Images from Sydney and New South Wales

Last year (and to my very great surprise), I was asked to go to Sydney on a business trip during the first month into a new job. I stayed in the Central Business District, slap-bang in the heart of the city, and although I worked fairly solidly throughout the two weeks I was there, I also managed to make good use of my moments of free time. Got a few friends there and a relative or two as well, so I made sure I caught up with a few folks and saw some great sights while I was at it - the Opera House, sunset over Harbour Bridge, Bondi and Manly Beach, the Blue Mountains. 

As I thought it would, Sydney shot up the list of favourite cities in the world to somewhere right near the top. I also got to set foot on Continent  # 6 for the first time - just Antarctica to go!

The job's been super busy ever since then and I also started my MA when I got back, so there's been all sorts of stuff that I've not had much time to catch up on. This summer's turning out to be a good chance to do some of the catching up that has been on hold for so many months. Last month, I finally managed to get a selection of the Australia photos online. Take a look at the slideshow above (link) and drop a comment below if ya dig 'em. As with most of my Flickr photos, these are free to use as long as I receive an attribution in return.

Disputing YouTube on copyright

I have republished a number of videos of TED Talks on my YouTube channel over the past few years, as I have wanted to share them, TED allows me to, and more eyeballs for my channel means the possibility of more eyeballs for some of my other videos. Whilst doing this, I have always been careful not to violate the terms of the licence that they are issued under.

Recently though, I've been starting to get notices from YouTube/Google of a possible copyright violation. I have therefore taken the first tentative steps towards disputing this - partly to try and stop these notices, but also to stand up for my right to reuse a work I have clear permission to do so.

The text I used to dispute the claim is below:

I am disputing this claim because the original video was issued under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license, which explicitly permits me to republish the video on the condition on compliance with the terms of the license.

In this republication, I have clearly referenced TED as the original source of the materials, I have not used the video for any commercial purposes (and consider that the serving of advertising against this video with contravene the license terms), and have republished the video in full including the advertising/sponsorship in the original file, and have thus not made a derivative work from it.

I believe that the republication of this video was made in good faith and in full accordance with TED's terms of use, as laid out in their usage policy page:

http://www.ted.com/pages/talk_usage_policy

Interested to see what response (if any) I get from YouTube on this. If it seems worth doing so, I'll share the responses here.

New film: 'J-Journeys'

More video.

It's great having spent much of the past two months working on a project to then be able to knock a different one out in about an hour. This short film, the third to feature footage shot on my last visit to Japan, takes a leisurely meander through Japanese suburbia as seen from a bus and a train. It also features a great mellow piano tune by Chris Zabriskie, which under by the unlikely name of 'That Kid in the Fourth Grade Who Really Liked the Denver Broncos' (sourced from the Free Music Archive and issued under CC-BY licence).

The film is more of a mood piece than a story (in other words, nothing much happens), but I rather like the pace of it. However, over 4 minutes is probably a little long for a web video where not much happens!

I chose to debut this film on Vimeo rather than YouTube this time. No reason, and it'll find its way onto YouTube as well, but always good to get to know another platform better.

Rootmap & ccMixter

Following on from last month's conundrum over what to do for my MA practical project, I made my mind up quite quickly in the end and decided to go with the Lessig/ccMixter option. Given time constraints, etc, it seemed to make sense to go for something where the content had already been created rather than trying to also get a whole raft of new stuff made. On top of that, as a main theoretical component of the project will be drawn from Lessig's writing on remixes, a sound map of remixes of works that build on his words seemed like a pretty cool way forward.

It took weeks of trying to figure out how to get an audio player into a Google Map, but eventually I got there via the fantastic Map Maker tool at Donkey Magic (so simple too). However, I've also ended up having to skill-up on bits of HTML, CSS and Javascript to style the placemarks as I'd want them to be, which has added to the prep time.

Below is a sample of a couple of styled placemarks. Click on the lower one to hear Lessig's original spoken word file, which was used to launch this particular remix contest. Click on the higher one to hear one ccMixter community response to that file, a blues take from Admiral Bob. My project, which I've titled Rootmap, will be mapping the journey that the idea took - from one spoken word file on a website to around 70 full songs from several different countries.

The submission deadline for this piece of work is about a month away, so I do still have some time on my side. However, I'd expect that to go quite quickly and there's also another essay to be getting on with at the same time.

In the meantime (and something that I'd been meaning to do for a long time anyway), I've signed up to ccMixter and uploaded a few files to offer up for remix. The files are all mono vocal recordings/acappellas of a handful of lyric sets I've written over the past few years. There are no effects on them (nor music around them), as that is the format requested for the submission, leaving choices like that up to the producers.

It can make you feel somewhat naked from a musicianly point of view to publish such a part of a song without it being clothed in any of the rest of what might ultimately constitute a song! Still, I'm taking from others' work to create this project, and although the Creative Commons licences that the works are released under give me the right to do that, as with any community there needs to be some sort of balance between laws and practices. In other words, I'm getting so I think I should also give.

Going to each page of an artist that contributed a remix and clicking through on whatever links they've put on their profiles, I've managed to get something resembling locational data for most of them. I'm not looking for anything particularly detailed like full GPS co-ordinates as that's not the point of the project and I wouldn't want to plot uploads that closely (others may also not want their location published either). However, I'm aiming to at least have a city as a means of locating where the original remix contributor is from, in order to gain a sense of how far this particular idea spread and the scale of that journey.

The next major step is getting in touch with the handful of ccMixter members that I couldn't find any form of locational data for and asking them if they're willing to provide anything towards that. I'm also planning to let all contributors know about the project once I've got a bit more to show for it. As Rootmap is a kind of re-imagining of a series of remixes, it would be great to involve that community a little more in the final work than just presenting their music in a different way. Still, I didn't want to start approaching anyone at ccMixter until I had a little something to give too (thus the pella uploads).

Really intrigued to see how this project's going to turn out (as well as what might happen to my tracks)!

Kisumu Mixtape - fines tunes from Kenya (WN0039)

A mixtape of 17 underground classics from Kisumu, Kenya, ranging from traditional guitar to blunted ass reggae to innovative hip hop.

RawMusicINTL: Raw Music International

Another gem here from the Free Music Archive, this time a delicious selection of tracks from Kenya. No words from me needed, just turn this up loud and shake your thing...

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) License.

New film: 'In Motion'

With over 200 exits and used by millions of people daily, Tokyo's Shinjuku station is the world's busiest train station. It serves as the rapidly beating heart of the city's commercial districts, and is the main hub through which commuters pour in from across the Kanto plain and beyond every day. This makes for quite a sense of bustle to the passing observer. 

'In Motion' (the film viewable above), which aims to capture a slight flavour of that sense of rush, busy-ness and movement that characterises much of the capital, is the second in a planned trilogy of short films about Japan. The first in this trilogy is 'Makes The World Go Round' (issued in 2010 and now with over 2,000 views on YouTube), with a final film due at some point in 2012 and based on footage taken at Tokyo's Shibuya Crossing.

Shot with a Flip UltraHD pocket camera in late 2010, much of this film centres around a sequence captured by placing the camera on the floor of a station walkway. This had the effect of representing the rhythm of hundreds of shoes as people passed by the eye of the lens. The remainder of the film was assembled from other footage shot in the same station. 'In Motion' was largely produced in iMovie HD, with opening credits put together with PowerPoint 2010 (in the absence of Flash).

The film also makes use of a Creative Commons-licenced song as its soundtrack. The track is called 'Machines and Muscles', an appropriate title for the main factors of motion in the film, and is by a psychedelic drone band from Chicago called Cave. An instrumental number originally featured on the flip side of the 7" single 'Butthash', the song has a certain 'Baba O'Reilly' feel to it which contributes well to the groove of the footage.

Feel free to check out the new commenting system on this blog by dropping by with a word or two about the film.

Portraits from a Zombie Parade

Brighton held its annual Zombie Walk today, from Victoria Gardens near the Pavilion, through town, and on to Marine Parade. Now in its fifth year and better know as Beach Of The Dead, the parade is one of many that go on around the world. 

I didn't end up following the parade, but stayed in one place to get my pictures. It was a sunny day, which resulted in some good lighting on the subjects, and I was able to grab a few fine portraits before I made my way back home.

Moments from a Catalan summer

It was a three-year wait, and ultimately a short city break. But this summer, my wife and I finally managed to get what we could call our honeymoon. We had a long weekend in Barcelona - her first visit, my second - and it was well worth the wait. 

Day One was a Gaudi day, with visits to Sagrada Familia, Park Güell and La Pedrera. I'd been outside the remarkable building that serves as a cathedral before, but this was my first time inside. It was fascinating to gain an understanding of how much Gaudi was inspired by nature and how that informed his work. This was demonstrated even further with the park, where the architecture was fused with the natural environment rather than just inspired by it. The roof of La Pedrera was unlike anything I'd seen before, and was a most striking example of what can be done with a building when the architect's imagination is the only limit.

Day Two took in the ocean and the hill that looks over the city. We started off with the wonders of La Boqueria, Europe's largest food market, then strolled down La Rambla to the sea, taking in an exhibition on Latin peoples at the Museu Marítim, the sights of the marina, then a cable car ride up to Montjuïc. The whole trip ended up being heavily loaded with with museums and galleries - up on the hill, we took in another two. These were Fundació Joan Miró  (an artist whom I was intrigued to learn had spent some time in Japan and been greatly influenced by his time there) and Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, a seriously impressive building housing 2,000 years of Catalan art from Roman times to 20th Century photography. The day ended with a fountain show set to lights and music, in the grounds of the museum, which amusingly was also flanked by a Spanish bikers convention.

Day Three saw a longstanding ambition of my wife's realised - a visit to the Picasso Museum. With that one under the belt, we took in the neighbouring Chocolate Museum, where I learned of the role that the cocoa bean has had in the Spanish Empire. On the way out, we were rather shocked to be standing around in the street an witness a police altercation. Two cops appeared from nowhere on bikes, one started shouting at a man with no shirt on, then chased after him and knocked him to the floor - with the motorbike he was riding! The man was still on the floor when things began to flare up with other onlookers, and we decided to slink away.

The photo gallery above contains images from some of the highlights of the trip, plus a few other sights not mentioned above. Really a fantastic city, I could easily go back again and again.

Joining the copyright dots...

I've been trying unsuccessfully today and yesterday to upload the above video to YouTube. It's of a 2007 TED Talk by Lawrence Lessig, about the effect of copyright law on creativity. I like it for a few reasons, namely that I've learned a lot about copyright and free culture from Lessig (co-founder of Creative Commons), plus as a teacher of presentation skills, I really like how he presents - both in the way he speaks and in his use of PowerPoint.

One of the things that makes TED so widely known is that they allow people to download their content (in this case videos of their talks) and re-'publish' them. They do this under the Creative Commons licences partly devised by Lessig. I do this with some of their works through my YouTube channel. This benefits both TED and myself - I get people who are interested in some of the same talks to visit my channel and they get yet more free marketing of what they do from the visitors that I bring in. 

The TED Talks I have uploaded to my channel so far have had a total of 46,525 views (as of today), of which I can guarantee that I have not made a penny. Under the terms of the CC licence, I am not entitled to make any derivative works - such as producing an edited version - therefore any advertising that is part of the original file I download remains in the copy I upload.

The talk is 19:08 minutes, and my YouTube channel previously didn't permit me to upload files of more than 15 minutes. However, I've recently noticed the below sign on the upload page, so figured it was about time to give it a try:

 

I figured too that if it was up on the TED channel, then it was possible for me to do the same. This is with the knowledge that YouTube themselves have recently embraced CC licences and allow users to make their videos available for download under an Attribution licence.

Anyway, as soon as the file had finally been successfully uploaded, I got two emails from YouTube, one of which is reproduced below:

 

WMG I'm pretty sure is Warner Music Group, the world's third largest music company. The other email mentioned UMG, which I'm guessing will be Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company. Oh dear, I thought, I'm usually meticulously careful not to violate copyright laws, no matter how much I agree or disagree with the full extent of them. One of my key reasons for using CC is that I can legally build on others work and allow people to do the same with mine, also within the law. One of the potential problems of these licences however, is that the reuser has to rely on the original producer having cleared all content in order for them to be able to do so under the terms of the licence.

The video (which you can view above, as embedded from the original TED channel) contains extracts from three copyrighted works, which are used to demonstrate examples of remix culture and certainly arguable as an example of 'fair use' (a US-only legal right). These songs are Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive', Lionel Ritchie & Diana Ross's 'Endless Love' and a track that I think comes from The Muppets originally but which has been endlessly parodied elsewhere. 

That I received these emails so promptly after a successful upload suggested to me that Google (as the owners of YouTube) have extremely powerful algorithms and processing power to be able to pre-screen a file for copyright violations prior to it 'going live' (no great surprise there - of course Google have tech with that kind of capability). It also suggests that they have an agreement with a broad coalition of copyright holders that would allow them to be able to match the sound waves of a copyright-protected audio file uploaded by a user against a database of protected audio (this is pure and wild speculation of my part, as my guess for how it would happen technically). My understanding was that under the user's terms, suspicion of a copyright violation should be flagged up by the supposed copyright holder first rather than preventing it being uploaded at all. 

Below are a couple of things that YouTube says about copyright and violation of it, from their FAQs:

YouTube respects the rights of copyright holders and publishers and requires all users to confirm they own the copyright or have permission from the copyright holder to upload content. We comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and other applicable copyright laws and promptly remove content when properly notified.

Repeat infringers' videos are removed and their accounts are terminated and permanently blocked from using YouTube. Users with suspended or terminated accounts are prohibited from creating new accounts or accessing YouTube's community features.

...

We provide content owners with the ability to control the use of their content on YouTube. Because content owners have the right to change their mind about how their content is displayed on our site, it's possible that content that was once allowed is subsequently blocked. Also, it is possible that multiple parties hold rights to a different components (e.g. audio, video) of a copyrighted work. While one owner may allow the use of their material on YouTube, another may decide to disallow use.

After scratching my head at the emails, bemused at how easy it seems to be to inadvertently break the law these days (plus going to Google to find out who WMG and UMG were), I went back to the file upload page to see the following:

Hooray I thought, it looks like it's gone up at last. A quick check of my video dashboard however, showed this:

The audio track had been disabled and it was described as 'blocked in some countries'. Hmm.

I then went to the URL for the video itself, which YouTube had given me, and found this:

If you're still with me thus far, you'll remember that YouTube had proudly told me that I was entitled to upload files of longer than 15 minutes. More than 15 but less than 20? I doubt it. A bit of a disconnect with what they talk about in terms of copyright violation though.

I'll draw no particular conclusions at the end of this post but have opted to share this experience as I feel it raises a number of curious questions. 

I'll leave it up to you, dear readers, to see what questions it raises for you, if any...

'Winter In America' - a tribute

I first became aware of Gil Scott-Heron around the early to mid-nineties, while I was at university, although it was a while till I actually got where he was coming from. He was often listed on posters around town as playing at something like that year's Jazz Bop or some festival or other. Regrettably, I never did see him live. 

His recorded music, however, became something very special indeed. A combination of deeply soulful and funky tunes, with a killer voice and a unique ability to tell the truth in song - in ways that few others ever came close to matching. His final album came out last year (listen to it in full here) and although he was clearly sounding more frayed than in his earlier years, it was glorious to hear him producing something new and equally up to standard as the rest of his work. Turned out to be his swansong.

I now never will get the chance to see him live, but when I heard that he had died, I immediately wanted to pay some form of tribute to the man. The above video is the result. The audio track is taken from an audience recording of an NYC show from '88, shoved out into the public domain and left on archive.org. The images are largely a combination of Creative Commons images sourced from Flickr and scraps of cutting-room-floor footage from the BBC's 'Digital Revolution' doc, plus a few other bits to pad it out.

The video is probably a little scrappy, both in audio quality and in the state of the editing (both feel free to diss it in the comments), but I hope that it can make for a slight contribution to the range of other content on YouTube that serves to give those that never listened to the man a chance to do so. I also hope that for those that know him or his work well, they'll feel that this humble clip is a worthy tribute, however slight.

RIP Gil.

10 things...about '10 things'

In order to provide some sort of structure to a new feature here at 'Postings From An Edge', here are 10 things about '10 things...'. This will give me a framework from which to write and guidance to any future guest posters.

'10 things...' posts...

1. can be a simple text-only list, a collection of multimedia-rich content, or anything in between these two pillars (including only images, only audio or only video).
2. can be long or short.
3. will come from me or from any guest posters that wish to contribute to the feature.
4. can be posted regularly or sporadically.
5. must be titled in the same way (beginning with 10 things... and continuing with a grammatically correct rest of sentence) and contain an appropriate collection of meta-tags.
6. should be promoted elsewhere on the Web (e.g. on Twitter or Facebook).
7. can be about any topic so long as it relates in some way to the concept of 'thinking globally'. Suggestions for specific topics include technology, education, music, activism, Japan, writing, travel or peace.
8. can be submitted in a language other than English, so long as an English translation is also provided.
9. are intended to encourage comment and interaction.
10. must total 10 things. No 9's or 11's (unless it's a '10 things...about 9/11' post). They must also not be abusive or offensive, and use of Creative Commons works are encouraged.

I'll be starting to approach other bloggers I know with requests for contributions, but if you're reading this and would like to write one, please email it in full (title, content and tags) to dompates.postings@blogger.com - they'll be published (if they meet the above conditions) following editorial review.

Creative Commons in the Classroom: Use, Share, Remix

  

On Tuesday 19 April, I will be speaking at IATEFL in Brighton - my first presentation at an international conference. I am due to present on the use of Creative Commons-licensed works (hereafter CC) in the classroom and other copyright-related issues. It was very fortunate that the first time I was able to present at this conference, it happened to be in my home town!

In many ways, it's an exciting prospect as get to stand up in front of professional peers from around the world and talk with them on a subject that I know a little something about (and which will hopefully be useful for them). On the other hand, it's also a fairly nerve-wracking idea, as I'll be standing up in front of professional peers from around the world and talk with them on a subject that I know a little about.

Partly because it's rather a big deal for me (I've organised a conference before, but never spoken at one), I've trialled the presentation at an in-house conference and a couple of workshops at work. It seems to have been mostly well received so far, with other teachers telling me that it was useful to know and interesting in parts. However, I'm aware that copyright is not the most thrilling subject to speak on and many people - teachers, students, others - pay little consideration to the idea beyond  possibly the occasional thought in the back of the mind ('I should probably think about this, but…'), so I really need to try and make the subject come alive and relate it directly to people's lives.

This post then is an attempt to introduce the subject and to call for testimonies from other teachers, in order to add some authentic voices to the topic. If you're already familiar with copyright and CC, please scroll down to the section 'A request for input'. If not, then firstly here's some context…

What is copyright, and where's the problem?

Copyright is 'a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work' (Wikipedia). In law, it is a form of intellectual property and while it is not possible to provide legal protection for an idea, copyright covers the expression of an idea. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, copyright exists 'to encourage a dynamic creative culture, while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence, and to provide widespread, affordable access to content for the public'. As we shall see, this is often not how things turn out in practice.

In most countries (including the UK), copyright is automatically conferred on a work once it has been created, enabling 'all rights reserved' to the creator without them having to register the work with an official body. Although copyright law initially applied only to the copying of books, it now covers a wide range of works, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Written articles
• Maps
• Charts
• Musical compositions
• Photographs
• Paintings
• Motion pictures
• Sculptures
• Computer programs
• Databases

'But I'm a teacher, not a sculptor, a film-maker or a computer programmer. What does this have to do with me?' Teachers and students make use of copyrighted works all the time. Whenever we use a textbook. Whenever we screen or watch a film or video clip in class, or listen to a piece of music or other audio file. When a teacher makes a lesson plan. When a student creates an original piece of writing. This means that within even just one classroom, large numbers of copyrighted works are both being used and created every day.

Secker (2010) claims that there is a 'general perception that there exists some sort of blanket exception for educational or not-for-profit use prevails in education, particularly outside of higher education'. This 'educational exception' is often not the case. In the UK, educational institutions are required to purchase a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA), in order to use copyrighted works. This licence generally permits the photocopying of 5% of a published edition (e.g. a textbook) or one complete chapter. I have yet to meet a teacher, even the most cautious of rule-followers, that will stand over a photocopier as the clock ticks for a fast-pending class and count the pages that they are copying to make sure they fall within their allocated page count.

Under British law, photocopying and scanning of published works when performed in education falls under the concept of 'fair dealing'. This is a legal defence rather than a legal right, as the UK does not have the concept of 'fair use' enshrined within its copyright laws (as the US does, being theoretically more lenient on the use of copyrighted works in a educational context). Fair dealing in the UK does not apply to electronic resources, meaning that copying pages from a textbook and making it available across a Virtual Leaning Environment (VLE) can be a risky business.

Plagiarism. Using 'Google Image Search' to source pictures for learning materials. Uploads to VLEs. Student work that builds on existing works. These are just some of the many other copyright-related issues that also arise in learning contexts, few easily solvable. Perhaps most importantly, if teaching is supposed to be about the spread of knowledge in order to facilitate learning, the greater the restriction on that knowledge, the more that learning opportunity is inhibited.

Creative Commons - towards a solution

There are some who claim that in the so-called Information Age, existing copyright regimes are in need of radical reform, in order for them to be more relevant in the reality of the Internet ('the world's greatest copy machine', as Cory Doctorow has described it). Under Britain's Copyright, Designs & Patents Act (1988), it was still technically illegal to view a website (Secker), until a 2003 amendment fixed this anomaly. This was because in order for a computer to display a web page, it has to download a copy of it from the server onto the client machine. The very tools that facilitate our modern times have copying built into their DNA.

Step forward, Creative Commons. This non-profit organisation was founded in 2001, to create 'a balance between the reality of the Internet and the reality of copyright laws'. The licences they issue enable the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools, by allowing the user to communicate which rights they wish to reserve on their work. Their mission statement depicts a 'vision (that) is nothing less than realising the full potential of the Internet - universal access to research, education, full participation in culture, and driving a new era of development, growth, and productivity'. They are not an alternative to copyright, more a compliment to it - a case of 'some rights reserved'.

There are four key elements to these licences - Attribution ('give my name when you use my work'), Non-Commercial ('please don't use my work to make money for yourself from it'), No Derivatives ('you can use this as long as you don't make any changes to the original') and Share-Alike ('you can use this as long as you issue the resulting work under the same licence terms'). Works can be issued under any combination of these elements, from the least restrictive Attribution (CC-BY) to the most restrictive Attribution - Non-Commercial - No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND). Generally, these conditions are fixed into the digital file, either within the metadata or in some visual form (such as by using the CC symbols), which is then uploaded to the Internet. I believe that they are an essential of a modern Internet user's toolkit, teacher or not.

Barack Obama uses them. So does TED. So does Wikipedia, MIT, and the Open University. And so do many millions of individuals around the world that wish to share ether work as a contribution towards a global creative commons. By the end of 2009, there were approximately 350 million such licenced works available on the Internet. At the growth rate they have been showing, it is likely to now exceed 1 billion. That suggests that it's not so much 'are there any quality works I can find related to my subject?' but more a case of 'how do I filter through this mountain of free stuff?'

Here are a few good reasons for using CC in education:

• Getting appropriate copyright clearance for certain materials can take too long for the material to remain relevant to the teaching objective
• Academic staff often don't have time to absorb the complexities of a copyright licence
• Institutional licences may not cover all student work, such as something which incorporates images and text from multiple sources that is then shared with others
• As the traditional content industries lose more income in the face of challenges to their business models, there are greater risks of prosecution for copyright infringement
• Cleared digital resources are easier to source, reuse and adapt than uncleared or non-digital resources
• Not misusing copyright is good 'netiquette' and should be part of teaching today's younger people to become digitally literate
• There's masses and masses of really high quality material available for use

A request for input

This post is meant more as a beginning than an end. Although many teachers I speak to often don't see how the copyright issue affects their daily work, the deeper I go into this issue, the more I hear of people that do have genuine concerns about copyright. On the other hand, while there are many examples of use of CC works in education around the world, I have so far come across very few examples within ELT (English Language Teaching). 

'Whodunit', the first free-to-share commercial ELT textbook, was only released last year. The eltpics project on Flickr (thanks to Phil Bird for alerting me to it), an image pool that collects CC resources in one place, was started only in October 2010. Further cursory Google searches bring up the odd few language teachers that use CC in the classroom but not a great deal.

I have two questions for readers - whether teachers or students. Please either add your responses in the comments section of this post, or for private communication please send an email using the icon in the sidebar:

1. Have you ever had any negative experiences with copyright at work/school?
2. Have you ever had any positive experiences with using Creative Commons in the classroom?

I'll use the best responses in the presentation, either as part of the slides or in the audience handout. And of course, in the CC spirit, with an attribution!

Further reading

Copyright

Teaching Copyright
A Music Teacher Describes How Copyright Hinders Music Education
The Surprising History of Copyright and the Promise of a Post-Copyright World
The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age

Creative Commons & Open Educational Resources (OER)

Teaching students about Creative Commons and appropriate use of images (for 7-8 year olds)
30+ Places to find Creative Commons Media
EduTech wiki about Open Educational Resources

Access to Knowledge as a Foundation for an Open World

References

Secker, J (2010). Copyright and E-learning: A Guide for Practitioners. London: Facet.

Unformed thoughts on the Internet

'Digitage Web 2.0' by ocean.flynn (issued under CC-BY-NC-SA license)

As with so many millions of others around the world, the Internet has become a major feature of my life. Not only do I spend a lot of 'leisure' time on it, but I also use it and teach about it to my students every day. This has led to me finding myself more and more these days thinking and talking about what revolutionary times we as a species are living through, probably more so than at any other time in human history.

Just last week, I was talking to a class of my students - teenagers from a range of different countries - about how different my life was from theirs at the same age (there's about a 25-year gap between me and them). At their age, I was working six days a week to save up a measly £2 salary in order to buy bits of plastic with 2-12 songs cut into them. When I wanted to get in touch with someone I didn't see on a regular basis, I had to either sit down and write them a letter or wait until the time was right (either on their side or mine) to make a telephone call. If there was a film I wanted to see, I'd need to wait until it was on television or it was shown in a cinema within accessible distance. I got my news from the volumes of inky paper I put through people's letterboxes every morning before school or by catching one of the televised slots of an evening. To learn new things, I needed to ask other people, go to school, rifle through the books in the house, or wait until the weekend to be able to get a bus to the library in town - not that it could be guaranteed that what I wanted to find would actually be accessible. Every now and then, I'd help out the family by going to the supermarket and carrying home some of the weekly groceries.

25 years is really only a very short time, yet the internet has transformed every one of those activities, and much, much more. The actions playing out in North Africa and the Middle East, too early for commenters to have agreed on an appropriate label yet (revolutions, Arab Spring, pan-Arab uprisings, etc), demonstrate the latest examples of the Internet as a transformative social tool and not just as the facilitator of increased consumption in a dilettante West.

The Industrial Revolution, set in train largely in this country (and still playing out in some parts of the world), must have been a very challenging time to have lived through with the move from the land to the city changing much about people's lives. It would likely have been difficult to imagine where all those changes were heading and how the human landscape would look once the dust settled when in the eye of the storm. Likewise, it is the case with the Digital/Information Revolution (delete as appropriate). The changes that are sweeping through most societies on the planet undoubtedly have much, much more to show us, and in ways that we can't possible imagine at the moment.

I have my own ideas and theories on things as I try and keep my own head above the waters of the bit oceans, but it's definitely helpful to explore what other knowledgeable people are making of it all. This post then, is aimed at exploring some unformed ideas I have about the Network so see how they chime and if getting them down in bits helps them to take better shape. An early draft, if you will. As the Wikipedia page on it says, 'as the digital revolution progresses it remains unclear to what extent society has been impacted and will be altered in the future.'

During a recent evening's surfing, I came across a hefty piece of work that asked a few interesting folk the question 'How has the Internet changed how you think?' I pulled out some of the first quotes that struck a chord with my approach and flagged them up here.

Given what we have today, the Internet could easily become...a modicum of educational material in an ocean of narcissism and social obsessions. We could, however, also use it as...the communicative backbone of real intellectual and civic change, but to do this will require more than technology. It will require that we adopt norms of open sharing and participation, fit to a world where publishing has become the new literacy.

Clay Shirky

While acknowledging criticisms levelled at the Internet, Shirky recommends collective actions that users should take in order to shape the Internet's future direction, for it to fulfil a great potential that it has. This is one of the reasons that I advocate so strongly in favour of using Creative Commons licences for sharing content online - it's a way of establishing good practise, or 'netiquette'. However, I know that I don't participate enough to get more out of it yet. I still lurk more than I engage. I still treat the Internet in a lot of ways as a broadcast medium, throwing out content in the hope of 'building up an audience' without actually building much of a relationship with people (aside from within the walled garden of my Facebook network or in the odd tweet).

...there is not one massive central computer with lots of satellites...but a distributed network of computers of different sizes, speeds and manufacturers, a network that nobody, literally nobody, ever designed or put together, but which grew, haphazardly, organically, in a way that is not just biological but specifically ecological.

Richard Dawkins

Interestingly, Dawkins looks at the Internet, particularly in how it has evolved, as an organic being - a fascinating perspective on an object that exists both physically (in cables, routers and servers) and virtually (in bits, digits and data packets). In the late 30s, H. G. Wells authored a series of works on a World Brain, being a global information resource and the best chance for world peace - potentially interpretable as a union of Google and Wikipedia. The biological perspective on looking at the Internet is a very alluring one. We could be in the early stages of the development of just what Wells foresaw, being the totality of human knowledge, an entity not only far greater than the sum of its parts but of man's creation and exceeding the marvel of the human brain in its capacity for storage and retrieval. The Internet is far bigger than any of us, but collectively we are the Internet.

'Internet Filters' by Nathan T. Baker (issued under CC-BY-NC-SA license)

Part of the reaction to the growth of this network and all that it allows is to bemoan the horrors of 'information overload' and the effects this is having on attention spans, or the destruction it is causing to traditional business models, or the 'publicisation' of the private sphere. These fears in many cases can be extremely valid, but need not be overwhelming providing we learn new ways of dealing with this new reality in our daily lives. When in deep water, we are faced with three choices - drown, tread water, or swim. So it is with the digital deluge - we let it overwhelm us, we manage and get by, or we learn how to make it work to our advantage (and I mean 'our' not 'my' advantage - the Internet is a reflection of our collective consciousness as a species rather than as a collection of individuals).

Kevin Kelly of Wired magazine had the following to say:

We are developing an intense, sustained conversation with this large thing. The fact that it is made up of a million loosely connected pieces is distracting us. The producers of Websites, and the hordes of commenters online, and the movie moguls reluctantly letting us stream their movies, don't believe they are mere pixels in a big global show, but they are. It is one thing now, an intermedia with 2 billion screens peering into it. The whole ball of connections — including all its books, all its pages, all its tweets, all its movies, all its games, all its posts, all its streams — is like one vast global book (or movie, etc.), and we are only beginning to learn how to read it.

Kevin Kelly

These are a few of my unformed thoughts on the Internet and a few slightly more formed thoughts of a few others. How about you - how has the Internet changed how you think?

Steampunk Wallpaper

I took the plunge a little while ago and went for issuing my Flickr-hosted photos under the least restrictive CC licence (a simple Attribution one), with the intention of allowing people to make use of them as they see fit. This essentially means that anyone can make use of the images without having to ask my permission, so long as they give a credit and (ideally) some kind of link back to the original work. The theory is that the more they are opened up, the more likely it is that other people will make use of them. The more others make use of them, the more my name or work gets spread around, bringing more visitors back my way (which is basically the essence of Creative Commons licences).

It's not immediately easy to keep a track on who does actually use these items. Ideally, whenever somebody uses your work, they would tell you and you'd be able to keep track of what has been used. This would add more levels of restriction to the use of the licensed work though, which runs counter to what a culture of sharing is trying to encourage. Instead, I believe that good 'CC practice' is to tell someone when you've used their work, expecting nothing back in return but embracing it when someone tells you 'Hey, I did something with your picture/tune/words (delete as appropriate)'. Admittedly I've not done it that often when I've used another person's CC-ed works, but have had a positive response on the occasions that I have.

Stumbling over my Flickr stats the other day, I found out that one of my pictures had indeed been used in the manner I was making them available for - in the legal parlance, a 'derivative work' had been created. Having never previously made any knowing contributions to the culture of steampunk, I was intrigued to find that a photo of a Nagano ski-slope I'd taken had made its way into an image at steampunkwallpaper.com - a place I'd never knowingly have stumbled across. There's an intriguing element added to the original picture that I would have loved to have seen first time around!

Have you had any interesting re-uses made of your work?

New film: 'Station To Ocean'

It's been in the pipeline for a few months now, was initiated before winter began and is coming out now that winter is ending - the latest short from Globalism Films.

Titled 'Station To Ocean', this short film was produced in response to a call for video from across the globe from a single day, known as 'One Day On Earth'. As with the hundreds or thousands of other films captured in different corners of the planet, it was shot on 10.10.10 - a great day for binary code and for standing up to say 'Hello world'. I don't think that many other Brightonians picked up the challenge (if any), so I was glad to be the person representing my city in a worldwide initiative.

The film starts in Brighton station with the view that new arrivals to the city get as they walk through the ticket gates. It then takes a journey from the station, through the main streets to the beach and the pier, ending up with sea and sunshine - as good an introduction to Brighton as any. It does, however, come with a viewing warning. That real journey can take up to half an hour and the footage in the film is sped up so that the journey goes REALLY FAST. If this kind of thing makes you queasy, look away now.

I found a couple of great drum 'n' bass tracks to go with it for the soundtrack. The first is by Hektor Thillet and is titled 'Tarzan and the Jungle Furies', the second by TopNotch and is titled 'Sooner Or Later (TopNotch Jungle/Drum and Bass rmx)'. Both were found on ccmixter and are issued under CC-BY-NC licence.

The footage was shot using a Flip UltraHD camera and edited using iMovie HD. I had a little bit of trouble getting the right export settings from iMovie to produce an optimum file for uploading to YouTube, so may well publish my findings here for anyone else tht would like to know how to get their video file just right.

The One Day On Earth global video archive has a silent version of this film without titles.

Changed terms of use

I've got some stuff coming up here soon on using Creative Commons licenses, so thought that I'd put money were mouth is and open up the content of this blog for licensing. I'm not really sure how much blog content gets used out on the wilds of the open Web, but there's a chance of finding out with this little experiment. My pictures at Flickr are already CC-licensed, so I can now add this blog to them as repurposable content.

Have gone for the least restrictive licence, a simple Attribution one. If you want to use any content from this blog, in part, in full or for remixing, please attribute it to Dom Pates and link back to http://www.patesonline.net - full terms available at the bottom of the site.

More on Creative Commons coming soon...

Japan + psychedelic folk

It's been a while since I popped anything up here and as usual, the backlog is building up. With that in mind, I thought I'd add a little late night music for you all. The above album is mellow and dreamy, contains some beautiful playing, and like much of what I put up here, is another window into Japan that is somewhat off the well beaten track of cherry blossom and skyscrapers.

'My Turntable Is Slow' is Hiiragi Fukuda's second album and it was released on cassette by a Belgian label called Sloow Tapes, who described the songs as 'like dancing shadows reflected in opium clouded jade'. The vocals are understated and delivered in an echo-laden, monotone, spoken-word style, wit a little French thrown into the mix for good measure. The sound of the crows that are ubiquitous in Tokyo's suburbs and back streets are woven in amongst hypnotic grooves, while elsewhere marimbas blend with baby chatter.

Frantic in parts, languorously catatonic in others yet all undercut with the pickings of a very gifted guitarist, the album is available as to download above or from the Free Music Archive. Served up to complement the album is a video of another one of his songs, which was shot in Kichijoji (one of my favourite parts of Western Tokyo).

Listen while lying down.

Hiiragi Fukuda / Oya wa Touhoku, Oto Kumori.

Hiiragi Fukuda | Myspace Music Videos

New film: 'Makes The World Go Round'

What do love and sushi have in common? Well, they both kind of make things go round. They say that love does it for the world and sushi...it's the reason for those belts drives that spend their working days in perpetual motion, serving up fish and rice for the hungry.

'Makes The World Go Round' is a short film shot in Tokyo during my visit this summer. It is the first in a series of shorts to use field footage filmed with a Flip UltraHD camera and Creative Commons-licensed music. The camera is roughly the size of a mobile phone and takes surprisingly good quality pictures. The action, if you could call it that, focuses on a kaiten zushi restaurant in Kokubunji, that Western Tokyo suburb where I used to live.

For the uninitiated, kaiten zushi (also known as 'conveyor belt sushi' or 'sushi train') is where sushi is placed on a conveyor belt that winds around the restaurant and delivers the food to customers as they sit. They are one of those uniquely Japanese things that a visitor has to experience to get a little further under the Japanese soul. The restaurant in the film became a local favourite, and I often spent a lunchtime there with a bunch of Australians, Americans or Canadians getting their fish fix. Having also seen other footage shot in such restaurants on the Web, I also couldn't resist this time dropping a camera myself onto the belt as it went round and round.

This short is soundtracked by an ensemble called The Years, with a wonderful track titled 'Let's Stay In Love'. It's got a real vintage soul groove to it, coming at you like an early 70's Al Green or The Family Stone as they're just waking up. Issued under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence, the track seemed to perfectly fit the pace of the train. It's also the kind of tune that, like a 7" single you'd have spent a month saving up for as a kid (am I showing my age here?) and end up wearing out from overplay, has been getting some serious action on my hard drives.

I usually try to be quite picky about the standard of images I put out, but there were some features of this clip - the camera itself making a cameo, jerky movement as the belt navigates a turn - that just seemed to fit, so I kept the editing to a minimum. Stay tuned for more in the Japan shorts series from Globalism Films.

Raw like sushi. Yeah.

Africa + music + open source

Sorting out my bookmarks, an activity which has taken me close to nine months to complete having had too many other things to do, had thrown up a few treats on the web that I'd previously stumbled across, saved and forgotten about. The sort will eventually manifest itself in a revamped Delicious profile, so that I can easily find the stuff I use on the web wherever I am and without having to be logged in to anything.

One such hidden gem that I'm delighted to have rediscovered is the Free Music Archive (FMA). The service describes itself as 'an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads' and it certainly is that. There is a dearth of sites that offer free music downloads and they are of varying quality (both the sites and the music that they offer), but the FMA seems to be a cut above the rest. It has a good clean layout, is very easy to use and navigate, and has very straightforward features like one-click downloading and code available for embedding players (of tracks or whole albums) in web pages. So far, the quality of music on the site seems pretty good too. All the tracks are made available through Creative Commons licenses, which makes download and discovery dead easy.

Browsing through the site, I came across the collection of songs available in the player above. Essentially a series of remixes of a Youssou N'Dour track - 'Wake Up - It's Africa Calling' - and released to mark the 30th anniversary of the charity Intrahealth, the tracks together comprise a pretty divine set of tunes. N'Dour's refrains, both in English and French, echo through the mixes and after a while become one of those earworms that you can't get out of your head. There are also several guest appearances, including the likes of Nas and Neneh Cherry, who keeps up her partnership with the Senegalese superstar as a kind of post-hip-hop Ella and Louis. The music has gentle Afro rhythms, mellow electronica and more soulful stronger undertones too.

Looks like the FMA is going to be one to revisit. I'll post up some of the tastier morsels I come across here too. In the meantime, enjoy the following formula: Africa + music + open source.

The tragedy of indoors on a beautiful day

It's yet another gorgeous Spring weekend in Brighton, with wispy white clouds gracing the blue skies and sunshine that tantalises your skin. After a long, cold winter, the season's change is finally clear and it feels like it's going to be a hot summer already. Not that that's much of a guarantee of one in this country though, I'm afraid!

I'm stuck indoors for much of the weekend trying to finish of as much work as I can on the final essay and lesson plan for my DELTA course, the postgrad diploma that's going to put Cambridge University on my CV. What a strange thought for someone who, 15-odd years ago, was determined that dropping out of university was the cool thing to do. It seems almost criminal to have to be inside on a day such as this, but sometimes one has to do what one has to do.

The course has been tough going in many ways, particularly the balance of simultaneously working and studying but also in having to drop so many of my other projects. However, it's been a very worthwhile experience so far. I've felt my teaching improve significantly as a result of it, plus it's brought a certain camaraderie with my fellow teachers who are taking the journey with me.

Funnily enough, I've actually made a bit of a switch amidst it all and am now spending half of my working day teaching IT as well, instead of just English. It feels like I'm gradually moving closer to the direction I want to be going in professionally, even if that end point or ultimate goal is not that clear yet.

I had a dream last night about my final observed lesson - the pending one which is going to be watched by an assessor from Cambridge. In the dream, I hadn't prepared the lesson at all and was trying to 'blag' my way through the class. This is something that many teachers have to do when they are either unprepared for the class or the needs of their learners change according to the language that emerges. It's even been formalised as a technique (visit the Dogme ELT discussion group), borrowing its name from the Danish Dogme 95 film collective's approach to bare bones filmmaking. However, it's not something to try when there's a Cambridge assessor in the room trying to see if you've taken on board what you've been studying for. An indication perhaps that I need to get on with it and finish off my preparations this weekend!

'Pink Blossom' photo by Dominic Alves, issued under CC-A 2.0 licence