlot.org website and I am so upset that I didn't know about this site while I was teaching. The amount of materials that I could have used to supplement the class readings on both historical and literary topics would have been so helpful. 

As a result, I will be sending several of the resources I have discovered so far in this course to many of my high school teacher friends in an effort that they may benefit from my learning and discovery. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Culture of Connectivity - Jose Van Dijck - Chapter 6

In this chapter, Van Dijck focuses on YouTube. YouTube started with the intentions of being an alternative to broadcast television. Like Flickr, its origins and its present state do not function the same. Where it used to focus on user generated content, the user is considered more of a consumer now with the intention of watching rather than posting. However, YouTube introduced some new abilities that have had a lasting impact. YouTube introduced the idea of streamed content, the ability to upload video, and combined these with aspects of social networking! YouTube videos are rarely downloaded, viewers do not own the content, but they have access to view the material. Where YouTube differs from Flickr is that in its adaptions of the purpose and focus, Some of the original users of the platform were disgruntled by the changes, but the majority of users supported the change and embraced it as a part of their everyday lives, particularly with their capabilities of meshing almost seamlessl

The Culture of Connectivity - Jose Van Dijck - Chapter 7

This chapter focuses on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is much different from the other sites discussed in the book so far, however its inclusion in the top influential actors in the digital landscape is undeniable.  Wikipedia is a "professionally run, volunteer based, nonprofit organization whose goal is the online production of an encyclopedia" (p. 132). It's nonprofit status came about due to the creation and maintenance of the Wikimedia Foundation. The sites is founded on five basic principles, but she never actually lists those 5 principles, but says that neutrality is the most important of them and while the elements that measure the success of the encyclopedia also cause "disenchantment" for those who feel that the focus on neutrality and the bureaucratic structure limits the site. Van Dijck discuses the users of the site and states that crowd management is one of the sites biggest strengths. She points out that it is neither the specialists or the generalists that

The Culture of Connectivity - Jose Van Dijck - Chapter 4

Chapter 5 focuses on Twitter. Originally the creators of Twitter were striving to create a utility. A piece of information infrastructure that was an everyday and unnoticeable part of our lives, like electricity or phones. Van Dijck says that this created a paradox in that is "presumes Twitter to be a neutral platform upon which users freely interact, much like the Web itself...indifferent to the contents they exchange" but that "the streams of data are engineered to promote certain uses and users over time" (p.69). Van Dijck says this paradox of "enabling connectedness while engineering connectivity" and "propagating neutrality while securing profitability" show up in every aspect of the platform. This is kind of a trend in all social media platforms as the start out about the user, but need to pay the bills... The Twitter platform has has some pivotal contributions to the culture of connectivity (culture influence tech while tech influences cul