It occurred to me after I published yesterday’s post that I should probably talk about why I think it’s important to do all the things I was trying to do with the Faculty Academy Web site. I’ve already touched on a few or those reasons — mainly the selfish desire to learn more about how WP/WPMU works and to, hopefully, discover some techniques/ideas that I could put to use on other projects. But I don’t want to suggest that putting together this site was purely an exercise; I’d like to believe that there was actually some meaningful purpose behind the experience.

In a former job, I spent a lot of time planing Web sites, thinking about their communicative goals, talking to focus groups and committees about their purpose and how we would measure their success. While I learned a lot from that experience, and I think I was able to put what I learned to good use, truthfully, a lot of it felt like wheel spinning. Talking about what we were trying to do so as to convince ourselves we understood what we were trying to do. Making a science (or a study) out of something that still, for me, often feels very nebulous and difficult to define.

So one of the reasons I love, love, love working on the site for Faculty Academy is that it has a somewhat short life-time (I know that it serves a purpose as an ongoing, permanent archive of the event, but it’s core user functionality is really critical for only about 6-8 weeks prior to the conference). It’s also a small enough conference, with enough returning attendees (most from within my own University), that I have some freedom to try new things and not worry too much if they backfire. Sure, the cfp and registration system needs to work. The program needs to be clear and easy-to-find. Logistical information needs to be accurate and consistent, but, beyond that, there’s a lot of opportunity to play.

This idea of “playing” as a way of building a Web site is, more and more, a much more rewarding way for me to work on sites. I feel pretty lucky that most of what I build online these days has a somewhat short life-span (a semester, perhaps), is done in collaboration with other playful individuals (my colleagues in DTLT and the amazing faculty and students at UMW), and doesn’t contain a lot of “serious,” institutional data that I need to worry about vetting with a huge committee or administration.

That said, I don’t want to downplay the importance of these projects. I just think course management systems, with all of their institutional-looking interfaces and static feature sets have lulled a lot of us (instructional technologists, faculty, students), into thinking that building online experiences within the Academy needs to be a locked-down, top-down, “standardized” experience. I think that’s just antithetical to how we ultimately teach and learn.

So as I embarked on this year’s conference site, I was seeking to build a site that could serve the following goals:

* provide clear, accurate information about the event (that’s a no-brainer)
* allow people to easily register or submit proposals (again, duh)
* provide an online venue for pre-conference interaction and investigation
* provide an online venue for live conference activity and monitoring of conference activities happening in other spaces

True:

* Not a lot of people added tags to program items
* I’m not sure how many people cared that there was a “live” feed of current sessions on the home page.
* As far as I can tell from the Google Analytics, no one viewed any of the archived conference video from previous years that I highlighted in the site footer prior to the event.
* Only a handful of people used delicious to add bookmarks that were tagged “umwfa09.”

But, by no means, do I think any of what I tried was a failure. First, as I’ve said before, I learned a ton doing it. I’m never failing when I’m learning. Second, even if a lot of people didn’t participate in some of the opportunities I provided, I believe a few people had seeds planted that we can continue to nurture throughout the year and at next year’s conference. Bit by bit, we make inroads. And we also model for our faculty, our students, and ourselves a way of building and creating that values learning, creativity, experimentation, and even “failure.”

Over the next week or so, I’m planning on putting up a bunch of posts about the work I did this year on the Faculty Academy Web site. Every year, working on this site is a particularly fun project for me, starting four years ago when we first began to host the conference Web site at www.facultyacademy.org with a one-off WordPress install. And every year, I’ve tried to use the project as an opportunity to push myself to learn more about how to use WordPress as a site for an event/conference. I spend an awful lot of time barking up the wrong trees and generally getting myself in trouble, but I chalk it all up to a great learning experience. For example, what I learned this year will not only come in handy as we put together the site next year, I’m also imagining how I can use it to help with a regional instructional technology conference that we often participate in here in Virginia and how I can put my lessons to use in the revamped DTLT Web site that went on hold as FA ramped up.

To start with, I’ll run quickly through a number of the tools, plugins, etc. that I made use of this year. I’ll try to dig deeper into what worked and what didn’t work for each one in future posts:

WordPress/WPMU: The conference site “proper” has lived within WordPress for several years now. I toyed with the idea of using something different this year, but ended up settling on WP again for a couple of reasons. One thing different this year was the the site was actually a blog within a WPMU install that Jim Groom helped me set up. The plan is to migrate all of our past FA sites to this install so that we can more easily upgrade, maintain (and possibly link) them. Another reason I decided to go with WP/WPMU was that we were hoping to use BuddyPress as a way to solicit registrations and proposals this year. We thought we might be able to set up custom user fields for the information we ask for when people are registering or submiting a presentation. Then, everyone would have an accounts on the site and we could maybe use that to build some kind of stronger online community presence for the conference. Bottom line, the BuddyPress experiment didn’t work out for a couple of reasons, but I’m still glad we went with WPMU. I think being able to migrate all of the conference sites to this platform — and build future conference sites within it — could pay off in the long run. Plus, it allowed me to get my feet wet with WPMU and to develop a deeper understanding of how that system works.

Google Docs/Spreadsheets: For the last three or four years, we’ve been using PhpSurveyor/LimeSurvey as the tool for soliciting registrations and proposals. It was a fine solution, but there were a couple of things about it that I wasn’t nuts about. For one, because it’s really a survey tool, the internal language in the application often confused people. I ended up hacking the core code so that there were no references to “survey” when people filled out the form. There was also no way to send people emails upon completion of the survey — which we got a few complaints about. Also, we had gotten to the point with that tool that we were making use of branching so that we could have one form for both registration and proposal submission. This seemed needlessly complicated. It was a pain to set up, and it was a pain to switch the forms mid-stream when the cfp would close but registration was still open. Finally, the output from PhpSurveyor isn’t very pretty. I ended up doing a bunch of exports periodically to a .csv or .xls file, and then cutting and pasting things together. I was always paranoid that I would screw up the cut-and-paste, and I felt like I was juggling way too much.

As I mentioned above, we toyed with the idea briefly of going with BuddyPress for this purpose, but we weren’t thrilled with how that was going to play out. So, instead, I used a Google Form/Spreadsheet which I embedded into the conference site. I’m not sure I’d do it again: there was a fair amount of template hacking (because I wanted more control over the form styling), Patrick still had to write a custom script for me so that people could get emails when forms were submitted, we ended up separating the cfp and the registration process which WAS better for us but may have been more complicated for users. All that said, having the data in a spreadsheet was very cool.

Exhibit/Google Spreadsheet: We’ve never had a dynamic registrant list on the site before — there was never any easy way to feed registration data into a place where we could consume it. But this year, when I realized that all of our registration data was going to be in a Google spreadsheet, I also realized it would be very easy to set up an Exhibit to display the data. It actually took a fair amount of time to set this up — more template hacking and some issues with getting the data to feed out of Google docs properly. But once it was set up, it worked seamlessly.

Various WP Plugins: I used a whole slew of new WP plugins for the site. It’s always fun to have a project that allows you to experiment with new plugins, and FA is a great opportunity to try things on:

* Add Link and FeedWordPress: I knew from some recent posts by Jim that these two plugins were working really well together, but I couldn’t believe how easy they made it to add a “Live Blogging” feature to the site while the conference ran (and beyond). We had about 8-10 people add their blog address/feed, and we’re still featuring any posts they write that they put in a category called “umwfa09.”

* More Fields and Advanced Custom Field Widget: I had experimented a few months ago with a plugin called “Flutter” which makes it easier to add custom fields (and create custom write panels), but it had some bugs and didn’t really work properly on WPMU. This time around, I discovered “More Fields” which is dirt-simple to setup and use. Then I stumbled on “Advanced Custom Field Widget” which makes it even dirt-simpler to display the values of custom fields in the sidebar. Bottom line: I was able to use the combination of these two plugins to enter session data for each presentation (location, time slot, format, presenters, etc.) and display it in the sidebar for each presentation’s post.

* Advanced Category Excluder and More Privacy Options: One of the challenges of working on a site for a conference that is coming up/ongoing is that you’re working on a site that people are going to be hitting regularly. You don’t want to show them some of what you’re working on for the actual days leading up to/of the conference. I was able to use these two plugins to hide certain activity until I was ready to make it available.

* FeedBurner FeedSmith: I’d never used a FeedBurner feed for a WordPress site before, but I’m glad I did this time. Not only did it allow me to track subscriptions to the site feed, I was able to set up a way for people to receive updates via email — which was really important since the plugin we’ve used for this in the past — Subscribe2 — wasn’t playing nicely with WPMU.

* Flickr Photo Album and Quick Flickr Widget: I actually used two different Flickr plugins at different times in the life of the site to display photos from Flickr. Flickr Photo Album was ideal for the display I wanted leading up to the conference (and made it easy to embed previous FA photos in pages/posts), but when the conference was running live, I preferred the output of Quick Flickr Widget on the home page to show a live feed of photos.

* WPtouch iPhone Theme: I don’t know who else benefitted from this besides Andy , but it was very cool to be able to simply install a plugin and have an iPhone/iPod touch-ready conference site.

* Yet Another Related Post Plugin: I kind of threw this one in at the last minute as the program was going live, and I was very pleasently pleased with the results. Basically, it allowed to me suggest related conference presentations for each individual session. If you’ve got a community that is actively tagging conference content (which ours wasn’t–see below), I could see this being very dynamic.

* Matt’s Community Tags: So often when you’re working on a site like this you spend an inordinate amount of time on a feature that seems really important to YOU but no one else cares about. This was one of those. But I don’t care, because I still think it’s a neat feature and maybe we’ll use it in the future. Basically, it allowed anyone to suggest a tag for any conference post (including all of the presentation posts). The tags go into moderation (which isn’t necessarily ideal), and you can use this to grow your tag cloud and, ultimatley, your understanding of the ideas inspired at the conference.

There were a few other great plugins that helped with the basic content-management aspects of the site, but I won’t go into all of those here.

For those who care, the theme I used was a seriously hacked version of WordPress Magazine Theme. It had good bones for what I wanted to do.

The feature of the site that I was most proud of, though, really didn’t require any special plugins — just a pretty mild hack to index.php. I knew I wanted to have something on the conference home page that displayed what was going on right now as the conference was running. It occurred to me the weekend before the conference that all I needed to do was create a post for each conference time slot with links to the various presentations and then time them to publish at the time when the slot began (actually, Jerry suggested going with 15 minutes prior to the beginning of a session, and that worked better). I put all of these posts in a new category called “currently.” Then I put a custom Loop on the home page that just displayed the most-recent post in that category. Voila! Dyanmic conference program on the Web site. I have no idea if anyone cared that there was a dynamic program on the Web site, but, again, I learned something figuring it out.

So. That was a lot longer than I intended. Maybe I don’t need to do individual posts about different tools now, but I think I still will, if only to document the successes and challenges for myself.

Join us next year at Faculty Academy 2010!!

• A Domain of Your Own
  Jim Groom (DTLT)

Workshop in B123

• Opening Up UMW
  Patrick Murray-John (DTLT)

Presentation in B122

• What Does a New Media Buffet Look Like?
  Andy Rush (DTLT)

• Enhanced, Blended, and Hybrid Learning — What I Picked Up In Illinois
  
• A Class Exhibit : Individual Work toward a Common Online Exhibit
  
• Teaching the On-Line Literary Journals Class, the Next Generation and Why I Bought a 1958 Mercury Excelsior Letterpress
  
• Pentop Computers: Educational Applications
  

Presentation Session in B122

• Teaching as Modeling Disciplinary Practice
  
• Altering Reality: Teaching About and With ARGs
  
• Preparing to Use Peer Instruction in Teaching Principles of Microeconomics
  
• Microlectures and Student Learning
  

Workshop in B124

• Course Redesign, Redesigned
  

Thank you!

Deck Wars

Sign up to compete at the registration desk or by speaking to anyone with a “Staff” flag on their nametag!

• We Were All A-twitter’: Micro-Blogging at UMW
  
• Old Dog, New Tricks: General Linguistics in the Age of New Media
  

Presentation Session in B122

• Report on a Successful (and Enjoyable) On-line Learning Experience
  
• Technology-Enabled Activities to Enhance Reflection
  
• Profiling eLearning Website Feature Preferences: An Empirical Study
  

Presentation Session in B210

• Academic Perils of Teaching Students
  
• Online Meeting Toolbox
  
• A Next-Generation Degree Planning System

• Blogging Panel
  

Presentation Session in B122

• Best Practices in Undergraduate Science & Economics Education
  
• “How I Use Drupal to Roll My Own LMS,” or “Eight Reasons why Drupal is Better than WordPress”
  
• A More Thoughtful Teaching Center
  

• If Any Moron Can Write a Blog, Then All Blogs are Written by Morons, Right?
  Laura Blankenship (Emerging Technologies Consulting)

Sponsored by the Office of the Provost

Please join us for a continental breakfast, coffee, and tea in the atrium and lobby. Stop by the registration desk to pick up your nametag and program, register for a workshop, or sign up to compete in Deck Wars.

Sponsored by the Department of Information Technology

The conference will resume on May 14 at 8:30 a.m.

Sponsored by the Department of Information Technology

Lots of great take aways from this first day of the conference.

James Boyle’s talk was inspiring, engaging, simply awesome. In Twitter someone said he had the audience in the palm of his hand, and that was certainly evident looking around the room. There was so much to take away from his talk, but I’ll mention two things that jumped out at me.

* It’s really interesting how we avoid thinking about issues of open-ness vs/ closed-ness in self interested terms. The conversation always seems to veer towards discussions of values and philosophies. I think values and philosophies are great — but Boyle reminded us that openness is also a great choice because it can serve our self-interests. We just tend assume it can’t.

This reminds me a lot of the way my dad talks about environmentalism. He’s a biologist with the Office of Endangered Species, and although he certainly believes in the mission of the ESA for philosophical reasons, he’s also great at reminding people that preserving species and the environment is a choice that protects our own self-interests.

It’s OK to be self-interested. It’s even better when our self-interests jive with our philosophies.

* At one point Boyle basically referred to the practice of teaching as the ultimate mashup. Teachers are constantly “stealing” techniques, lesson plans, activities, styles from each other — often without attribution. The next time I’m talking to faculty about mashups, I plan to use this as a means to explain the concept.

During Lunch, Jim Groom and John St. Clair blew us all away with the mock debate, “Is the CMS dead?” Jim, quite predictably and charmingly went the zombie route. John, however, well. . .who knew John had that in him? I can’t describe it. I recommend visiting the faculty academy Web site in a week or so and watching the video.

In the afternoon, Cole Camplese’s plenary captured people’s imaginations about how we can use lightweight emerging technologies to redefine our notion of conversation in the classroom. The number of questions and comments at the end of his presentation spoke to how he clearly engaged the faculty at UMW and our guest visitors. My favorite anecdote from his presentation was about the student who tweeted one evening that he had just realized his thesis was due the following day — a week earlier than he had thought. Out of nowhere, his classmates jumped in to assist — proofreading, helping with endnote formatting, meeting in the Library to discuss a draft. In the course of that evening, the entire class suddenly understood what Twitter could do for them.

And now, I’m sitting in Laura Blankenship’s workshop on personal learning networks where about twelve of us are brainstorming how to use lightweight web-based tools to accomplish all sorts of tasks and connect with the people who can help us to work, learn, and live online. Frabulous!

We’ll close the day with some wine and food and be back in the morning to start it all over again.

I wish everyday could be Faculty Academy.

• Foreign Language 2.0: How technology has altered the ways we teach and learn language, literature and culture
  

Panel Discussion in B122

• A Domain of One’s Own
  

Presentation Session in B115

• There’s a Librarian in My CMS!
  
• Enhancing and Enriching Learning: Blogs, Drupal and the Great Monster Mash-Up in First-Year Seminar
  
• Whose Tube Is It, Anyway? Using a Web Site/Blog for Student Oral Presentations
  

Workshop in B124

• Creating a Personal Learning Network for Yourself and Your Students
  

• Engaging the New Classroom Conversation
  Cole Camplese (Pennsylvania State University)
  

Sponsored by the Office of the Provost

Sponsored by the UMW Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning

Mock Debate

• Is the CMS Dead?
  Jim Groom (DTLT) and John St. Clair (Distance and Blended Learning)
  Moderator: Tim O’Donnell (English, Linguistics, and Communications)

• Cultural Agoraphobia: What Universities Need to Know About Our Bias Against Openness
  Dr. James Boyle (Duke University Law School)

Special thanks to our Keynote Sponsor the UMW Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning.

• Fairytales about Cooking with Monsters & Math: Blogging in the Freshman Seminar
  

Panel Discussion in B122

• Digital Resources and Global Studies: Working Projects
  

Presentation Session in B115

• Architecture and Place: Contextualizing Buildings Through Virtual Travel
  
• Designing and Implementing a Drupal: Can a Biology Geek and a Computer Geek Begin to Think Alike?
  
• Teaching “Introduction to Logic” On Line
  
  

• Mr. Jerry Slezak, Acting Director, Teaching and Learning Technologies
• Dr. Nina Mikhalevsky, Acting Provost
• Dr. Khalil Yazdi, Vice President for Information Technology and Institutional Research and CIO

Registration and Continental Breakfast

Please join us for a continental breakfast, coffee, and tea in the atrium and lobby. Stop by the registration desk to pick up your nametag and program, register for a workshop, or sign up to compete in Deck Wars. Sponsored by the Department of Information Technology

Breakfast Sponsored by the Department of Information Technology

It’s that time of year. Again. Tomorrow will mark day one of yet another Faculty Academy at the University of Mary Washington. Once again, we’ve got a stellar line-up of guest speakers and faculty presenters. This year’s conference planning has been particularly poignant and meaningful for me, and I’m extraordinarly grateful to my colleagues in DTLT and the faculty at UMW who are contributing to the program. Plus, it’s very exciting to have James Boyle, Laura Blankenshpi, and Cole Camplese coming to contribute to the conversation.

I truly believe that the innovative thinking and work that is shared at events like Faculty Academy can point us toward the future of higher education. I feel very lucky to have the opportunity every year to help showcase and promote the thinking, experimentation, and creativity that this event represents.

See you on the other side.

Over the course of the next day, abstracts for all of the sessions will be available on the site and will be linked to from the program page.

We’re very excited about the breadth and depth of topics that will be covered at this year’s event, and we’re grateful to all of our presenters for putting together proposals at this very busy time of year!

• Brooke Donaldson, “Teaching the I-Phone / Facebook Generation: Sacrifice or Enhancement?”
• Jeremy Larochelle, “Weekly response papers are so Twentieth Century: Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies meets UMW Blogs”.
• Elizabeth Lewis, “Energizing, Inspiring, and Relevant Spanish Literature Studies? My Experimentation with an Undergraduate Course on the 19th-Century Novel”
• Marcel Rotter, “Student-centered learning in upper-level language courses: authentic news and wikis as textbook 2.0”

This panel discussion seeks to explore the various ways technology has altered the teaching of foreign languages, cultures and literatures. From the use of internet resources and interactive power point presentations, to the use of social networking, wikis and course blogs, technology has enabled language students to access information, practice new skills, and interact with the target languages and cultures like never before. But is this necessarily better? What might the limits or pitfalls of such teaching and learning be?

In the meantime, don’t forget to register! The registration deadline is Friday, May 8th at 5 p.m. Remember, Faculty Academy is free, but you must register if you plan on joining us for lunch on either day.

In addition, there are still some slots open in our two guest presenters’ workshops:

• Cole Camplese: Course Redesign, Redesigned
• Laura Blankenship: Creating a Personal Learning Network for Yourself and for Your Students

You can register for either workshop using our online form.

It’s not too late to be a part of this year’s Faculty Academy. Remember, your participation in the conference is what makes it great!

Jim Groom will be leading a workshop on “A Domain of Your Own,” in which he will explain how you can map your own domain name to a site at UMW Blogs, thereby building out your personal online presence.

Patrick Murray-John’s workshop, “Opening Up UMW” will extend the theme of the keynote address, demonstrating a number of projects Patrick has been working on expose and visualize online activity at UMW Blogs. You will have an opportunity to help contribute information about your own classes and the resources they use during the interactive portion.

Andy Rush will be speaking about current new media resources in his presentation “What Does a New Media Buffet Look Like?” Join Andy to learn more about the online new media center he’s been building out this past year.

For the hands‑on part, I’ll ask you to both help me test the application and give me feedback. If you bring along information about a course or courses you taught this year, especially the ISBN numbers of texts you used, we’ll use that information to create course profiles, and see what connections we can discover. You do not need to have used UMWBlogs to take part in this activity.

New Call for Proposals Deadline: May 6, 2009 at 5:00 PM

New Registration Deadline: May 8, 2009 at 5:00 PM

In addition, you may sign up for one of the interactive workshops through May 12: http://facultyacademy.org/blog09/workshop-registration

To get the full experience of this workshop you may want to purchase a domain at http://godaddy.com (they run anywhere between $8-$14 per year), get a blog on UMW Blogs, and then follow these instructions for mapping the domain. During the workshop we’ll take a close look at how to customize this space to be a simple, attractive, and effective means of framing your online presence.

The UMW New Media Center has recently come on‑line and it offers a smorgasbord of resources for using digital media. By integrating mobile technologies, adding some user‑generated content, and utilizing several WordPress installations, we’ll show you what’s possible with the latest technology. We’ll demonstrate a mobile version (using the iPhone) of several websites, introduce you to our Digital Media Cookbook, and encourage feedback and suggestions on improving the sites.

Central to understanding the chapter and Boyle’s position on intellectual property is a letter written by Jefferson to a person wanting his opinion on a patent involving a grain elevator. Jefferson replies indicating that the idea of a string of buckets used to carry material has existed at least since the times of the Persian Wheel. Instructive to those interested in this topic is his assertion that intellectual property rights are a “gift of social law” rather than a “natural right.”

According to Jefferson, intellectual property is neither “rivalrous” (one person’s use precludes another person’s use) or “excludable” (can be quarantined from use by others):

“That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their destiny in any point, and like thin air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement of exclusive appropriation. Inventions cannot in nature, be a subject of property.”

Boyle summarizes Jefferson’s warning against a monopolistic view of intellectual property rights in five points:

1. Intellectual property rights are “a temporary state-created monopoly given to encourage further innovation.”
2. Intellectual property rights are not an entitlement.
3. Intellectual property rights should not be permanent.
4. Intellectual property rights potentially restrain and may “actually hinder rather than encourage innovation.”
5. Agreement on which and what types of intellectual property rights are bestowed is difficult and limits should be set deliberately.

Included in the chapter are several examples of abuses of the public interest by asserting intellectual property rights in extreme ways. As is common in modern politics, the real reasons for a legislative or regulatory action are often veiled in a rationalized pabulum used to anesthetize an ideologic cohort. The true motivating force is often an economic interest (book publishers and printers) rather than the innovator (author). Extending copyrights for decades past an authors death often results in an economic gain not to the author’s descendants and certainly not the author but to the publishing conglomerate which has purchased said right.

Another possible abusive consequence of extended copyright is a possible restriction on the availability of a work. A copyright holder may prevent distribution based on an objection to the work. And as noted in chapter one, the distribution may be prevented merely by a lack of certainty in the assignment of the copyright. A classic example is given in the judicial misconduct associated with restricting publication of The Wind Done Gone retelling of Gone With the Wind.

Another interesting point is the necessary extension of the (mistaken) idea that intellectual property is a natural right. There are those that believe a creative work is an addition to the human condition possible only because of the creative force of the author. The logical extension therefore is that the author’s right to ownership should continue in perpetuity. Clearly (at least to this poster) this is an absurdity. Some alternate logic applied here is that the author – even a genius whose brilliance transforms the public consciousness – has used their own accumulation of common knowledge as a background resource. Even Newton acknowledged having “stood on the shoulders of giants.”

Boyle himself is an example of one possible reasonable approach assuaging the economic needs of the author and publisher while simultaneously allowing unfettered access to his work. This book and many other examples of creative work are available to the public at very little cost in money or effort in one form and also from a publisher in a traditional hardback book for retail purchase. Hopefully, are the author and publisher as happy as this poster. I have printed a chapter from the public domain pdf file so that I could make notes directly on the text, downloaded a copy to my iPod Touch to read at odd moments, and purchased the hardback to have on my shelf to refer to in the future.

Another important concept Boyle brings forth in chapter two are the definitions and contrasts between the terms “public domain” and “the commons.” He states that the public domain consists of those materials which are not restricted by copyright (for any number of reasons). [Aside – loved the tessellation reference!] “The Commons” is used to mean those materials over which some group has a (potentially restricted) right. His personal view is that the “group” should be the whole society. Thus, the difference in the public domain and the commons is the extent to which the right to the said materials is restricted. So overly restrictive copyright laws are detrimental to the public good because “the public domain is the place we quarry the building blocks of our culture.”

It was a very interesting experience reading Jefferson’s words here in Virginia having visited Monticello just a few weeks ago – not that another reader could not have benefitted just as well or better from the reading. But it did get me thinking again about Chapter One and the information that so much material is easily available to me because I am a 50 minute drive away from the Library of Congress. It is JUST NOT FAIR, that those who cannot afford the expense or time to travel to the Washington, DC area are not able to access those materials that are languishing in the swamp of indeterminate copyright.

Boyle uses an allegory to help make this point clearer. He introduces us to an early colony that is based on farm products and innovation. The colony begins its existence by working together, each member of the community becoming partners for the betterment of the entire good. As a result, the community has open access. But, with innovation and easy access comes fear. Fear that others will take control and take advantage. Fear that someone will use the creative endeavors of one and use them against another. Possibly, improving upon the endeavor and selling it for profit or using it without providing compensation for it. Many times fear comes with technology. This allegory is no different.

In this early open farming community, technologies are developed (automobiles, tractors) and easier access and the threat of piracy are sparked. Farmers fear the possibility of a passer by stealing produce for a person’s own endeavors. Easily stuffing car trunks and driving down the open and passable road. The idea of the open marketplace is now slowly closing with the entanglement of barb wire around crops and land preventing easy access. Farmers claim that they must prevent this from happening before it actually happens so they take action. They take a technology and wrap themselves tightly inside in the form of a barbed wire fence around their farms and open roads. Now the community and those passing by cannot easily enter.

This does not stop progress. New inventions such as wire cutters are sold in mass numbers to help individuals who want to pass through these blocked but open lands. Now people can easily and painlessly cut the barbed wire to pass through the farmers once open fields. Fear takes hold again among the farmers. The question is posed, what if the thieves use these wire cutters to enter our property and fill their roomy car trunks with our goods? This act will impede our profits. Not fair. They take suit. The farmers propose to the courts prevention of wire cutters, smaller trunks for new cars, and the development of technologies to help truck drivers so there whereabouts are accounted for at all times. This will maintain our right to production! The courts agree and laws are created to protect the farmers keeping these possible threats away. Laws are passed to prevent the sale of wire cutters and smaller trunk sizes for all new cars are built. Tracking systems are considered to let farmers know where cars and trucks are at all times on their property. Safe at last!

Okay, now what? Are we moving into the realm of protection of copyright or protectionism? In the digital world, is accessing and repurposing digital bits and bytes in creative ways harmful? Or, is repurposing fair use? Should fair use be prohibited in the digital world because of what could happen? With this ability, all who use it and work within it will be tempted to do wrong and thus should they be stopped before it happens?

The idea that industry can prevent industrious individuals from gaining a possible competitive advantage through repurposing is in question. When laws begin to restrict fair use of digital content because bits and bytes are for the most part misunderstood by the masses, creative and ingenious endeavors are at risk. Individuals that work within this digital realm have the potential to work within this cryptic language and to create new and better works. The fear of misuse, infringement, and possibly competition becomes the central element to be discussed and explored.

Congress put their hands into the digital pot trying to set boundaries and possibly clarify the digital realm of innovation and infringement. The Act is called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This act is both beneficial as well as a hindrance to creativity and innovation. On the shaky side of the law is the simple ability of accessing these bits and bytes to repurpose them to meet the user’s specific needs. This in a non digital world could be viewed as fair use. I, as an instructor, can paraphrase a book that I read in front of my class to make a point. As a class, we can discuss this new point and build upon it to help create new understandings. This, the idea of ‘paraphrase’, is fair use. I, as an instructor, have taken a creative work and repurposed it to meet my specific teaching needs. It is not seen as piracy or theft. In the digital world though, this is not the case.

In walks the movie industry. This industry is inundated with piracy. Piracy is the act of copying and redistributing a product, such as a DVD. Usually selling the pirated DVD at a lower price. To help prevent this, the music industry has developed strict guidelines for hardware and software producers of companies, such as developing and distributing DVD players or DVDs. Certain DVDs cannot be played in certain players. Code controls this. As in most stories there is another character that is making its way into the pages of the book that has another story to tell. This one is no different.

In walks a new character. Most computers play DVDs. Some do not. Linux, an open source operating system, does not. A sixteen year old boy took this open source software and wrote code that would allow him and anyone that uses the Linux operating system to play DVDs on their personal computer. Innovation and creativity at its best – Or is it? This code was posted on Web sites for easy download, and it was quickly found to have the ability to unscramble DVD code allowing individuals to copy and pirate movies. Enter Universal Studies v. Reimerdes et al. case.

In the court case that ensued, it was determined that this creative expression of repurposing code instigated piracy, not free speech. It was determined to be illegal. Making repurposing code illegal would help prevent the threat of infringement and piracy. Anyone with access to bits and bytes, in the courts viewpoint, has the ability and ultimately the potential to do illegal acts. This ability needs to be controlled, no matter what free speech, original expression, and its relationship to copyright imply. The possibility of possible wrong needs to be prevented before it can begin.

With the ruling of the Reimerdes case, intellectual property law took on a new layer. Now, even if a user legally buys a product and desires to quote, parody it, or repurpose it – they cannot. Fair use no more. Did the judge that ruled on this case understand what he was ruling on? Can you rule against possible threat and against fair use of creative works? Does this mean that creative endeavors will be stopped? How will innovation flourish and an open marketplace stand tall and strong in this digital world?

A sixteen year old took a problem and solved it. His solution turned out to create new possibilities. His solution in this case provided opportunities for piracy. His actions opened the door to do questionable wrong to an industry. Was this impeding and misunderstood, “Internet threat” hyped up? Can’t someone take code, speech, and repurpose it to create new and innovative products to provide the opportunity for competition? Can Congress allow some formats of expression to be exempt from fair use rights? Through the Reimerdes court case the answer becomes, yes, they can.

Boyle poses many questions throughout this case and then stresses the idea of competition and the possible threat to competition with the Apple and RealNetworks court case. Can RealNetworks create software to allow Apple iPods to play songs from RealNetworks music library? Apple says no. This is an infringement of their intellectual property rights. The “idea” of Apple and of iPods in general is now threatened. By making the iPod interoperable, by creating products that can introduce new companies products to be accessed and utilized, iPod no longer is proprietary and as a result becomes only a device. Does this pose the question of a monopoly? Will this prevention of innovative thought alter innovation and an open marketplace? Why would Apple not want other products to play on their iPod, wouldn’t this open their device up to a larger audience? Or does open access blur their product line taking away the ah factor?

In another case, Lexmark sues Static Control Components, attempting to prevent them from selling generic printer cartridges. They are stealing our code! The courts did not see it that way. Instead, they claimed fair use for innovative purposes to help prevent antitrust issues and to promote competition. In another company dispute, the same solution was found. A garage door company, Chamberlain, wanted to prevent a generic replacement garage door company from selling a product that would open their garage doors. In both of these cases the code was protected under copyright laws, but in each case the courts found fair use. What does this mean? How is this different then our first case of Reimerdes? How about from Apple? Free speech and expression seem to be at issue in the first case. The ruling was to stop this free expression before it caused problems. In both the Lexmark and Chamberlain cases the rulings prevented antitrust and competition laws from being infringed upon.

There is a lot to think about in each of these cases. Each ruling provides an incredible dilemma for all digital content users and producers.

Laws concerning copyright, free expression and competition are different in the international marketplace. Issues of more control and less control take center stage. How do these issues impact us as consumers, academics, industry professionals, and beyond? Can I repurpose video for a class lecture? Can an individual repurpose computer code to solve a problem and then post it online, sharing it with others?

As forward thinking individuals we want to promote creative expression that builds upon the ideas of others. We do this to ensure that innovation flourishes. When it comes to the digital world, we need to understand the limits that we have to create new and innovative products or to share content. We must think about infringement and what fair use means in this new digital world. Fair use seems unclear, even murky. As users, consumers, and even producers of content, each of us now needs to be cognizant of this murkiness and continue to ask questions so clarity can be found.

Question: How can creativity and innovation flourish in this digital realm? How can fair use be central in order to promote competition and at the same time prevent antitrust issues?

A few pages into the first chapter, Boyle clarifies his title by asserting that intellectual property rights, originally meant to be “the servants of creativity” have gone awry and become prickly barriers that now restrict access to much of our 20th century works and culture. I couldn’t agree more, as I’ve often been frustrated helping researchers navigate through copyright issues. I’ll even confess to having my own favorite copyright cheat sheet and flow chart courtesy of Cornell University’s Copyright Information Center.
So how has this happened? Copyright is intended to be a good thing, providing incentives for innovation and rewards to the creators. Boyle leads us through an idealized vision of how intellectual property rights should work and then argues that two changes – extending copyright terms and giving copyright immediately to creators (no application needed) – have “turned the copyright system on its head.” No longer are exclusive rights given just for the duration of a works commercial feasibility. Instead copyright terms are now so long (the creator’s life plus 70 years) that many works may stay under copyright and unavailable for well over a century. We are losing access to about 85% of the works that under the prior system continuously stockpiled our public domain treasure trove.

Before reading Boyle’s book, I hadn’t thought about just how many works nationwide get trapped in this long term copyright dilemma. Every archivist knows the “orphan works” in their own holdings. Those materials with murky copyright that you professionally can’t duplicate and certainly shouldn’t place on the Internet without possibly involving your institution in copyright infringement. Boyle estimates that 95% of our books fall into this category and an equally large amount of our films and music. This is a huge number and daily impacts where our information comes from and how we can use it.

This is just Chapter one, so I’m really interested to read what further thoughts Boyle has on how we can possibly begin to reclaim some of our public domain. Check out the U.S. Copyright Office’s Orphan Works to see what they are saying about this topic as well.

As I began reading James Boyle’s book, it was his title that initially intrigued me, The Public Domain:Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. What did he mean by juxtaposing the public domain with “enclosing the commons of the mind?” <!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> The public domain, those resources that all of us can use freely and without permission, is a researcher’s ultimate playground – no worries here about infringing on someone’s copyright or tracking down a photographer now living in Timbuktu before you can use an image. These are the materials that make my job as an archivist easy, allowing me to provide immediate and full access to primary materials.

<!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

A few pages into the first chapter, Boyle clarifies his title by asserting that intellectual property rights, originally meant to be “the servants of creativity” have gone awry and become prickly barriers that now restrict access to much of our 20^th century works and culture. I couldn’t agree more, as I’ve often been frustrated helping researchers navigate through copyright issues. I’ll even confess to having my own favorite copyright cheat sheet

<!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

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Wednesday, May 13, 2:00-3:15
Engaging the New Classroom Conversation (Plenary Presentation)
Cole Camplese

Wednesday, May 13, 3:30-4:45
Creating a Personal Learning Network for Yourself and for Your Students (Interactive Workshop)
Laura Blankenship
Register Online

Thursday, May 14, 9:00-10:15
If Any Moron Can Write a Blog, Then All Blogs are Written by Morons, Right? (Plenary Presentation)
Laura Blankenship

Thursday, May 14, 2:00-3:15
Course Redesign, Redesigned (Interactive Workshop)
Cole Camplese
Register Online

You can see more developing program details by visiting our the online program at the conference Web site.

Register Online

Register Online

We had hoped to move these deadlines up a bit this year so that we could provide the conference program earlier than ususal. However, in the end, we wanted to be sure to accommodate UMW faculty who won’t be completing exams until May 1st.

Don’t forget to register and submit a proposal!

The address, Cultural Agoraphobia: What Universities Need to Know About Our Bias Against Openness, will be held at 11:00 am on May 13th at UMW’s College of Graduate and Professional Studies. You can find out more about Dr. Boyle and the keynote at www.facultyacademy.org/blog09/2009/03/james-boyle/.

In addition, we invite anyone who is interested to participate in an informal reading group of Dr. Boyle’s latest book, “The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind.” If you are interested in participating, please sign up at www.facultyacademy.org/blog09/2009/03/get-ahead/.

Registration

We hope you’ll join us at Faculty Academy and register today! The conference is a wonderful opportunity to hear more about what colleagues at UMW are doing with teaching and technology, listen to a stellar line-up of guest speakers, and connect with teachers and technologists from UMW and beyond. If you’re a colleague at another institution, please join us! You can read more about what Faculty Academy is all about on our Attending & Registering page.

The conference is free but registration is required if you plan on joining us for lunch on either day. When you register, you will have an opportunity to share which days you plan to attend so that we can get an acurate headcount for meals.

In addition, this year on the registration form we are asking for volunteers to convene sessions. We hope you’ll consider participating in Faculty Academy by volunteering. Session conveners will be responsible for introducting presenters, keeping track of presentation times, and facilitating Q&A.

We’re also planning on making a dynamic registrant list available on this site in the next few days. Don’t worry; if you prefer not to share your registration information, you can opt out on the form.

Call for Proposals

Proposal submission has opened up earlier than ever this year! Beat the end-of-semester rush, and submit your proposal now. If you have any questions about formats or available technology, be sure to check out our Presenting page.

If you have any questions about either registration or presenting, please contact us!

Bio

Dr. Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Professor Boyle is also the Chairman of the Board of Creative Commons, and the co-founder of Science Commons. He serves on the board of the Public Library of Science and on the advisory board of Public Knowledge.

In 2003, Professor Boyle won the World Technology Network Award for Law for his work on the public domain and the “second enclosure movement” that threatens it. He is the author of Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society, and the editor of Critical Legal Studies, Collected Papers on the Public Domain and Cultural Environmentalism @ 10 (with Larry Lessig.) His more recent books include Bound By Law, a co-authored “graphic novel” about the effects of intellectual property on documentary film, The Shakespeare Chronicles, a novel, and The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind which was published in 2008 by Yale University Press. He writes a regular online column for the Financial Times’ New Economy Policy Forum.

You can read more about Dr. Boyle at his Intellectual Property Web site.

The book is available for sale from Amazon or as a free download at www.thepublicdomain.org.

If you’d like to be a part of this discussion, feel free to sign up in the comments section below:

Is the CMS dead? Have we graduated to a new kind of understanding and integration of technology into teaching and learning?

Or is it still a vital part of the technology landscape of our institutions? Do faculty still need the foundational support of the CMS to scaffold their use of technology?

Care to weigh in on the topic before the conference? We’d love to hear your point of view in the comments below:

Deck Wars is a competition in which the presenters deliver a short, impromptu, three-minute presentation based on a deck of PowerPoint slides they have never seen before. Each presenter’s work is judged by the audience for originality, believability, jargon, and poise. Each of the presenters receives a thank you gift for his or her bravery. The winner will receive the grand prize and the bragging rights associated with the coveted title of FA Deck Wars Champion 2009.

Deck Wars Competition from Faculty Academy 2008

If you are interested in competing in this year’s competition, please leave your name in a comment below:

Workshop
Thursday, May 14, 2:00-3:15
Course Redesign, Redesigned

Bio

Currently, Mr. Camplese serves as the Director of Education Technology Services at the Pennsylvania State University. As Director, it is his responsibility to oversee University-wide initiatives with a focus on impacting teaching and learning with technology. He guides teams in the appropriate uses of technologies in the contexts of teaching and learning. His primary area of focus is the integration of emerging technologies into learning spaces. At Penn State, the overwhelming challenge is providing scalable solutions that the 93,000 students and 5,000 faculty can successfully use to enhance their teaching and learning environments. Camplese has recently worked to integrate several new emerging technologies into curricular activities at Penn State to support digital expression. He and his team have lead the creation of the Blogs at Penn State, Podcasts at Penn State, and the Digital Commons. Camplese oversees the annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium, several community development events, and numerous other initiatives designed to support the adoption of technology for teaching and learning.

Prior to accepting this position, Camplese served as the Director of the Solutions Institute in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. The Solutions Institute is an applied research and development institute with a focus on the innovative uses of technology for education and training. Camplese designed the Online IST program that has been used to serve as the foundation for both resident and distance deliveries of the College of IST’s core undergraduate curriculum. This program was built on a custom instructional design and development methodology and toolset envisioned and crafted by Camplese.

Camplese was also the principle investigator and chief administrator for the Pennsylvania Governor’s School in Information Technology, an outreach program designed to enrich 75 of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s best and brightest high school juniors in the areas of information technology management.

Camplese teaches courses in the College of Education with a focus on the integration and implementation of disruptive technologies into teaching and learning. He is an Apple Distinguished Educator, selected for his innovative uses of technology in and out of the classroom. Camplese has served on several industry and higher education advisories boards ranging from data storage management to the Apple Digital Campus.

Camplese is an established consultant, helping organizations integrate technology into their business practices, education and training programs, and their internal and external communication processes. He is a published author and has presented both practical and theoretical concepts at regional and national conferences.

He received a Masters of Sciences in Instructional Technology from Bloomsburg University and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from West Virginia University.

Workshop
Wednesday, May 13, 3:30-4:45
Creating a Personal Learning Network for Yourself and for Your Students

Bio

Dr. Blankenship has been working in higher education since the early 1990s and is currently founder and president of Emerging Technologies Consulting.

She began using technology in her teaching in 1997 and in 2003, made helping other faculty use technology for teaching and learning her full-time job. This past fall, she left full-time work to go out on her own and broaden the scope of what she does. While she still feels passionate about integrating technology into educational environments, she also wants to work with communities and businesses to use social software effectively.