Black Mirror

Hello all! I've already made a post on NetSmart for this week, but a quote from Zack's blog reminded me of something and it would have been too long to post as a comment.

Zack mentioned how people say things like, "get ready, because soon technology will be all around us." Netflix has an original series titled Black Mirror (they recently released the third season!) It's an incredibly morbid yet addicting show about how technology affects peoples' lives, usually negatively.

Each episode is it's own story, and some of them hit terrifyingly close to home. In the newest season one of the characters says, "I didn't realize I was living in the future." We always think of the future as flying cars and teleportation, but we're there now. 3D printing and virtual reality and phones that we can video chat on anywhere we want!

More realistically, we're all in different places in the future. My mom had to call me at school because she couldn't find the Windows button on the computer. I still have to have physical papers and CDs because I don't entirely trust in the concept of "the cloud". And my students have never had to endure the stress that was calling your friend on their house phone and her parents answering. I'm content with how I'm in the middle of this technology boom - I don't feel overwhelmed but I can survive without constant internet connection.

Just some extra thoughts. Black Mirror is an fantastically creative show - the first episode is a little much but the rest I could watch over and over!

Net Smart

After reading (aka skipping every few pages to get the gist of each chunk) NetSmart I felt okay about my internet habits. I honestly don’t do that much research on stuff. Most of the resources for my classroom I get are from coworkers. I try to stay away from the news sources because I am a hermit and all politics annoy me J

My students are much different, as the resources they get from their peers are obnoxious videos of people in ridiculous outfits singing really dumb songs. My inner monologue has been going back and forth since last class – to put things simply, whose job is it to teach our students how to be net smart? I see my kids 45 minutes once a week to frantically try to put together a concert. There aren’t computers or research projects, and the only homework is to practice their instrument.

I think it’s one of those ‘it’s everyone’s job and also nobody’s job.’ Parents need to be involved with what their kids are doing online, but I know that’s not always happening. Classroom teachers use research, but also have way too many subjects to squish into their days. Specialists either use a lot or don’t use any researching. Does it actually say in any teacher’s program of studies that there is a unit on showing kids how to be net smart? Or is it just something we assume everyone else is doing?

Copyright Clarity

This week was all about copyright! I expected it to be mega boring and technical, but I was actually pretty engaged. Hobbs’ book talked about copyright in a very relatable way that wasn’t too boring or over my head.

I tend to be the type of teacher that just copies everything a lot. My kids tend to lose papers, or leave them at home, and there’s not way I’m giving them the original copies to write all over. I never really considered it to be ‘breaking the rules’ – my school owns the full pieces of music; I just don’t trust 10 year olds to return all original copies with no markings on them.

I like the way that Hobbs talks about fair use. It made me feel better about all the copies I do make! She says to think about it like: is the way I’m using this preventing the author from making money? As long as the answer to that is no, then you’re probably fine. Are you changing the integrity of the original work in terms of things like audience, purpose, and amount? As long as that answer is yes, then you’re still probably fine.

Copyright seems like just a really big gray area. Fair Use is up to interpretation, so there’s no set of rules that we can put up on a poster on a wall for everyone to follow.