Eric, Pam, Greg, and I created a group project that focused on Copyright laws, Creative Commnons, Fair Use, and Public Domain. We had scratched the surface of this great big goliath topic at the beginning of July when we were working together in East Lansing but we wanted to dig deeper. Since we all lived in different areas so we decided to form our group via the internet (facebook, ect.) and collaborate using the all mighty cloud.
It was decided that we would make a professional development type presentation and the group thought that a combination of Prezi and Jing would be the most effective we of conveying our information. We then split up the work and all went our separate way to create out marvelous presentations. When we met up online we found we had a lot of great material so we created a Website for the information on Weebly.com.
During my travels through the world of Copyright laws I learned a couple of really clear facts.
1) I would not be a good lawyer. There is a lot of research that goes into being a good lawyer and there are thousands of similar but different cases out there and they all need to be read and digested in order to gain a good understanding of exactly what is going on.
2) Copyright laws have a lot to do with the flow of money. Everyone in the world needs money and they would like as much of it as they can get so it makes sense that you would do everything you can to protect your money and its flow. As an educator, I am not necessarily trying to make a profit from a lot of the things I do so I have certain loop holes and backdoors that can make my life a lot easier and I really enjoy that.
3) The public domain is a really great thing. I feel like a lot of great can come out of material that is shared by everyone. I don’t feel entitled to all of the things in the public domain, I feel blessed to have unrestricted access to them. I plan on exploring all of the great things that are in the domain and putting them to use in my professional and private lives.
4) Keeping your presentation short and to the point can be very difficult. Even though I was only asked to focus on a portion of our entire group project I still found a ton of helpful information that I wanted to talk about. Unfortunately, we were trying to avoid any kind of long winded responses so I tried my best to shorten things up to those things that were most important or directly requested by the audience (via wallwisher)
If I had to develop a similar product in the future I would try to communicate more effectively with my group. We used email, messaging, and chatting but I feel like I was always late to the party or confused by what was being posted. I really let my group down with my poor communication skills. Call me old fashion but, I needed some real face-to-face meeting (even though that would have been impossible in my group). Also, it would have been extremely nice if I could have worked on this while I had some consistent access to the internet. Rustic camping and digital presentations just don't mix.
The website:
http://groupleadershipproject.weebly.com/index.html
Here is my screencast presentation Fair Use.
Excellent job on the project, Ryan. It is clear that it was truly a collaborative effort - and one that resulted in an awesome tool. Each of you created powerful presentations that were well-designed, full of great information, and succinct (to the point). I also appreciate your reflection on the process. As you know, this was not only a project on copyright, but also an opportunity to work together in a small group (in a virtual way). It can be challenging at times - but you all did an amazing job. GREAT WORK!
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