I know, I know. I should just start a Lessig blog. So sue me. The man is inspiring, at least to me. So inspiring, in fact, that after listening to his most recent talk from the 4Cs conference last week, I decided to transcribe the whole thing for further study. (I know…I have no life.)

“Writing Not Allowed?” basically asks whether or not the freedoms we have always enjoyed in terms of “remixing” content through writing should apply when writing changes from just text into audio, video, digital photography, etc. It’s a typically well crafted, impassioned plea from someone who just gets it more than most, and I would urge you to carve out 40 minutes to listen to it. I’ll leave you with a snippet from the end.

Now you have a connection to this debate that is much more important, I think, than even the profits threatened by this war. You have a connection to the literacy that these technologies comprise. Because when we live in a world that is constituted by these forms of media, we live in a world where our ability to participate in this world depends upon the capacity to critically understand an express in this form of media.

Now we never had that opportunity growing up, in an age where the cost of doing it was so high. But our children will. And you in this context need to become engaged in a single objective which is consistent with the objectives of academics since the beginning of time. You have to defend the freedom to write. You have to defend a world where the expression of ideals using the tools of the age is again free. Because if we allow this issue to be defined and determined by the extremes that now occupy the few, that freedom will be lost to our children. And that loss is much more significant than the loss of profits to one very small segment of the American economy. It’s a loss that will ramify not just in the capacity to speak, but in the ideal of what it means to be member citizens of a democracy. You grew up with the freedom to obey the law, and our kids grow up in a world where that freedom is in so many places, taken away from them.

So I’ve come here to ask you to help in this battle. First to redefine it, not as a war, but as the continuation of the struggle that began when Guttenberg released free speech first in our tradition. You need to enter this debate, and speak with the authenticity of your position, not as promoters of piracy, because no one world believe that you are promoting piracy, but as promoters of the tradition of knowledge that we inherited, and that we have an obligation as academics to pass down to our children in as a robust a form as we inherited.

As teachers, we need to get our brains around these issues. And then we need to do some serious teaching.
—–

I know, I know. I should just start a Lessig blog. So sue me. The man is inspiring, at least to me. So inspiring, in fact, that after listening to his most recent talk at the 4Cs conference last week, I decided to transcribe the whole thing for further study. (I know…I have no life.)

“Writing Not Allowed?” basically asks whether or not the freedoms we have always enjoyed in terms of “remixing” content in writing should apply when writing changes from just text into audio, video, blogging, etc. It’s a typically well crafted, impassioned plea from someone who just gets it more than most, and I would urge you to carve out 40 minutes to listen to it. I’ll leave you with a snippet from the end.

Now you have a connection to this debate that is much more important, I think, than even the profits threatened by this war. You have a connection to the literacy that these technologies comprise. Because when we live in a world that is constituted by these forms of media, we live in a world where our ability as participants in this world depends upon the capacity to critically understand an express in this form of media. Now we never had that opportunity growing up, in an age where the cost of doing it was so high. But our children will. And you in this context need to become engaged in a single objective which is consistent with the objectives of academics since the beginning of time. You have to defend the freedom to write. You have to defend a world where the expression of ideals using the tools of the age is again free. Because if we allow this issue to be defined and determined by the extremes that now occupy the few, that freedom will be lost to our children. And that loss is much more significant than the loss of profits to one very small segment of the American economy. It’s a loss that will ramify not just in the capacity to speak, but in the ideal of what it means to be member citizens of a democracy. You grew up with the freedom to obey the law, and our kids grow up in a world where that freedom is in so many places, taken away from them. So I’ve come here to ask you to help in this battle. First to redefine it, not as a war, but as the continuation of the struggle that began when Guttenberg released free speech first in our tradition. You need to enter this debate, and speak with the authenticity of your position, not as promoters of piracy, because no one world believe that you are promoting piracy, but as promoters of the tradition of knowledge that we inherited, and that we have an obligation as academics to pass down to our children in as a robust a form as we inherited.

As teachers, we need to understand this debate. And then we need to teach.

—–

(Via James, who has much to say on this as well…) This piece by Ulises Mejias takes a look at the writing process in wikis as a way to understand the need for what he calls a “social literacy” now needed when tackling collaborative writing spaces.

Thus, social literacy…does not refer to the skills necessary to perform in society, but to the use of the resource of writing in social contexts. Social literacy amounts to the textual practices not (as has been true so far) of a single author, but of multiple and simultaneous authors. Wikis make social literacy apparent by allowing us to witness the evolution of text in time, and evolution that reflects the decisions not of a single individual, but of a community.

In keeping the focus on literacy in the context of writing, this post does much to identify the ways in which we are going to need to prepare students for the negotiation of content and style that is going to be required to navigate these collaborative spaces. And there is much to say about the educational benefits of using wikispace to create content, but not to use it as a discussion space.

There are plenty of other online tools better equipped to support an Initiation-Reply mode of conversation (such as discussion boards for collective dialogue, or blogs and email for more individualized forms of exchange). If appropriate, these tools can be used in conjunction with wikis. But the whole point of wikis is to de-prioritize the individual voice in favor of the collective voice, which dictates the structure and content of the text. This, of course, is a literacy which most individuals in our societies are unaccustomed to. Which is why scaffolding wikis with other technologies that support more traditional forms of communication might be an adequate strategy.

Worth wrapping your brain around if you’re trying to find some context for wikis in your practice…
—–

I’m still a little peeved at that Vermont school principal who says that blogging is not an educational activity. It’s just such an uninformed statement that I hope it’s a misquote. I’d bet the farm he’s never blogged, never commented, never even read a well designed classroom blog. Instead it’s a knee jerk, blanket assumption drawn from the bad habits of a few kids who have not been taught to do better. And there is enough blame for that to go around. But don’t blame the blogs. The fact is, Myspace is less a Weblog site than it is a community of adolescents making a lot of sexual innuendo who love the color pink. (I can’t even figure out how to post an entry to the account I just created there.) It’s journaling, flirting, posing…none of which comes close to what it means to blog.

What’s doubly ironic is that there is less and less doubt that writing ability is among the top factors in predicting a student’s success in college and afterward. To improve your writing ability you need to write consistently for real audiences. No tool that I know of does that better than Weblogs. In addition, bloggers improve their reading and critical thinking skills and become more information literate in the process. Blogging is most definitely an educational activity.

Blogs are getting a bad name in educational circles because those who disparage them think sites like Myspaces are representative of the technology and aren’t taking the time to understand their potential. We need to make the case more clearly that a) much of what is happening in these online writing spaces is clearly not best practice, but that b) best practices and real learning can occur when employed by teachers and students who have embraced blogging (v) and, finally, that we can c) keep our kids safe by practicing common sense, modeling appropriate use, and making sure our students understand the rules of the road.