Wednesday, June 24, 2009

6 words

We shared new ways of teaching

Saturday, June 13, 2009

A Lesson for Educators

Slashdot, the website that highlights "news for nerds", reports on the experiences of San Jose State University student Kyle Brady, who, after completing his assignments in computer programming, published the code he wrote online. His professor attempted to force him to delete the posts, citing the school's academic integrity policy. Kyle claimed that he posted his work in the spirit of sharing knowledge as well as part of a digital portfolio for future employers.

Thankfully, the University ultimately ruled that posting the work was acceptable and did not violate either copyright or the school's academic integrity policy.

The lesson is this, as stated by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing: "Profs...fall into the lazy trap of wanting to assign rotework that can be endlessly recycled as work for new students, a model that fails when the students treat their work as useful in and of itself and therefore worthy of making public for their peers and other interested parties who find them through search results, links, etc. But the convenience of profs must be secondary to the pedagogical value of the university experience...Students work harder when the work is meaningful, when it has value other than as a yardstick for measuring their comprehension."

An important lesson for all of us in education.