Month: September 2022

ETL533 6.2: Issues in Management

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Do you know what type of lending models and licences are available for the distribution of literary resources? Have you considered the challenges involved for education/libraries with digital literature licensing agreements? What are some issues involved in DRM, and how can they best be handled?

Once upon a time before I began my teaching career in 2011 I was lucky enough to work at a bookstore. We sold physical books as well as CDs of audiobooks. Life was simple. Life was grand.

Technology has dramatically changed the publishing landscape and while increased accessibility and functionality are definite benefits to readers, new lending models, licences and DRMs have irrefutably complicated the situation for schools and libraries.

We currently pay over $3000 each year to provide our students access to a variety of e-books and audiobooks as part of the Wheeler’s consortium. While it was popular during the period of online learning, it’s less popular now and not exactly what I’d call cost-efficient. We’ve had students request certain books on the Wheeler’s e-platform, but the price of these digital resources is significantly higher than if we were to purchase a physical copy, and we lose access to the resource if we drop our subscription. We’re also having issues with security, since our shared iPads are logging in the first user and not allowing new students to login. If we move to another service we’d be faced with different licencing and DRM models. And if I encourage students to create their own personal accounts for services like Amazon Kindle, it’s wonderful that they can link their Goodreads account and become socially connected, but also problematic that their data is being tracked and potentially sold.

A few weeks ago I had one of our Learning and Support Teachers approach me about getting an audiobook for one of our year 8 teachers to play to her class while they read the physical novel, so that she could wander the room dealing with behaviour issues instead of being stuck reading to the class. Whaddayaknow – it was impossible to source a copy of this text as an audiobook! If we had, we’d have been faced with issues around access (what device to play it on? How long do we have access to it? Do we need a subscription?) and if we wanted to create our own audiobook of the teacher recording herself reading, we’d be in violation of copyright laws. Call me old-fashioned, but I just wanted a CD audiobook that the English staff could keep in their book room to accompany the class set of novels. 
Sometimes I really miss the good old days!

ETL533 6.1: Fair Use vs. Fair Dealing

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Why did the judge consider Google’s Book search project to be transformative? What are some of the possible benefits and possible issues with such a project? What are some differences between Fair Use (US copyright law) and Fair Dealing (Australian copyright law)?

As so often appears to be the case with new developments in technology, Google Books is simultaneously democratising and ultra-capitalistic. Google’s aim of bringing literature and research to the masses is a wonderful equiliser which increases access to quality resources, but isn’t purely altruistic or without benefit to the corporate giant behind the move since they stand to profit from advertising and potential future subscription models. I’m no lawyer, but it seems that Google is prevailing on a technicality – namely, that according to US laws a class action must be brought by a ‘class’ or group with similar facts (in this case, I think this refers to similar losses). If I’m understanding this case correctly, the ‘injuries’ or financial losses by the authors involved in the class action are potentially not similar enough for them to be counted as a class, which means that each individual author would have to sue Google separately – and who has the time, money, and resources to go up in a David vs. Googliath battle like this? Google Books is also an internationally accessed resource affecting international authors, though it seems like this case is being decided in US courts under US laws. Since Australia’s Fair Dealing provisions seem more prescriptive than the USA’s Fair Use laws, I wonder what the implications will be for local publishers. I’m also concerned about the possibility that in future, Google can restrict access to these materials again in the name of profit or lock users in to access via certain devices (which, of course, will also financially benefit Google!).

ETL533 4.2: Digital Tools

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Why incorporate digital texts and storytelling into your programs? What new tools or approaches have you discovered that are interesting and worthwhile trying for you?

As a high school teacher with History and English classes, I’m always on the lookout for new ideas and resources that can enhance the my students’ engagement and learning. However, with so many options it can definitely be overwhelming for teachers to consider how to most effectively implement ICT and digital storytelling into their practice! I really enjoyed the questions presented by Reid (2013) which teachers should consider before embarking on this journey:

  • What do you want your e-book to do?
  • What kind of technology do you have access to?
  • What ratio of technology to students do you have?
  • What basic skills and knowledge do your students already have?
  • Which curriculum outcomes do you want your students to achieve?
  • What are the minimum expectations?

It’s crucial to consider these questions in order to ensure our use of digital storytelling and digital resources has a sound pedagogical foundation and avoids falling into the realm of the gimmicky, or being what the SAMR model designates as Substitution.

I’m really intrigued by the possibilities of digital poetry at the moment. One of my year 11 English Extension students has discussed the possibility of writing a suite of poetry for the Extension 2 course in Year 12, and I think that exploring this emerging form could be an exciting pathway for her. I also really like the idea of the digital interview suggested by Kolk (n.d.), which could fit our current year 7 English unit on Respecting Differences and support our students’ developing empathy.

 

Kolk, M. (n.d.). Six ways to implement digital storytelling. Retrieved from https://creativeeducator.tech4learning.com/2016/articles/six-ways-to-implement-digital-storytelling

Reid, K. (2013). Creating e-books in the classroom. In J. Bales (Ed.), E-books in learning – a beginner ‘s guide (pp. 37-43). Australia: Australian School Library Association.

ETL533 Assessment 3: Digital Storytelling Proposal

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Working titles: Shakespeare’s Age and Stage OR The Shakespeare Chronicles OR Shakespeare Transformed

Topic: This digital storytelling project aims to help secondary students understand Shakespeare’s life and times through an interactive, multimodal choose-your-own-adventure digital narrative. 

Platform/tool: Canva

Rationale: 

This digital narrative is intended to support the EHS Stage 4 English unit Shakespeare’s Bawdy Mouth, where students explore Elizabethan England to gain an understanding of Shakespeare’s context and works. It could also be used as revision for Stage 5 or 6 English students studying a variety of Shakespearean plays. 

In this choose-your-own-adventure narrative, students will follow the adventures of a young actor in Shakespeare’s theatre company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, as they prepare for the opening night of Macbeth in 1606. Students will be presented with choices to guide the narrative and learn about Shakespeare’s life and times. It aims to utilise the three elements of quality digital literature I’ve previously identified – interactivity, multimodality, and connectivity – to support students’ developing understandings. 

Ideally, this resource will also function as a research pathfinder, as student’s choices will be supplemented by hyperlinks to external resources in order to support literary learning and develop their information literacy skills. Currently, students are assessed on their knowledge of this unit via their composition of three diary entries from the perspective of someone in Shakespeare’s time. Students could potentially use this narrative as a model for their own digital diary entries, thus updating the task for a digital environment and supporting student learning needs in the 21st century.

I initially investigated PowerPoint and Microsoft Sway for this task but chose to use Canva for a variety of reasons.  I enjoyed using Microsoft Sway but its inability to link between pages meant that it wasn’t viable for a hyperlinked choose-your-own-adventure narrative. I am proficient with PowerPoint and could utilise many of its features to construct a hyperlinked narrative, but felt that Canva was easier and more appealing for Stage 4 students due to its user-friendly interface, cloud storage, collaborative potential and its wide database of images and graphics. It is also free to access for NSW Department of Education students via their student portal. However, I am finding it difficult to inset audio to different slides since Canva is limited to one audio file per design. 

You can view the work in progress here.