How much text can you cite from another website in your blog before you’ve crossed the line and entered into copyright infringement? Is it okay to post an image you didn’t create in a blog? Even if it’s just for window dressing? Does the “educational” use of blogs in our journalism classes give our bloggers greater freedom and protection to cite text and post multimedia?
From a new Web log New Media Journalism @ Seton Hill U.. Dennis Jerz has been using blogs in his classes and finding some resistance to assigned topics. I think that sense of ownership is pretty cool, and I still waant to find ways to give my own students more ownership. But there is a difference with university students, isn’t there? There’s more of an expectation for structure on my level, or at least that’s my sense of it. Somehow, interspersed posts like “Sit tight. I’ll be back with something cool about my mundane student existence soon.” don’t feel as appropriate in high school. Sometimes I wish I was teaching college.
Thanks for linking to SHU’s New Media Journalism site. That “Fair Use” piece was actually posted by my colleague, Mike Arnzen. http://blogs.setonhill.edu/MikeArnzen
Yes, the tone at college is probably different.
Some of my students are starting to test the limits now.
For instance, I was terribly sick when I taught on Friday, and a minutes after the class was over, a student had posted about how my mumbling and lack of togetherness showed my human side. Since I know the student well, I took it as an affectionate ribbing, but I hope it doesn’t come back to bite me at tenure-review time… these blogs keep me on my toes.
Meanwhile, a student in one of blogging classes was actually named in the local paper in association with an early-morning vandalism spree; so far, one other student has posted a disdainful linked to the story. I don’t yet know how this will affect the classroom dynamic. (That class didn’t meet Friday when I was sick, but even if it did meet, I doublt I would have been able to notice any subtle change.)
But Will, I’m glad SOMEBODY who understands technology is teaching today’s high school students — because they are tomorrow’s college students, and your experience will help us prepare future curricula to teach those same students.
The freshmen I get in my composition courses every year are so used to writing “what the teacher wants” that it takes them a while to think of writing for themselves. This year I wasn’t ambitious enough to introduce blogs in my fresh comp course, but maybe I’ll try it next year.