linchpin – JAMES MICHIE

Please Feel Free To Use My Stuff!

Several people have blogged recently on Creative Commons licenses and what to do when people steal your work, presenting it as their own.

I’m jumping on the bandwagon a little and offering my perspective on the re-use of material from my blog. I use a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 U.K. license which allows you to copy, distribute, display, perform and make derivative works from my blog content. I picked this license because I wish to share. I am in the habit of “giving gifts”! (Godin, 2009) This is a philosophy that I deeply believe in. On my blog itself I have tried to stay true to that same ethos when using found material. If I have used others work, I have given them credit, added links and contacted them to let them know that I’m using their stuff. I simply ask that anyone who uses material that I have made and published here do the same. So here is a statement that I plan to feature permanently on my blog.

If you wish to use any of the material published on this blog, then please:

Give me credit. Acknowledge the work is not your own.
Provide people with a link. This could be my blog address included at the end of a PowerPoint presentation or a hyperlink on your blog. Whatever it is, it will allow any interested parties to visit the source of the original content and perhaps find other material that they might find interesting.
Contact me. Let me know what you have used, why, and what the results were. Perhaps I can help? I may have ideas to share or more information which may be of use. I may even offer to feature a post about you/your work on my blog.

Considering this issue has made me reflect on why I blog.

My blog is my “cave” (Thornburg, 2007) where I internalise, reflect and evaluate. It is why I moved beyond writing a class blog to writing this, a personal blog that is unashamedly for me, about me. This is not ego tripping but a feature of my journey as a life-long learner. My “cave”, however, is made of glass so that anyone can look in on my learning journey. And I have provided a convenient in-tray where people can leave comments, questions, ideas. My blog therefore, is also the “watering hole” (Thornburg, 2007) or at least a conduit to it, much of the discussion generated on the blog being transferred to Twitter where it continues and evolves. This is why I blog, for me, and for you. This blog is my “gift”!

If the “cave” and “watering hole” metaphors have left you either intrigued or confused, then please read: Campfires in Cyberspace by David D. Thornburg Ph.D.

You may also like to read more about “giving gifts”, if so try: Linchpin by Seth Godin

CC Logo courtesy of Drew Baldwin on Flickr.

Boo #2: Shipping, Gifts & Email

This is a recording of a blog post published earlier this month. You can read the original post here where you will find all of the links to people, books and concepts that I mention in the recording.

You can find all of my Boos here.

And you can subscribe to my Boos direct via iTunes or RSS.

Shipping, Giving Gifts & Combating the Email Onslaught

I finished reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin a few weeks ago and while I found it to be an interesting read, the main thesis of the text was nothing I didn’t already practise. I strive every day to “ship” and “give gifts” and I can’t evangelise enough on how important both of these concepts are as a teacher.

You have to “ship” because your day is filled with deadlines: lessons to be planned and taught, data to be input, reports to be written and homework to be marked. If you want the learning inside and outside of your classroom to be any good you have to “ship” on all of these tasks. Also, you have to “give gifts” because it’s good to be generous. Share what you do, not to get noticed and win promotion but to help make sure that every student gets the best possible education they can. I love to “ship”. I love to “give gifts”. Why? Because I care about learning. In fact, I love learning; it’s the reason I’m a teacher.

Shipping is fraught with risk and danger.

(Fear of shipping, Godin, 2010)

It’s easy to be afraid of “shipping” and “giving gifts” because many teachers are perfectionists and many teachers are protective about what they do.

What if every part of your lesson has not been meticulously planned?
What if you didn’t mark every essay in minute detail?
If you share an idea or a resource what if someone steals it and presents it as their own?
What if no one thinks what you are doing in your classroom is of any value?

To questions like these, I say remember it’s the students in your classroom that matter, so get smart. Digitise everything you do/use and back it up. Reuse and improve should become your personal mantra from day one. The better you get at this the more time you will have for the marking and data analysis which is (honestly) more important than much of the planning that you spend your time doing. What’s more, good formative assessment and understanding your students’ potential will ultimately lead to better planning any way. They inform each other and will lead to better teaching and better learning.

One of the keys for me, in ensuring that I “ship” on time is the way I deal with email. I, like many of you, work at a school where email has become the number one method of communication. However, the reality of this is that your inbox can have a stranglehold on your productivity as a teacher and certainly get in the way of the learning by impinging on the time you should be spending marking, planning and experimenting.

To combat the email onslaught I religiously use the following approach to email set out by Merlin Mann in Inbox Zero. Implement this into your work day when checking your email and your productivity will improve significantly, leaving more time for the marking, planning and most importantly the learning.

As for “giving gifts”: blog. Blog what you do, get a creative commons license and don’t let someone else show your ideas off. Do it yourself! Deliver CPD, sign up to present at a TeachMeet, build sessions into department meetings to share your ideas and encourage colleagues share what they are doing. If you take control of your gift giving you will find that you can (and will want to) share selflessly. Others will benefit but so will you.

To close, I will give a gift and allow Seth to have the last word:

A life spent curled in a ball, hiding in the corner might seem less risky, but in fact it’s certain to lead to ennui and eventually failure.

(Fear of shipping, Godin, 2010)