Copyright

I've been doing some research on copyrighting for our final presentation and I'd like to step back and look at this from a philosophical standpoint.  What are the current copyright laws and what are the hegemonic considerations that inform this laws?  Moore (2011) stated that early references to "intellectual property protection dates from 500 B.C.E." (p. 1).  Copyright legislation was introduced in response to proprietary aspirations, and protected "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression" (p. 1). Over the course of our history, we have established boundaries intended to protect property, whether it be physical or intellectual in nature.  Recent debates over digital copyright law has fuelled further discussion, however, at the core, the arguments are fundamentally the same.  The concern here is over protecting the notion of 'what's mine is mine.'  We value proprietary rights.  We value the 'American Dream.'  The dominant North American teachings subscribe to a life of study, work, marriage, and owning property complete with a white picket fence and whatever other luxurious assets one is able to procure.  We reinforce these messages in our media, government policies, and daily conversation.  We are taught to accumulate as much resources as we can in our life, often at the expense of others and/or the environment.  We do not know how to work together for the sake of a collective.  We do not know how to share.  We do not know how to put the needs of others or the environment ahead of our own.
Copyright law exists because we all participate in a proprietary model, regardless of whether we believe in it or not.  The model is so deeply rooted, that I question whether or not we are conscious of it.
Now, do we need protection?  I suppose that depends on who you talk to.  Consider Microsoft versus Linux, proprietary versus open source.  While Microsoft's motives are clear being held accountable to their shareholders, Linux's motivations may be less so.  Linux's mandate "protects and advances Linux by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source development community to ensure Linux remains free and technically advanced" (About Us, para. 2).  What's in it for them?  Here lies the problem.  We are conditioned to perpetuate the profit motive, so when we encounter something altruistic, does this garner suspicion?  Linux's motives seem to challenge conventional ways of doing things, however, ironically they too hold copyrights to their product with the disclaimer, "distribution of substantively modified versions of this document is prohibited without the explicit permission of the copyright holder" (gap_alpha1, para. 1).
It seems that our capitalistic values are so deeply seeded that we must not only copyright to protect our property and intellectual rights, but also copyright our intentions not to copyright.


About Us (n.d.). The Linux Foundation.  Retrieved from http://www.linuxfoundation.org/.
Gap_alpha1 (n.d). The Linux Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.linuxfoundation.org/.

Moore, A. (2011).  Intellectual property.  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. p. 1-15.

Yellow Light of Death

After 3 years of active use, my Playstation 3 (PS3) died this month.  It served me well, yet I could not accept that a $500 Sony device would not outlast the span of its product lifecycle.  A visit to the Sony store revealed a defect in the PS3, known as 'the yellow light of death.'  Essentially, the system will no longer power up and provides this feedback in the form of a small glaring yellow light.  As the system was off warranty, I began to weigh my options, from repair to replacement.  Granted, the price of a new PS3 has come down considerably since its release date in 2006, but I wanted to explore the repair option and challenge the notion that in North America, it is cheaper to replace technology than repair it.  A representative at the Sony store in Market Mall advocated for the former, stating it would cost $100 for Sony to look at the unit plus $70 per hour to fix, in addition to parts.  Recognizing the bias of a sales rep hired to sell Sony's products, I decided to seek out a more non-biased opinion.  I turned to Kijiji.ca and found a local service company that could fix the problem for $70, far less than the $249.99 price point for a new console.  This Calgary company fixed the problem in a matter of hours at a fraction of the replacement cost.  Now, I wonder if I might have gone another route and tried to fix it myself.  The 'do-it-yourself' mantra for home improvement is nothing new, but I perceived the intricacies of electronics manufacturing to be prohibitive for the laymen.  A quick Google search provided a host of 'how-to' websites and videos to guide this process (see the Youtube video above and website http://ylodfixrepair.com/ps3-yellow-light-of-death-fix).  Blogs have also surfaced addressing the problem, such as http://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/01/24/yellow-light-of-death-repair-kit/.  I found it refreshing to find I was not alone in my search for information.  I think a few years ago, I would have been very tempted to feed into the corporate conditioning of replacement before repair, however, this experience has taught me to look outside the box, either by leveraging local expertise or by accessing an online collective.

Skyward Sword

I'm a gamer.  I've been playing video games since the Commodore 64 was launched in 1982. My father bought the computer for me because he had hoped I would learn to program and help create a spreadsheet for our family finances. I was 9 years old. I remember working on a piano program to play music on my keyboard, but I think that's as far as I got. I started playing Space Taxi and GI Joe and it was over. From there, I got my first console, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), followed by the Super Nintendo, and up to the present day Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360. I love Nintendo and have happily supported the Mario and Zelda franchises over the years, though the latest installment, Skyward Sword, has me questioning my brand loyalty and response to change. Nintendo revolutionized console gaming with their motion controlled Wii system released in 2006. Some of the functionality of the traditional button-based control scheme was cast aside in favour of motion sensors. Skyward Sword uses the Wii motion plus control as a sword and senses the direction the user is pointing and slicing. The concept is wonderful, however, I do not believe the technology is quite there to support this innovative idea. If I am to get on board with this, I need the technology to be precise. If it proves unresponsive, I have little patience for the innovation.

So, how have my expectations for games changed over the years? What am I looking for in a game? How do my past experiences inform my future decisions? How does a company like Nintendo innovate on an established franchise without isolating and turning away their core audience?

To explore answers to these questions, I turned to the blog collective. Thomas & Brown (2011) stated that "blogs that survive and thrive do so because they create a strong collective of users who build conversations around an author's posts" (p. 787). I explored Michael Abbott's Brainy Gamer blog to find what he had to say about the Zelda franchise.  He posted, "The latest Zelda release, Skyward Sword, was my favorite game of 2011" (To Dream Again, para. 5). If I were to engage in this conversation and either agree or disagree with Abbott, what might my response be? As I read through the comments section of this blog, I found a number of posts in agreement with Abbott. One in particular, however, resonated with how I felt after playing the game. Patrick said, "The motion controls were too finnicky in a lot of places and things really dragged on too long towards the end (in my opinion). I wished for a standard controller option the whole time" (Patrick, para. 1).  I wholeheartedly agree with Patrick, but what does this matter? Where would this information go? I'm not sure what the purpose of my participation in this conversation would be. Is this an opportunity to vent to the community about my beloved franchise gone horribly wrong? Is it a chance to connect with other gamers and see what their thoughts are? Is it a chance to speak out against Nintendo's innovation and ask for them to get it right before they bring it to market? How would I know that Nintendo executives are listening? I would like to believe that the purpose of this blog would be to enact change. Is this the best forum to achieve this? Should I choose to contribute to the conversation about this game on Brainy Gamer or am I better off voicing this elsewhere?

Abbott, M. (2012, January 18). To dream again. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/

Patrick. (2012, January ). Re: To dream again.
[Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/

Thomas, D. & Brown, J.S. (2011) A new culture of learning: Cultivating the
imagination for a world of constant change. [Kindle version]. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/New-Culture-Learning-Cultivatingebook/dp/B004RZH0BG/ref=sr_1_?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC&s=digial-text&qid=1307924795&sr=1-1

Dubstep

Thomas and Douglas (2011) stated that "seeing information as a resource can help us stop thinking of learning as an isolated process of information absorption and start thinking of it as a cultural and social process of engaging with the constantly changing world around us" (p. 531).  This past weekend my son turned 14 and had a couple of friends for a sleep over.  One of the boys brought over his iPod and introduced me to dub step, a genre I was unfamiliar with.  Click on the Skrillex and/or Chrispy clips below to get a sample.

My son's friend then decided to take his passion for dub step further and created his own tracks using a free demo for fl studio (http://www.image-line.com/documents/flstudio.html).  The music he creates is entirely self taught, however, what separates this from musical teachings of the past (I sure played a mean trombone in Jr. High) is that he is immersed in a  participatory environment.  He not only created the tracks, but uploaded them to Youtube to share with his friends and family, soliciting feedback on his ability to generate a proper "drop down."  Now he is publishing his tracks with available feedback to inform future iterations of his recordings.


So yes, the world is changing.  My son's friend is learning how to dub step and has devised a way to do so that works best for his learning.  I wonder how he learns in his Jr. High school. How is he afforded the opportunity to inquire into something he is passionate about and have access to technologies that support this?  How would a school accommodate for this type of scenario?   If our world is changing and we are to embrace change, what can we anticipate the next evolution to look like?  How will learning evolve?

Thomas, D. & Brown, J.S. (2011)  A new culture of learning: Cultivating the

imagination for a world of constant change. [Kindle version].  Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/New-Culture-Learning-Cultivatingebook/dp/B004RZH0BG/ref=sr_1_?ie=UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC&s=digial-text&qid=1307924795&sr=1-1

25%

25% of my grade in this course is derived from blogging.  That's significant.  What am I expected to gain from this experience?  The learner outcomes are: "What is the role of technology in society?" and "What changes to education, academics, social culture and politics are a result of Web 2.0 technology?"
I started my post-secondary studies in 1991, back in the days of paper registration and long line-ups at the Registrar's office.  In class, a component of our grade was derived from contributions to class discussions, but I don't think this amounted to any more than 10% of the grade.  What was the purpose of this?  A cushion for the professor in assigning grades?  To ensure attendance in class?  An attempt to make students more accountable to assigned readings?  Now here we are with 25% of a grade comprised from participation.  I find myself in a participatory world, though I wonder if this was always the case and just labelled differently.  True, blogs did not exist in 1991.  Participation did, however.  Teaching instruction may have differed, yet my construction of knowledge was always there whether the course delivery was behaviouristic or constructivist.  Now the question becomes will I better meet learning outcomes in this way than I did back then?  What am I learning as I type this?  The words here will be posted online.  I can go back and reflect on this entry.  This I could have done in my hand-written class notes in 1991.  What is different here is my peers can comment on my work as can anyone who cares to look at this blog.  My class notes are made public and I am graded on the quality of my blog and my comments on my colleagues' blogs.
Leslie and Murphy (2008) studied the purpose of blogging in a post-secondary environment.  They noted one purpose of blogging is to "support, facilitate, model, and increase opportunities for social, peer and group interaction, communication, presence, feedback, networking learning experiences, and getting to know each other" (p. 5).  The idea of increasing social presence is an interesting one.  On the surface this seems entirely ego-based, but I suppose we need to delve deeper into what social presence means.
Shen, Yu and Khalifa (2010) defined cognitive social presence as "the extent to which a user is able to construct and confirm meaning about his/her relationship with others and the social space" (p. 340).  In this graduate course, I am among a community of learners contributing to developing a knowledge base or repository.  I have access to my colleagues' "class notes" via blogs in the form of links to websites, text, audio or video.  This helps me be an active participant in my learning.  My professor presumably wants to assess my participation in this process.  I have a responsibility and am accountable to my colleagues' learning, not only my own.
This breaks my mind.

Sources:

Leslie, P. & Murphy, E. (2008). Post-secondary students purposes for blogging.  International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. 9(3), 1-17.

Shen, K.N., Yu, A. Y., & Khalifa, M. (2010).  Knowledge contribution in virtual communities: accounting for multiple dimensions of social presence through social identity.  Behaviour & Information Technology, 29(4), 337-348.

Blogging Assignments

This term I'd like to take a close look the form and function of blogging.  I have completed blogging assignments in other courses and I find myself in familiar territory.  This time, however, Dr. Francis-Poscente presented an additional assignment that I think will change my approach.  We are tasked with blogging and responding to our colleagues' blogs throughout the course, but we must also choose three blogs on a topic of interest and examine them critically.  How does one begin to impose a critical lens on a grass roots, widespread and seemingly unfiltered form of communication such as a blog?  What assumptions do I have about blogs?  Do we equate the quality of the blog with the number of comments or followers associated with it?  How does a blog differ from a forum?  These are the questions I seek to answer throughout this process.  This week I had the good fortune of bumping into one of my professors from last term, Dr. Lock, at the local Safeway.  Our conversation led to blogging and how we might define it.  She referenced a text by Will Richardson titled "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom," claiming Richardson seeks to define what constitutes blogging.  Dr. Lock has offered to lend this text to me next week so I hope to have some answers in subsequent posts.  In the meantime, I am reviewing the following blogs for the purposes of the Learning Task 3 assignment.

http://www.brainygamer.com/ 

http://www.giantbomb.com/

http://gamerswithjobs.com/

The content of these blogs connects with my thesis work on gaming in education.  These gaming blogs represent examples of a participatory environment students could potentially access in their leisure time.  I wonder how content such as this might inform expectations if a Serious Game were to be introduced in a classroom setting.  ie. if the student is accustomed to playing big budget games such as Call of Duty Black Ops and participating in an online discussion, how does this inform the work taken on in class?  What place do blogs serve in a participatory learning environment?