The original concept of the web was to connect documents. Obviously, the web has grown and expanded. Now, there are many, many different places to put “your documents”. Now your “documents” are no frequently longer web pages or documents that you write, but rather things that you post on other’s web sites.

Personal Examples

Lots of people now post their “documents” to places like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, InstaGram, Tumblr, etc. These sites all make it really easy to post information. They all vary in how easy it is to get your data out of their system. They also control where your data lives. Generally, the trade off is the ease of use to post (and network effect of those there) in exchange for your data living in their ecosystem.

Professional Examples

Similar to the personal examples above, there are many professional examples as well. Many people are using some the of the sites above in a professional manner. There are also sites like BlackBoard, Edmodo, Haiku and more. These sites vary from some free access to some very expensive options. Beyond the cost (because usually the cost is born by the school district, not the individual teacher) is the idea of who owns the data. Here the data is the very hard work that a teacher has put into developing that site. Getting that data out can be difficult.

Why does this matter?

I know a teacher who recently switched districts. This is a technology proficient teacher who had created a wide range of classes, activities, resources, etc digitally. However, the district that this teacher was in, had contracted their LMS out. That means that the teacher could not take her data with her. She had some terrific lessons that she had spent time developing and could really use now. However, her data is locked up somewhere else. She can no longer get to it.

There is also a movement called the IndieWeb. The basic concept is that you write a text post, post a picture, post video or some other type of data and then it is connected to whichever other destinations that you want it posted. For example, you could take a picture and post that picture to Instagram, Facebook. This means that even if one of those sites goes away, you still have your picture. Think about how many pictures exist on Facebook only. Maybe that’s fine. But it should be a choice. Here the idea is that you own the data, you post the original and “copies” are distributed around to other sites.

Now the same thing really can be done right now. One can set up a web site, purchase a domain name, install a couple of plug-ins and away you go. This is what I’ve chosen to do via this site. However, it does take some work. Not everyone is going to do that.

It is far easier to sign up for a service like any of those above. Next, hope that there are people there (and especially the right people). Be thoughtful though.

Professionally

This is why I’ve started and use this site. This is one reason that I’m a big believer in Moodle. With this site, I’ve also installed Moodle. I own the data. I can use it however that I want. I’m not dependent upon others. That also means that I need to maintain the site. *It’s really not that hard to maintain.

No matter what you choose, at least make the choice thoughtfully. Do you want to own the data? Do you care if the data goes away? Just how important is the data?

Cheers.

I’m currently enjoying the Traverse City Film Festival. One of the movies that I chose was The Internet’s Own Boy:The Story of Aaron Schwartz. See below for a movie recap and my thoughts.

Movie Recap

For those of you who are familiar with the story, Aaron was a gifted child who learned to program. At the age of 14, he helped write the standard of RSS (RSS is a fundamental standard for the web, even though most people don’t know what it is, they use it). Note that he was involved in writing the standard. These are the guiding principles of RSS. This is one example of the deep thoughts that he had, and communicated.

He was also one of the founders of Reddit. When Reddit was bought out, Aaron made a good bit of money. However, he really didn’t fit in with corporate culture (he complained that he wanted to work) and famously got himself fired. He didn’t fit in within the Silicon Valley culture. He felt that people said that they wanted to change the world and make things better, but didn’t do anything tangible to make that happen. He left Silicon Valley and went back to New York. He became more and more interested in social activism.

One of his fundamental beliefs was that the information should be free. He, along with some others but posted under his name, wrote the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. This talks about how information is power and that power should not be “locked up” and held by the few.

Fast forward. Aaron works with group that is “recycling” court documents that people pay to access. The government has set up PACER which is supposed to provide the citizenry with access to official court records. However, they charge for that access. The group, and Aaron, felt that access to the law should be a fundamental right for all. That it shouldn’t be restricted to just those who can afford to pay for it. This was a major theme for Aaron. Information should be free.

Aaron ended up downloading Gigabytes of information from JSTOR through a laptop placed at MIT. The Federal government charged Aaron with several felonies. Since Aaron wanted to work in Congress or the White House, he had grown to understand where he could make true changes, and knew that a felony would mean that he couldn’t do that, he fought the charges.

The fight went on for a couple of years. JSTOR issued a notice saying that they were not interested in pursuing charges. MIT refused to publicly support dropping the charges. Still the Federal government pursued the charges. In fact, they added more felony charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. The only thing that the government told Aaron’s dad is that they wanted to make Aaron an “example”. What was never clear was the example of what.

During the time of the prosecution, Aaron was also fighting for social justice. He was one of the largest voices and organizers of the movement to stop SOPA. When SOPA was first proposed, it looked like a slam dunk. That Aaron and others were able to effectively organize and defeat SOPA was a key to showing Aaron how influential and effective social organizing could be.

Aaron ended up committing suicide.

My Take

One of the things that struck me the most is how much things have changed and how unsettled those changes are for us as a society. Aaron seemed to be caught up in that. He wanted to make changes. He saw things a little differently He fought for knowledge to be free. Fought is the operative word here. There are many who are invested in the way things are (or used to be). Aaron saw that things could be different and worked to make changes.

Another theme was the lack of Congressional understanding. Congress started investing the issue after the public outcry. On of the lines repeated in the movie is “Bring in the nerds” from several Congressmen. The message was simple. The members of Congress were saying “we don’t understand this” and need someone to explain the issues to us. (Congress used to have an Office of Technology Assessment that any member could go to for help understanding these issues, but Newt Gingrich disbanded that group in 1995). Thus, we’ve ended up with Congress making laws for things that they clearly don’t understand. Not only do they not understand, but seem comfortable in in acknowledging that they don’t know (hence the jokes about “bringing in the nerds”). Add in the idea that the Federal prosecutor was using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. This law has changed very little since 1986. Aaron was charged with “recklessly damaging a protected computer” among other things. The law makes no distinction between what happens with the information. Did it make a difference if he was going to use the information to learn something versus making the information free to anyone versus selling the information? (Interestingly, Aaron had downloaded a large amount of information in the past and used the information to analyze what was going on. He did not make the information public).

Public education is in a similar position as Congress. Things have changed. The world has changed. It is time for us to evaluate where we are, what we need to differently, what changes that we need to make. We won’t get it perfect, but we need to continue the dialogue.

I’m back from ISTE (obviously) and been pretty busy. There have been lots of things going on that have gotten in the way with keeping up the site.

On a personal level, I’ve been dealing with parents that are getting older and in need of some additional attention. I think that we’ve got that worked out now.

I’m doing some consultant work which has taken a good bit of attention. It’s a lot of work, but very worthwhile. I’ll post more about that in the future.

On the professional front, this has also been a big summer. My district has passed a bond which will allow us to better serve the students, teachers, administrators and community. However, this also comes with a ton of effort by my team. We’re working on putting things in place so that the school year can start smoothly.

That being said, I should be catching back up on things shortly.

   I’ve landed at ISTE 2014. For anyone who has never attended, this is an overwhelming conference. There are thousands of people in attendance. The conference is always in a very large city with a massive conference center. This year, Atlanta, Georgia is the spot. The Conference Center has several buildings. The conference begins on Friday and runs until Tuesday.

The start of the conference is the overview of the schedule. This is done using the Conference App. The app itself is very overwhelming. The central issue for me is which sessions can I attend.

• When are these sessions?
• Are sessions offered more than once?
• What is the session about? There are lots of overlapping sessions. There are also lots of extra pay sessions. I have mixed feelings about extra pay sessions. On one hand, I certainly understand individuals being compensated or their expertise, time, and efforts. ISTE wisely has mostly segregated these sessions to the morning of Saturday. I like that. However, notice it is “mostly”. I do wish that the paid sessions were a little more, shall I say, affordable. Lots of the sessions are in the $100-200 range for a half day session. The real truth is, that I feel that many of these sessions are things that you could fairly easily learn on your own. There is some advantage to streamlining these topics, but $100 seems pricy to accomplish that. For example, there is a session that called “Streamline your daily tasks using Google tools and scripting”. The description is: “Discover how to make everyday processes more efficient using new tools and scripts.” This session is $109-$119. The description really isn’t enough for me to make a $100 commitment. However, I may be in the minority (this session sold out). This is not to disparage this session, by the way. This is just my view.

I spent several hours going through sessions so far. I still don’t have a discrete schedule (lots of choices, with many overlapping). This is one thing that I don’t like. Sessions may run from 8:00-10:00am. Other sessions run from 8:30-9:30. Others, 8:30-11:00. I prefer straight forward, simply organized blocks of time. You know 8:00-9:00, 9:00-10:00 OR 8:00-10:00. That way, if I attend a two hour session, I know that it replaces two one hour sessions.

I can imagine that traffic flow is an issue with a conference this large though. Again, this is a huge conference with tons of things going on.