Nov/09©Chris Farley
Educating Students on Intellectual Property
On a school trip I participated in last spring, one of the students turned on the bus’s entertainment system, and put in an illegally obtained copy of a then-unreleased film. None of the chaperones intervened.
That incident illustrates a much broader problem, and is a reflection of the experiences of my generation. We were the first generation to grow up with an iPod in one pocket and a cell phone in the other, and then see them combined into one device. Now we expect anything, anywhere, any time, and for free. Illegal file-sharing and piracy are rampant among teens and young adults, but educators seem indifferent. Infringers are depriving right-holders of revenue, but they do not perceive their actions as theft.
My generation is the most digitally active ever, but the schools that we attend have played only a minor role in fostering digital savvy. Most schools have encouraged students to learn about the Internet only sporadically, and have watched in bewilderment as online social networking has chipped away at in-person social networking. While schools are not ignorant of the dangers of illegal file sharing, they seem to be woefully unaware of how widespread it is among students, and have consequently been passive in their approach to combating it. By their inaction, they have unintentionally encouraged the attitude that stealing music, movies, and software is like jaywalking — it’s illegal, but no one cares.
But file sharing is not like jaywalking; it’s like shoplifting. It is illegal, and people do care. The cost of not ramping up intellectual property education immediately is too great. Forrester Research estimated that by 2013, total music sales will be worth $9.2 billion, down nearly 40% from a peak of $14.6 billion in 1999. Record companies have turned to litigation to protect their sales (yet another risk associated with illegal file sharing). The move to litigation is a clear signal to some that the record companies are evil. They forget that artists voluntarily agree to deals with record companies because the companies provide valuable marketing and distribution services. The record companies’ litigation may not be the best long-term business plan, but they are protecting their investment in artists, and by extension, in art.
Schools are already making progress in teaching Internet safety, so they need only expand their message to include respect for intellectual property. Students are bombarded with messages about the dangers of Facebook and MySpace and lessons about how to be safe online. In teaching respect for intellectual property, however, schools have been stunningly deficient. Illegal file sharing or piracy may be less physically dangerous than meeting an online stranger in person, but the intellectual property problem is far more widespread.
Using the Internet responsibly means being respectful of intellectual property and the owners of intellectual property. Schools should teach students the fundamentals of respecting intellectual property from the first introduction to the Internet, because in an age where things can be copied so easily, students should learn that just because they can do something does not mean that they should.
Today’s students embrace all that new technology and the Internet have to offer, and this generation will certainly reap the benefits of social networking; quick, easy, and legal file sharing; email; and mobile computing. Not every copy is illegal, so students should know how to differentiate between legal and illegal copying. Schools must be careful to encourage thoughtful exploration while cautioning against intellectual property infringement. Students can be responsible while still taking advantage of all that new technology has to offer.
Respect for intellectual property needs to be taught because it is anything but intuitive. A common perception is that once you “buy” any sort of content (like a DVD or song), you can do whatever you like with it — upload it to YouTube or make it available on a file sharing service, for example. Students are either unaware or simply do not care that they did not “buy” the content, but just paid for a license to consume the content in a certain way. If students do not like the terms of the license, then they do not have to buy it.
Perhaps the Coldplays and U2s of the world are not struggling in poverty because of illegal file sharing (their highest profit margins are in concert ticket sales), but the situation is nearly impossible for small up-and-coming bands, non-performing artists, actors, authors, and movie studios. If millions of illegal file sharers slowly erode copyright, they will also erode what the Constitution calls “the progress of science and useful arts.”
Schools are uniquely placed to teach students the law, and then allow them to question the law. There is a legitimate debate about whether copyright in its current form is the best possible system, but students should learn what the law is, even if they do not agree with it. Students should learn how to protect themselves from litigation, be respectful of content that does not belong to them, and then learn how to effect a change if they believe the current system is wrong.
Sep/09©Chris Farley
The President’s Address to Public School Children
The New York Times had an excellent editorial on Friday about the ridiculous effort of a small but vocal minority of Americans to paint the President’s address to children as some sort of socialist propaganda effort. It is truly sad that these right-wing nuts cannot trust a duly elected president and highly educated individual to deliver what I imagine will be a sincere and thoughtful message about doing well in school and doing good in America.
The response of the American right-wing nutcases does, however, underline one thing for me: Clearly our education system has broken down somewhere because these crazy people on the right appear to be as educated as the first graders they believe will be so harmed by the President’s speech.
Read the editorial here.
Aug/09©Chris Farley
The New Digital Landscape
With an Apple tablet rumored to be on the horizon, the first question that comes to mind is, “Who will buy it?” I’m sure that it will have some educational uses, though a multi-hundred dollar multi-touch device might be a hard sell to K-12 districts. I imagine it will be great for some businesses. (I have images of Apple store employees using a point-of-sale app on the devices or building contractors checking off items on a virtual list). But the real market that Apple will pursue is the everyday consumer market. Apple is a consumer electronics company that does some education and enterprise sales, but they don’t build products for businesses. Apple builds products for consumers, and businesses like them enough to buy them anyway.
Targeting the consumer market is tricky because it’s hard to make the case that consumers need yet another device in their lives. Our current digital world is such that the norm is to have a cell phone or smart phone, a laptop or desktop or both, and a work computer of some sort which I’ll ignore here since it falls outside the consumer realm. Apple’s tablet, should its existence be more than just a rumor, seeks to redefine all that. It’s a game changer because it does not replace and improve something like iPhone does. It inserts a new device to make a more complete digital lifestyle.
My view of the new digital landscape is something like this: Most people will have very powerful desktops at home. This will be their everything machine, and it might even be a home server. Movies, TV shows, everything that is on their other devices will all be here. It’s the place you’d go to manage your media or do resource-intensive tasks like graphics work or video editing.
Next you have your notebook. If you’re like me, you would want this to be very portable, but easy to type on. If you’re a video professional, you would probably want something that could do some video editing on-the-go when you don’t have the luxury of using your amazing home machine.
Then you have your smartphone. It is truly portable, and with you always. It’s perfect for receiving messages and shooting off quick replies, but not for long form composition. It’s great for media consumption on a plane or in a car, but not for the great experience your home desktop will give you.
The rumored tablet comes somewhere in between the tablet and the notebook. It’s for those times when you need something portable and quick without the power and bulk of a notebook. I imagine this as a device that you carry with you around your home, and maybe type out a few quick emails on. It’s nice to have the luxury of the larger screen in your home without the need to stay in front of a desktop. It would be more functional and have more screen real estate than the smartphone, which would make it great for reading articles and consuming media around the home.
I have a feeling that this is what Apple is going for with their new device, if the device exists. It’s about having more devices, more choices, more freedom, and more portability. Users can have remarkable power at home where they need it and great speed and portability on-the-go. If the Apple tablet does exist, it could be a blockbuster product. It could be, like the iPod, a device that we didn’t think we needed.
Aug/09©Chris Farley
Town Hall Nonsense
This post will be short because this topic hardly deserves more than a few paragraphs.
Insuring healthcare for everyone is complicated. Extremely complicated. I don’t even understand the intricacies of some of the legitimate arguments about healthcare reform, but I do know that having more people insured is better than having 40 million Americans without healthcare.
There are citizens out there who have legitimate concerns. Everyone wants to know what the current proposals will mean for them. Everyone has a question to ask, because everyone will be affected. Everyone wants to know that the proposal that is eventually adopted helps the most people in the most effective way possible. Lawmakers have gone out among their constituents to answer their questions.
Instead of the real, honest debate that should be taking place, we have organized disruptions orchestrated by people who are acting contrary to the American ideal of fierce but respectful debate. These hijackers of public forums are drowning out the voices of the millions of Americans who are wondering what will happen to them.
There is a small, but very vocal minority who claim they are out to stop healthcare reform. That is, superficially, their goal. But in reality, they are out to destroy intelligent discourse. Their mission is to show that the person who shouts the loudest is the most effective, and that is extraordinarily dangerous.
So you can agree or disagree about healthcare reform, but speak your opinions respectfully. The shouters and the screamers are in pursuit of stupidity, so the rest of America needs to show them that real debate will continue unabated.
Jul/09©Chris Farley
No Compromises
Someone told me once that a compromise results in agreement that no one is happy with. I don’t think that’s always true, but it’s becoming increasingly true with legislation. The problem with legislation is that the not-happy parties aren’t just the two people who broker the agreements; it’s everyone impacted by the legislation.
Let’s take, for example, the stimulus package. At $800 billion dollars, it is far, far, far, far above what the fiscal conservatives in Congress and elsewhere want. It is positively apocalyptic for conservative economists (or at least those who write on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal). At $800 billion, it is also significantly under the over-$1 trillion that the President and more liberal economists had been hoping for.
So each side is convinced that their way is the best, so when the bill is actually written, neither side is happy. Perhaps the liberal economists and politicians are correct; perhaps the conservatives are. But what certainly does not work is creating a bill that is entirely inconsistent with any existing ideology. What we got was a bill that was packed with compromises. The President compromised on the bill’s total, and its content. In order to compromise with the Blue Dogs and Republicans, all sorts of additions of dubious stimulative effect were added. Instead of a bill run by a sound economic ideology, every representative wanted a piece of the pie.
Unfortunately, health care seems to be going down a similar path. The President wants universal health care, and a growing chorus of respected medical voices are saying that this plan is not viable. Why? This bill compromises what the President wanted to make it more appealing to conservatives. And now we have a bill that everyone hates.
The President needs to stop compromising. He needs to abandon partisanship, and abandon bi-partisanship. I’m looking for the White House to be very involved in writing bills the way they should be. Bills need to be written with some sort of higher theory or logic at work. Politicians haven’t been doing a good job of this lately. So the President should write the bill the way he thinks it should be, and get approval from the best and the brightest. Then the President should make his case to America, and do his best to get the best bill passed. Doing your best to get a mediocre bill past just isn’t worth the effort.
Jul/09©Chris Farley
Marriage
David Boies wrote a remarkably well-reasoned op-ed about gay marriage published in The Wall Street Journal on Monday. His legal insight makes it painfully obvious that keeping gay marriage illegal is ideologically inconsistent, alarming idiotic, and demonstrates a harmful attachment to a sadly defective belief. Read his editorial for the specifics, but he makes a reasonable argument from a legal perspective. Boies wrote about interpreting gay marriage to be legal under our current laws, but I think this should be more about changing laws than changing interpretation. We need an ideological and a legislative shift, and the sooner the better.
I don’t think we should change the definition of marriage. I think we might even be able to save ourselves the struggle of deciding what the current definition of marriage actually means. We should instead eliminate marriage all together.
What is marriage but the joining of assets? After the legal side is done, people add to the concept of marriage whatever special significance they want to. I see no reason why the joining of assets, agreement to joint custody in the case of children, and all the fun tax requirements cannot be independent of “marriage” in the emotional, spiritual, or religious sense.
Marriage is not something that should be dictated by the government. Who you love and how you love them should not be subjected to debate. Let’s make the legal side open to everyone, and keep any special significance people want to attach to it separate. “Marriage” should disappear from law, and be replaced with some terminology like “domestic partnership,” or one of the terms previously used for the almost-marriages that homosexuals are allowed. These are essentially what I just described — marriages in the legal sense, but not automatically carrying the history and struggle around the term “marriage.”
If for no other reason than it’s easier, marriage should be left to individuals. Treating gays differently than anyone is just plain wrong, but treating them differently in the eyes of the law is just plain alarming. This way we can allow people to unite themselves legally, and the religious nuts can preserve the “sanctity of marriage” in their own churches.
Jul/09©Chris Farley
Terrorism
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drocpsu/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
As yet another report surfaced of former Vice President Cheney’s complicity in legally questionable, morally deplorable, and blatantly dishonest conduct to “fight terrorism,” I was struck by a few things. Terrorism, despite immediate appearances, almost always fails in the end. The only possible way for terrorism to succeed is with help — help from unwitting accomplices like Vice President Cheney.
It is first helpful to understand the purpose of terrorism. In the case of Islamic extremists, they seem to take issue with our acceptance of more than one belief system. For them, it is painful that an Islamic world could relatively peacefully coexist with Jewish, Christian, and atheist ones. I don’t think they would be too happy about our freedom of speech, nor our republican government. That is exactly why terrorism is not about killing people. It is my understanding that killing people is a desirable byproduct for terrorists because terrorists know that it’s not possible to kill every person with conflicting values. It is much easier to kill the values.
The best example of this is 9/11. In the post 9/11 frenzy and fear, incredibly intelligent individuals were driven to do irrational things, like warrantless domestic surveillance. By creating fear, terrorism accomplishes one half of its purpose — to cause terror. The second half of its purpose is for the extraordinary terror to cause our value system to collapse. It’s at this point that it’s possible to stop terrorism, by not playing the same game. It is possible to protect against a terrorist threat without compromising principles like privacy, abandoning agreements like the Geneva Convention, or violating rights like habeas corpus.
No one willingly aids a terrorist, but they certainly can do so accidentally. Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Deputy Attorney General John Yoo, and many other members of the Bush administration were the greatest accomplices to modern terrorism, but the damage they did was in their idiotic and poorly considered zealousness to defend the United States from terrorists. They managed to convince themselves that the world was split into good people and terrorists, so warantless domestic spying, torture, and indefinite detention — all very illegal — were justifiable. So much for privacy, the Geneva Convention, and habeas corpus. If the goal of terrorism is to end our values, and in order to stop terrorism we erode our values, then we have betrayed ourselves.
This all hinges on the ability to fight terrorism without resorting to the extreme methods preferred by the Bush Administration. It would not be unreasonable to rationalized the Bush Administration’s methods by arguing that while the methods are undesirable, it is worth it in the context of loss of life. Unfortunately, the efficacy of the Bush Administration’s policies is uncertain at best, and criminally unjustifiable at the worst. The CIA’s inspector general reported that warrantless wiretapping yielded “limited results.” Torture is also of questionable usefulness, and indefinite detention is just stupid because if there is no reason to hold people that wouldn’t stand up before a judge, then there doesn’t seem to be much of a justification to hold them.
The key to fighting terrorism is exercising all possible measures within existing laws, and creating reasonable new laws to fight new threats. If domestic wiretapping is necessary, then it should be done with warrants and with congressional oversight. If interrogations need to be done, then they should be done legally and without coercion. Secrecy will inevitably be necessary in some circumstances, but never from our own Congress. There is a judicial system for warrants, and there is a Congress for oversight. Any law that ignores those two things for any reason has gone too far astray.
New crimes call for new laws, not new legal systems. We need to adhere to the values upon which our country was founded, or we have truly let the terrorists win. Fear causes a knee-jerk reaction, but that reaction isn’t necessarily a prudent one. The Bush Administration set us on an imprudent course — one that completely ignores two hundred years of Constitutional law and American values. I would much rather be confident that the American people are safe today because of measures conducted in accordance with American principles than through questionable methods that play into terrorist plans. We are now over nine years on from 9/11; it’s time to move from fear-based policies to thought-based ones.
Jul/09©Chris Farley
Computer Science
I’ve always considered myself suited for intellectual pursuits. I am most certainly not one of those people who can be satisfied by kicking around pieces of rubber while making absolutely no contribution to society whatsoever, nor am I much suited to theoretical physics or medicine. Economics, law, or business were my choice professions. Computer science never even seemed worth of consideration.
Fortunately, rapidly shifting interests seem to be an occupational hazard of being young so I have found a new, exciting, and promising field that I might wish to go into. As I return from my blogging hiatus, I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to share.
This all starts, of course, with school. I learned Java with an amazing teacher, and I’m pleased to say that, as all good courses should, this revealed new doors of educational possibility. Computer science is as much about concepts as it is about a way to think. The step-by-step problem solving that is required for programming is not unique to programming; it’s helpful for solving any problem.
I’m planning to expand my knowledge far beyond Java. It’s a gateway language in the narcotically addictive world of computing. My current topic of study is Objective-C so I can program for iPhone and iPod touch. AP Computer Science is in my future as well so I can expand my knowledge of actual concepts rather than just languages.
Long-term, I have no clue where all this puts me. I am no longer wedded to economics or law; I could see myself studying computer science. Whether it becomes my primary focus in college or not, I’m sure it will be a valuable addition to my repertoire. It has, as you will hopefully read on Friday or Saturday, also added a dimension to my not-serious, but ongoing, unofficial, personal search for a college at which I could be happy.
Jul/09©Chris Farley
Sanctity of School Breaks
This shouldn't be happening in July
There’s a sad moment in every student’s summer when they realize that school is again on the horizon. Even for those of us who absolutely love school, it’s sad to see the freedom we enjoyed get replaced by our studies. When we are in school, we take solace in the fact that we have a vacation somewhere in our future, and if all that fails we have the summer to relax. So when we reach that sad moment and realize that we still have summer reading, it’s annoying. I’m willing to accept a certain amount of annoyance for educational purposes, of course, but I doubt the educational value of summer reading. I don’t think summer reading is an educational annoyance; I think it is just an annoyance.
The idea of summer reading, as far as I can tell, is this: Students have a few months off. If they spend their time swimming and doing things other than learning (which many will), their minds will atrophy. Vocabulary will float away, math concepts will quickly be beyond their grasp, and they’ll completely forget how to write an essay. Enter summer reading. Have students read books, work on math problems, and read and write in a foreign language. That way students will retain more information when they return to school in the fall.
I have little doubt that remaining intellectually active over the summer is a huge benefit for students when they return in the fall, but the benefit versus the cost simply does not justify work over the summer or over any vacation of more than a couple days. I’m a big advocate of working hard on school days: waking up early, studying hard, learning as much as possible, diligently completing homework, and keeping a busy schedule; but I’m also a big advocate of the breaks that are actually breaks. It is incredibly important for students’ emotional and physical state to keep vacations sacred — a time for students to unwind, recharge, and get ready to work hard when they return. It makes students more productive when they are in school.
The best analogy I can think of for this case is pulling an all-nighter. A misguided individual might stay up all night to finish a project without realizing that his or her efficiency is probably only a small fraction of what it usually is. He or she would probably rationalize by saying that because they are spending more time on the project, they are certainly getting more done. In reality, he or she would create a much better finished product in a much shorter time span if he or she simply went to sleep and worked on the project after taking a break. The idea behind summer work seems to be that if we take up more time with education to prevent students from degenerating over the summer, they will automatically be better students. No one seems to have stopped to consider that if we all took a break, a real break, we might just come back to school ready to tackle new material with enthusiasm and energy.
There is one final component to this, which, as with many education issues, has to do with trusting students. If summer reading is eliminated, there is a gap that students will have to fill. It will be up to students to keep learning and keep interested in school material, but at least it will be on their own terms. If students return to school unprepared because they did not keep up as they should have, then it will be their own fault. The most important lesson that the student will learn, however, is that they ought to keep on learning over the summer. Choices about education are so often made for students that the education about how to make choices is too often forgotten. If students are given control over their own education, then they will learn how to keep themselves on track rather than having an oft-resented restriction placed on them. The result is a valuable lesson for the student and, once students self-adjust, no change for teachers in the fall. As a dedicated student, I don’t need my teacher to tell me to read a book in French over the summer to keep up with my French. I know that if I don’t, I’ll struggle when I return. Now if only a teacher could entertain the notion that I might actually learn something if I had a choice about how to keep myself education, that would be great.
There really is no valid reason for schools to intrude on breaks. Students should defend breaks fiercely because breaks, no matter when they are, belong to them. Breaks belong to students, and students should be trusted with their education in that time. The basic drive to succeed will surely keep students learning. The ineffectual cavalcade of summer work, the grievous inefficiencies it causes, and the inevitable aggravation that ensues can and should stop.
Jul/09©Chris Farley
Digital Wave
Courtesy of Riley Kaminer
I always love when teachers become the taught. Every once in a while, the student-teacher relationship is turned and students get to be the teachers. Those situations often arise as the result of a normal class discussion, and most teachers genuinely enjoy learning something new. In recognition of the fact that there are some areas in which students are more qualified than teachers, a wise teacher (Mrs. B) at my school developed something called Digital Wave. Once a year, a group of tech savvy students team up with some tech savvy faculty (there are more of us than them) to create a series of workshops on various technologies. The concept has evolved somewhat from students being in an assistant role to actually leading workshops.
We decided this year to do something slightly different. In the past, Digital Wave has focused on technology that teachers can use, but we realized that so many teachers don’t know anything about things like Twitter or Facebook. For a group of professionals working with a group of students who widely use social networks and other technology-related tools, teachers are often ignorant of them. Our task was to change that, and I think we were at least partially successful.
I ran three sessions this year on Twitter, iPhone, and blogging. You can see various pictures of me presenting courtesy of Riley Kaminer. My goal was never to get teachers (and a few administrators) to go out an start using Twitter, buy an iPhone, or start blogging, but to make them aware of how students are using these tools. Interestingly, many teachers realized that the iPhone in particular could be a powerful tool for education.
So why am I talking about this? I’m convinced that the typical student-teacher relationship is functional, but not ideal. It’s great for a student to learn about something from a teacher, but if the relationship isn’t reciprocal, then both sides are missing out on something. Students have the ability to improve the quality of education for everyone by teaching teachers how to use new tools, or simply making them aware of their existence so that they understand their students better.
In the coming years, I hope that we can expand Digital Wave to include more student-run sessions. There are so many areas in which students have the capability to enrich teachers’ knowledge, and reap the benefits afterwords. Outside of spontaneous classroom exchanges, students need the capability to break down the traditional one-way information flow between teachers and students. Programs like Digital Wave allow that to happen, and both teachers and students are better because of it.