LearningTimes Green Room

In this episode, Susan and Dan speak with a K-12 technology integration coach and a professor at Temple University who have worked together on several projects related to copyright, fair use and media.

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Show Notes:

In this episode, Susan and Dan visit with Kristin Hokanson, a Technology Integration Coach for the Upper Merion Area School District and Renee Hobbs, professor at Temple University and creator of the Media Education Lab. Kristin and Renee have worked together on several projects related to copyright, fair use and media. This interview was recorded via Skype.

Kristin recently introduced readers of her blog to Remix Culture: Fair Use is Your Friend, a video produced by the American University Center for Social Media. You can access the video and read Kristin’s thoughts at http://khokanson.blogspot.com or go directly to the video.

We begin the interview with the idea of remixing to create something new and how teachers limit themselves (and their students) by not understanding what they can do. The guidelines become misinterpreted as restrictions. She gave the example of the student video on Darfur and how students can think critically about the use of media and do so responsibly.

Guidelines are only one set of interpretations. It would be better to teach a thought process to determine this yourself.

This is where Renee came in with her work with Patricia Aufderheide of the Center for Social Media, American University and Peter Jaszi, Program on information Justice and Intellectual Property, Washington College of Law. They followed a best practices model crafted by documentary film makers, and used it with educators of all types. After initially interviewing teacher to see where the misunderstandings were (and the subsequent limiting behaviors), they engaged some of them in focus groups. From that the identified 5 principles and this became “The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use” [PDF].

Other resources they created: fun music videos, more music videos and lesson plans.

The “Code” has been endorsed by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Another important resource is a Reasoning Tool. This is in response to teachers wanting guidelines. Instead they work through the decisions they need to make to select and then use the media they need (and defend their choices). They can compare their responses to those of other teachers.

Renee will next be at the Association of Educational Publishers, who oppose her work in trying to obtain an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to bypass encryption technology for media literacy education.

And then she’ll have stories to tell at NECC!

Listeners, go visit the Media Education Lab site at and explore these resources!

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Episodes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.