I’m teaching a Computer Literacy 9 class this semester and, although I hadn’t taught grade 9s for nearly 15 years (I’ve been teaching that long – geez, I’m gittin’ old), I’m starting to have a really great time. The last two assignments in particular have involved some seriously fun learning. Both involved students creating a wiki page. One was the Amazing Web Search Tool Evaluation, and today they started the Fun and Interesting Page About Something I Like (FIPASIL). Neither assignment is particularly novel, in my opinion – basically an online report. Maybe we’ll be able to get into some collaborative work sometime this semester. I think that some of the work they are and will be producing is worth saving, but then some questions of ownership and stewardship arise.
When I’m asking students to put some work online, using a blog or a wiki or some other tool, I always come back to the same questions – whose work is this, and where should I put it? If this were a paper assignment, the standard procedure would be for students to submit their work, I would mark and return it (eventually – I’m a painfully slow marker) and they would then do with it what they will. In some cases I might keep a copy of their work for a portfolio. In most cases, however, the student owns the work and keeps the master copy of it. Some will throw it away, quite often many of them. But some may choose to keep the assignment to show family or friends. Some might file it away to use as the starting point for a future assignment (hey – it could happen).
When I ask them to put work online, ownership is not as clear cut. If the blog/wiki/whatever is hosted at the school or school division, what obligation do we have to store their work after they complete the assignment or the course or the grade or maybe even after they graduate fromt the school? What if the school web server is shut down and the school web site gets moved to a different server, losing some personal files in the process? That has happened at my school.
For the current assignments, I’m having students work on their pages at one of my spaces at wikispaces.com. It is outside of the school’s web server so change in management of the server won’t result in student’s work being lost. There are other options for hosting student wiki work, but I chose wikispaces because it is a familiar tool to me, and they offer ad free wikis for K-12 use. (Thanks wikispace people!). But I do have some concerns about what could happen to work hosted on a service that might on day disappear. With current global economic maelstroms, that becomes a real concern. I also have some hesitation to put student work on a commercial service. I like wikispaces, google docs, wordpress.com, blogger, etc. etc. but we lose some control of our work by putting it there.
A final solution is to host the work myself. The cost of registering and hosting a domain is negligible and I certainly have some of the skills needed to maintain such a site so right now I’m looking at this as a path worth pursuing. The big drawback of this approach is that some of (and in some cases too much of) my time gets put into maintainance and management of the hosting. Additionally this is a solution that might work for me, but other teachers might not have the skills or time or desire to maintain. The benefit is that I can host at least some of my student’s work indefinitely.
So, in a nutshell, the questions on my mind are what degree of ownership and control of student’s online work do I need to assume while they are my students and afterward? What are reasonable and prudent guidelines to follow while acting as the guardian of student work?
This is a great question, and I’m surprised how little this subject is discussed in the edublogosphere (did I spell that right?) For me, I take great care in trying to save and archive as much student work as possible. I tell my students at the beginning of the year that much of the work they create in my class will be saved and made accessible for years to come. But this doesn’t answer your question, who owns it.
In my opinion, the students ultimately own the work. I never post work a student does NOT want posted. I also make sure to get student and parental permission at the beginning of each year allowing me to post and save student work.
I’m in my 5th year of teaching. I have a large amount of digital content saved on my teacher weblog. It’s turned into a valuable teaching resource. I can easily access projects from the past to share with my current students. Also, past students often drop me e-mails and comments asking for help when they can’t locate something they are looking for. I feel like part of my job responsibility is to not only save as much work as possible, but also organize it in a way that makes it accessible for my students. I think this also shows the students that you truly value their work.
Great question! Wonder how others feel about this.
This is a great question, and I’m surprised how little this subject is discussed in the edublogosphere (did I spell that right?) For me, I take great care in trying to save and archive as much student work as possible. I tell my students at the beginning of the year that much of the work they create in my class will be saved and made accessible for years to come. But this doesn’t answer your question, who owns it.
In my opinion, the students ultimately own the work. I never post work a student does NOT want posted. I also make sure to get student and parental permission at the beginning of each year allowing me to post and save student work.
I’m in my 5th year of teaching. I have a large amount of digital content saved on my teacher weblog. It’s turned into a valuable teaching resource. I can easily access projects from the past to share with my current students. Also, past students often drop me e-mails and comments asking for help when they can’t locate something they are looking for. I feel like part of my job responsibility is to not only save as much work as possible, but also organize it in a way that makes it accessible for my students. I think this also shows the students that you truly value their work.
Great question! Wonder how others feel about this.
Rob, this is something that we’ve been discussing at the higher ed level, but my colleagues and I have yet to come to a consensus.
What if the students had their own wiki or blog that acted at a portfolio throughout their formal education experience? They could dump or keep what they wanted after a class was over. They retain ownership and having it on their own space may make them even happier to add to it.
Just a thought.
Rob, this is something that we’ve been discussing at the higher ed level, but my colleagues and I have yet to come to a consensus.
What if the students had their own wiki or blog that acted at a portfolio throughout their formal education experience? They could dump or keep what they wanted after a class was over. They retain ownership and having it on their own space may make them even happier to add to it.
Just a thought.
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I’ve been working with this dilemma as well. For me, at the K-8 level, it stems from a desire to be able to share what we are doing with parents. I am really trying hard to move away from printing and more toward digital galleries. Multimedia projects can not be printed anyway, and so much of what we do has a multimedia component. I’ve tried many different approaches, but none have felt just right. This year I started both a blog and a wiki to share lesson plans, projects and resources. I’ve not done much with either of them yet, although now I’m leaning toward the wiki as “the one.”
In the meantime, I share here and there as works. There are often issues. Someone isn’t able to view the video I’ve posted. I email a powerpoint, but somehow it loses images or sound in the transmission. If I post it on slideshare it loses sound and animations. ETC…you get the idea.
As for who owns student work…of course it is the students who ultimately own their creative works. I consider their work part of my portfolio as a teacher, too, but I have “disclaimers” on my various sites requesting that parents who do not want their children’s work shared online notify me. One of the commercial software companies whose products I use a lot has used some of my students’ work in their materials. They require a signed, parent consent form. They also “paid” one of my students in free software for allowing the use of her project on a promotional flyer.
I’ve been working with this dilemma as well. For me, at the K-8 level, it stems from a desire to be able to share what we are doing with parents. I am really trying hard to move away from printing and more toward digital galleries. Multimedia projects can not be printed anyway, and so much of what we do has a multimedia component. I’ve tried many different approaches, but none have felt just right. This year I started both a blog and a wiki to share lesson plans, projects and resources. I’ve not done much with either of them yet, although now I’m leaning toward the wiki as “the one.”
In the meantime, I share here and there as works. There are often issues. Someone isn’t able to view the video I’ve posted. I email a powerpoint, but somehow it loses images or sound in the transmission. If I post it on slideshare it loses sound and animations. ETC…you get the idea.
As for who owns student work…of course it is the students who ultimately own their creative works. I consider their work part of my portfolio as a teacher, too, but I have “disclaimers” on my various sites requesting that parents who do not want their children’s work shared online notify me. One of the commercial software companies whose products I use a lot has used some of my students’ work in their materials. They require a signed, parent consent form. They also “paid” one of my students in free software for allowing the use of her project on a promotional flyer.
Thanks George, Heather and Andrea for taking the time to respond.
@George – interesting that you see a certain amount of stewardship of your digital archives as a service to your students. Our sense of duty as teachers doesn’t end when they leave our classrooms, does it?
@Heather – I think that students should move towards that level of responsibility for an online portfolio. I wonder how we educate them towards that goal as they progress through K-12?
@Andrea – Yeah, there don’t seem to be any solutions out there that put all the pieces together. I agree with you about the power of the wiki as a knowledge management tool, but I like blogs for timely dissemination of information. I’ve tried to integrate the two in my latest project at the World of Wall. If you have any thoughts or ideas to share, I’d love to hear them.
Thanks George, Heather and Andrea for taking the time to respond.
@George – interesting that you see a certain amount of stewardship of your digital archives as a service to your students. Our sense of duty as teachers doesn’t end when they leave our classrooms, does it?
@Heather – I think that students should move towards that level of responsibility for an online portfolio. I wonder how we educate them towards that goal as they progress through K-12?
@Andrea – Yeah, there don’t seem to be any solutions out there that put all the pieces together. I agree with you about the power of the wiki as a knowledge management tool, but I like blogs for timely dissemination of information. I’ve tried to integrate the two in my latest project at the World of Wall. If you have any thoughts or ideas to share, I’d love to hear them.