[NIFL-TECHNOLOGY:1939] Re: Opening questions for David Reinki

From: Hacker, Emily (EHacker@fegs.org)
Date: Wed Jul 25 2001 - 14:10:54 EDT


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From: "Hacker, Emily" <EHacker@fegs.org>
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Subject: [NIFL-TECHNOLOGY:1939] Re: Opening questions for David Reinki
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David:
The question you posed debating the concept of plagiarism, "When is it
ethically justifiable to deny people access to and dissemination of
potentially useful information?" made me think immediately about the open
source movement. Here is a description of open source from the Open Source
Initiative web site, http://www.opensource.org/
"The basic idea behind open source is very simple. When programmers can
read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the
software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs."
This is what I understand you are saying about digital texts - that they
are, by design, more "open" and we should be looking for ways to expand on
this ability, not restrict it according to rules that apply to older
technologies of reading and writing. I remember many early web sites that
were essentially digital copies of a company or organization's flyer or
pamphlet. They designed and thought about their web sites according to rules
that applied to print publishing, instead of understanding and taking
advantage of the new possibilities created by HTML. These old rules die
hard. 

A good question for us (tech list) to toss around might be -  what are the
pedagogical opportunities presented by the definitions of digital texts that
David has presented.  I know many list members have done extensive work with
learners using a range of digital resources, including e-mail, the Web and
digital images.   Would anyone like to talk about one of their projects in
light of this discussion? Also, in the good analogy that David shared -  in
this digital age, "finding the information you need is like trying to take a
sip of water from a fire hose."  Does anyone have suggestions for how to
help literacy students and teachers manage all this information and develop
good Internet/Multimedia research and evaluation skills?

--Emily

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Emily Hacker
Moderator, NIFL Technology
Director of Learning Technologies
F.E.G.S
(212) 366-8122
ehacker@fegs.org

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