This week, we explored an assortment of online resources, including Trello, Twitter, Tweetdeck, Feedly, Diigo and Hypothesis. I have limited experience with Twitter, and no experience with any of the others. I am still very cognizant of the impact that Twitter has had on accountability for one’s beliefs and communication in our culture, due to numerous high profile controversies involving celebrities getting in trouble for old tweets. Teachers are vulnerable to the same phenomenon on a smaller scale, and should aspire to make sure they only post statements that they would be happy for anyone to see on a medium that anyone can see.
In addition to appropriateness and social acceptability of content, people posting content on the internet needs to be cognizant of intellectual property law. On that note, we watched a film called RiP! A Remix Manifesto. This documentary looked at copyright law and how it impacts new technologies for creating and distributing media. A great deal of the issues dealt with on this film are reminiscent of the economic concepts of value creation and value capture. The Internet has made value creation far easier and more efficient, particularly as it relates to the distribution of media. People now have far larger libraries of music than they did during the age of the physical album, usually at a much lower cost. However, tremendous legal issues have arisen regarding who should reap the benefits of these improvements, and how.