March 31 and April 2

We are going to be talking about copyright issues as the have played out in terms of the internet. For background on the history and development of copyright you might want to look at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FND


The clip's use of Disney characters is particularly satisfying to individuals who favor copyleft since Disney has been especially rigid and aggressive in terms of enforcing copyright to its characters, ideas, storylines - a move that is deeply ironic considering Disney's use of folk materials as well as storylines and characters from uncopyrighted materials. (See http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/05/hijacked_disney.html ).

Other sites you might want to check out as you follow through on ideas raised in the readings include:

Overview of DMCA of 1998

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/dmca1.htm

DCMA of 1998 + amendments + testimony

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/primary_materials/legislation/dmca.html

US Constitution

legal basis for copyright = Article 1 Section 8

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/articles.htm

Creative Commons

http://creativecommons.org/

In class on Monday you will do some writing about how the issues raised by Boynton connect to changes in "writing" and conceptions of authorship that result from the nature of cyberspace. At the end of class you can post these reflections to your blog - or you may choose to create a different post for Reflection 1.

Blog 9 (due Monday, March 31) : your first entry to develop writing for your research topic.

Blog 10 (due Monday April 7) : second entry on research topic.

Reflection 1 (on copyright) + Reflection 2 (on Lauren Collins "Friend Game" are also due Monday April 7.

In class Wednesday, April 2, you have an open workshop. During this class you may work on creating the structure for your web essay, or other work for the course. Good luck - and I will see you on Monday April 7 when we take up our discussion of the Myspace Suicide.

I have sent you feedback on Blogs 7 and 8 and your Wikipedia Projects. You did a great job.

Class Wednesday, March 26

You did a great job presenting your web designs/headings for the content of your web essays in class today. You all look like you have a good start on this. Keep your research question in mind as you begin to write. Make sure each section of your essay relates to and develops an answer for that question. Good work!

On Monday we will be discussing "The Tyranny of Copyright" by Robert Boynton, 207 - 218 in Vitanza, so take a look at it. For those of you with topics related to ethics - this is relevant. It is also a consideration for publishing issues, and it makes some important points about how digital spaces are changing the way we think about authorship and ownership.

On Wednesday I will be at a conference. You will have an in-class workshop to workshop, using FrontPage on the lab computers, to work on the layout for your essay. Your work will be developing (or choosing) the template for your essay, and setting up the link structure. Bring Johnson-Eilola to class for reference, and Ryan will be available for point of need help to figure out the details. You also have the link for the Microsoft site and help page.

I will be reading through your blogs over the weekend (through Blog 8). For Blog 9 and Blog 10, due Monday March 31, and Monday April 7, you will create posts on your research topic. These posts should be writing you will use for your web essay. We will spend some time in class reading through this writing - to get you some support and feedback before you put your essay all together.

Have a good week end an see you on Monday!

Class Monday March 24

Today you presented presented your contributions to Wikipedia, and discussed your experiences posting. You had a range of experinces - and had a number of different observations about how Wikipedia works and the "validity" of the information it provides. A short list would include the observations that;

- posts are regularly monitored and removed (sometimes in under two minutes)

- many edits are simply reversions to the original post - there does not seem to be much thought put into understanding and assimilating new users' contributions

- what is valued as important to the entry (what stays posted) does not always make sense or represent an in-depth (encyclopedic) explortion of subject material (eg the contradiction in the pro-ana post, the form of the self-publishing post, the one-sideness of the history of travel blogging) => wikipedia is as much a social experience as a scholarly one

- editors are sometimes rude, pedantic and otherwise off-putting (the comment about using periods at the end of sentences

- there is a definite a hierarchy - where some individuals have the power to remove posts and "ban" individuals who re-post their posts without negotiating a consensus

- getting your post to stay up on wikipedia is not easy => even though this is supposed to be a democratic, open process there are gatekeepers who are bent on keeping some kinds of information out

- there is an ideology that decides what will be posted and what will not I'm thinking of Angela's experience); this ideology goes beyond the npov and not a dictionary and etc. rules listed in "what wikipedia is not" list

- the moderators/editors remove edits based on their understanding of/perspective on the material - not necessarily on its worth ( I'm thinking of James', Ricky's and Jennifer's experiences)

- pages with high traffic are harder to stay posted on than pages with low traffic (the eBay entry was the most vulnerable in this respect)

-some editors spend 8-hour days on wikipedia

- the validity of wikipedia entries needs to be taken with a grain of salt


We also had a discussion of how publishing on wikipedia compares to print publishing - both in terms of validity and possibilities for new authors to make it into print. I would like to read some more of your reflections on this on your blogs. I was surprised at how difficult it was for contributors with good intentions to make edits. I was also surprised how un-welcoming the editors you dealt with were.



For class Wednesday:

We did not get to your presentations on your layouts for your web essays today - so you are going to present them on Wednesday - so we are revising the schedule: do the FrontPage tutorial on your home computer or in one of the computer labs here at Kean (let me and I will get you a place to work). The site for the tutorial is:

http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC061276411033

Come to class with any questions - about how to use FrontPage - and Ryan and/or I will try to work through them with you.

We will spend most of the class talking about your layouts.

I will be reading your blog entries over the weekend. Your next entry, Blog 9, due on Monday, will be an entry where you are developing writing for your web essay. At this point you should be doing some in-depth analysis on a particular aspect of your topic.

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Class Wednesday, March 12 and over the break

By the end of class today you should have all the information - in terms of how and what to post- for your wikipedia entry. We will use class as a workshop - for you to network with each other and me to do what ever you need to get your entry posted. You should have a quick drawing/plan to set up what your post will look by the end of class.

Your assignment over break is to post your wikipedia entry (no later than Friday, March 14) - and to watch it. Keep an eye on any revisions - and if you are moved to do so - participate in those revisions. Blog 8, due on Monday March 24, should include the text of your original entry, a link to your completed entry, your wikipedia user name, and a reflection on what you learned about participating in wiki online writing/an online community.

Also in class today we will have a brief discussion of layouts and navigation for you hypertext essay. At this point, you should be getting a fairly definite idea of the headings for the information you are going to have in your essay (the sections), the links (both internal and external), and you should be ready to think about how to organize your text.

Your second assignment over the break is to design the layout for your essay and develop a brief presentation.

Your presentation should include:
1) a schematic of your essay that includes the navigational structures labeled with the names in Chapter 7 of Eilola;
2) major headings/section titles with a brief synopsis of content; and
3) a brief explanation of why you decided to organize your essay the way you did.

To find "models" for how you might organize your work, check out the web essays at Kairos. The following link offers one example that is fairly simple. Check through the back issues and TOC to find others. Blogging Places: Locating Pedagogy in the Whereness of Blogs




Have a great break - and have fun in Wikipedia-wonderland.

In Class Monday March 10

We are now following the assignment sheet for the Wikipedia Assignment. For today - Blog 7- was to do some exploratory writing on your wikipedia entry to include: focus, sources for your entry, draft writing; any questions you ahve about the posting process.

At the beginning of class we will have an open discussion on any discoveries and questions - and the rest of the class will be devoted to developing your entry.

Also - youmight want to take a look at this article by a wikipedia participant; http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131?email

Wikipedia Project

The assignment sheet for the wikipedia project is posted and I have written to each of you regarding your focus for your research project and how you might use some of that work for your wikipedia posting. We are actually a little bit ahead of what is stated on the calendar - since we previewed the assignment sheet on Monday.

In class Wednesday you will spend hands-on time in the presence of your classmates to familiarize yourself with the wikipedia editing processes. That way - if something doesn't work - there will be someone next to you to ask. Hopefully SOMEONE in the classroom will have the answer to all of our questions (and it probably won't be me - my editing skills on wikipedia are probably about the same as yours).

As I said in class - your future blogging assignments are going to be your work related to your research topic. At the beginning you will be summarizing and reporting on what you are reading - and as you get deeper into the project you will begin posing theories/answers to your research question. You can use RSS feeds or bookmarking programs as you choose - as I mentioned in class - my feeling was that you had enough to work with at this point. So Blog entries 7 - 10 will be on your topic, with Blog 8 as a report on your posting to wikipedia (see assignment sheet).

Good work on your research plans and see you in class on Thursday.