Edging Ahead…

Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy or Technology Use Agreement? What’s in a Name?

During the current SUNY Technology class, at least three groups are wrestling with ISB’s Acceptable Use Policy. Two groups are redrafting existing divisional Acceptable Use Policies to bring improved currency and relevance to documents several years old.  This project is to attempt to forge a link between the somewhat subjective wording of the AUP’s as currently in development and the very objective requirements of applying principles of “acceptable use” in a real-world environment; in this case, ISB’s Main Library.

For the purposes of this reflection, I will concentrate on the work of the HS AUP and Main LIbrary
“Technology Use Agreement” teams, since the most significant disparities between policy and behavior appear at this level. By the time they reach high school, students are better equipped to both assess their own personal actions and to rationalize this behavior.

A surprising revelation as I have considered this project is that none of the related documents (from ISB) are currently (at least prominently) available on ISB’s website or 1st-generation linked pages. A Google search for “ISB Bangkok” along with “AUP” or “Acceptable Use Policy” does not turn up a working link to a current AUP at any division level. This fact alone suggests that ISB’s core relationship to an AUP needs to be rethought. The quickest way to ISB’s existing AUP’s is through the SUNY Technology Course currently in action, where the current AUP’s are offered as attachments (scroll to the bottom).

Neither is the laptop-loan-agreement we have used for the four years since we adopted wireless laptops in our Main LIbrary available online. In my search I came across Acceptable Use Policies, Laptop Loan Agreements, and Technology Use Agreements, but none from ISB.

Once again, kudos to our very own ISB SUNY instructors Jeff Utecht and Chad Bates, for finding some of the best summarties of current thinking on AUPs, posted as resources for this course from AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) For New Web Tools by Dr. Howie DeBlasi (His keynote address from the AzTEA Conference, January 31, 2009 is worth a view)

Meanwhile, while I believe in a review of the overarching guiding principles of acceptable technology use at ISB, in our Main LIbrary, we still need a tangible, quickly reviewable but relatively comprehensive set of guidelines which we will ask student patrons to sign off on. As we review our school webpages, whatever emerges as a full-blown new AUP will  be placed at the library pages. For now, here is the proposed  “isb-technology-use-agreement-final-090509” which will likely continue to be used as the “rubber-meets-road” working document to hold students accountable for acceptable technology use in Main LIbrary.

Essential Question: “What makes the web so powerful?” The one-word answer? Quality.

I’ll get to why this it. But first – In view of the “digital reality” of (our) students today, I’ve been seriously considering retiring one of the “soapbox speeches” I sometimes trot out when talking with a class that has that particular glazed-look attitude to actually looking in a book for information on their current assignment

“HEY! Check this out!” I tell them, once I’ve got their attention by jumping up on a chair, a table, or whatever is available that can give me a bit of a vantage (I’m only 5′8″ and shrinking…) and using my traveling evangelist voice.

“There’s a new technology you should know about for this assignment It’s the most amazing device ever invented for gathering, storing and providing quick answers to just about any question you might have. It’s compact, reasonably lightweight, instantly accessible, and infinitely retrievable. The information is logically organized in a way that’s easy to follow and convenient to reproduce for your own use. Setup is a snap, and there’s no tangle of cables and plugs drive you buggy. Best of all, it doesn’t even need electricity. Just grab it and GO!

I hold up a book, usually one measuring more than the 1 cm thick that I’ve noted as the limit of most teens’ interest (”if the answers aren’t in 64 pages, I’ll just Google it…”)

“This is it,” I tell them. It’s called a BOOK. And it’s a timeless example of “QUALITY“...

***

I spent the Songkran vacation upcountry (well, it’s looks like “downcountry” on a map, but it’s distinctly UPCountry).  This trip I decided to just go Cold Turkey. I packed a briefcase, the backpack I usually haul all my laptops bits around in, and, for good measure, the conference bag picked up at Learning 2.0 – with printed BOOKS, and every day I treated myself to a couple new titles.

It’s been a while since I spent any amount of real quality time reading for pleasure, and so many of the titles I had on this trip were fiction, and there area some great reads here. Check out my thoughts on these at “Reading for the Future“. Heading into this break, I figured I also would have some time on my hands (like during the 13 1/2 hour drive down) when I wouldn’t be able to read, but I could listen, so I downloaded several new titles to my phone (I don’t have an iphone, so need to list on my O2). I recently listened to “One Second After” and decided I wanted something along that line, so I had 12 hours of ”Apocalypse 2012″ by Lawrence E. Joseph to chew over. Joseph’s take on the many and varied ways in which events seem to be converging toward an inevitable collapse of society (and the technologies that underpin it) as we have come to expect them, is, in my view, a “must-read” for anyone in education, in the tech world, or just in the business of “getting on with life”.  While a true “apocalypse” may be not be inevitable, I believe that a rethink of our expectations for the future IS – and enduring quality figures prominently in whatever that future holds.

Because both “One Second After” and “Apocalypes 2012″ are pretty dark visions of the future, and to provide a bit of timeless food for thought, I also decided on this trip to try out one of our new MP3 CD audiobooks. This gave me another 9 hours of “Zen and Now” a recently published followup to the classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. For anyone who has ever read and mulled over Robert Pirsig’s reflections on “Quality“, n “Zen and Now”, Mark Richardson offers up his own road-trip along with unique insights into Pirsig’s philosophy, and details of the Pirsig’s personal journey that, as a rider myself (with several motorcycling incidents detailed in my own book), I found absolutlely riveting. A “must-read” (or listen. Actually, this is one of those titles that I find huge pleasure in going back to again and again to listen while the miles spool by). Don’t miss it!

Of course, I didn’t ignore the non-fiction side either. To start out, I reviewed, skimmed, or otherwise perused a collection of new titles recently arrived for our library on environment/climate topics. All of these, now available in our Main Library, are worth checking out. If you aren’t yet convinced of the gravity of the situation facing the world today, or if you’re convinced, but uncertain of how you, as a single individual, can be “part of the solution rather than part of the problem”, check these out;

• Climate Chaos. Your Health at Risk. Cindy L. Parker & Stephen Shapiro. Praeger, 2008
Energy Supply and Renewable Resources. Regina Anne Kelly. Checkmark Books, 2008
• Going Global. Key Quest for the 21s Century. Michael Moynagh & Richard Worsley. A&C Black, 2008.
• Harnessing the Sun’s Energy. Why Science Matters. Heinemann, 2009.
• Plan C. Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change. Pat Murphy. New Society Publishers, 2008
• Seven Years to Save the Planet. Questions and Answers.  Bill McGuire. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2008

Better yet, I brought with me the print copy of “Born Digital. Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives“, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (Basic Books, 2008).

I picked it up and glanced at the introduction, intending to skim it and summarize what I figured I already had a pretty good handle on. But then I found myself actually reading it fully, nodding at the examples that struck a chord, reflecting on the discussions we’ve already had on topics covered, and turning over in my head the things we haven’t discussed yet. I found myself going back to chapters that seemed particularly relevant and mulling over the salient points. The chapter on Quality was particularly of interest in view of my concurrent listening to “Zen and Now” and thinking back to Robert Pirsig’s theses on quality from 40 years ago. I even bookmarked several of the key points, and the book is beginning to develop a thumbed-through look even though I’m the first reader. If you’re one of the shrinking number of people who still love to read real books, get the book and spend some quality time with it.  For starters, chew on this (I’ve blogged about this on several occasions)

• p. 14 par.3 ”One of the most worrying things about all digital culture is the huge divide it’s opening up between the havs and have nots.”, and
• p. 14 par.4 “The vast majority of young people born in the world today are not growing up as Digital Natives.”

And don’t stint on Chapter 7. In the digital age, these points are more relevant than ever.  

• p. 161 – “Information quality goes directly to the heart of what it means to have a freer society. Unfortunately not all Digital Natives see it this way… In conversations with Digital Natives about information quality, questions like “So what?” and “Who Cares” are common refrains.”
• p. 163 – “It’s essential that all of us be able to differentiate good information from bad. By virtue of their age and education level Digital Natives are more susceptible  than adults to the threats posed by inaccurate information.”
• p. 165 – “When speaking about information quality, we always need to ask: “Quality” viewed from what perspective and in what context?”
• p. 166 – “…young people who access the Web, for instance, through computers in the library need to get the information very quickly and thus don’t have the time to evaluate their sources carefully.”
• p. 167 – “The ability to make quality judgements about information on the internet is not an innate skill.”

There’s more, much more. Get the hard copy and do yourself a favor. Spend some Quality time with “Born Digital” and in particular, with Chapter 7.

Back to the shop, to reality, tomorrow. I’ll be continuing to think, though, about quality – and I’m thinking that Robert Pirsig, Mark Richardson, and others, who worked, and still exist, almost exclusively in the world of print, may really have the answers (and the questions) that those “Born Digital” may never experience.

Perhaps, in the end, I consider myself lucky to be a “Digital Settler” (”Born Digital, p. 3). I like this designation better than the more commonly used “Digital Immigrant”. I’ve been there from the beginning. I worked on my first Commodore Vic20 program  (4 K of memory delivered straight to a tv monitor) for a travelling set of the new devices in Abbotsford School District in BC, Canada, in 1980. I have a collection of personal computers including one of those Vic20s, a Commodore PET, a Radio Shack TRS80, and each of the Macintosh models from the original Mac128 to the last of the all-in-one models (the Color Classic, in 1995). I appreciate quality – and I’ll keep striving for it as I move into the future – whatever it holds.

Essential Question of the Week: Do we as a global society need to rethink copyright laws? What’s our role as educators in copyright usage in schools?

I’m a strong proponent of modernizing copyright laws to reflect changes in both technology AND in society, As part of this course, I added a Creative Commons Atttibution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License to this blog. I’m on track to become a truly 21st century “cyber-citizen”.

I still worry, however, about simply bowing to the inevitable: the inevitable, in this case, is the perhaps inescapable conclusion that technology is making digital “mashups” of content from a growing number of technically accessible sources the norm in the “cyber” world.

Should we just assign a Creative Commons license to everything out there and be done with it? Encourage our students to troll the web, grab a selection of keyword-linked bits, paste them up in an approximation of original thought (providing  web-link attribution where it’s obviously not our own material) and throw in a few pithy aphorisms to give the piece the illusion of depth? It’s the way of the future, it seems.

But then a piece; a well-researched, documented and carefully crafted written piece, comes across my desk that forces me to re-think my complacency at accepting yet another small chipping away of traditional standards of scholarly research and creative expression. Make no mistake; I believe that the current penchant for posting every whimsy and personal conceit to the cyber-world at large is morphing the global pool of informative thought and creative expression into a quagmire of personal opinion superfluity.

The piece that got me thinking along this line was was an article in the March 20, 2009 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. forwarded to me by Dr. Jeff Harper, a thoughtful and broadly-read HS Counselor at our school, the article reminds me to consider the possible logical conclusions if we continue down the path which has brought us;

The Globalization of Cheating

Image reproduced from “Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 20, 2009

Do we, as a global society, need to rethink copyright laws?” Of course. With the exponential growth of data and knowledge, we need to find new ways of exploiting and sharing original thought, recombining disparate ideas, and creating original new theses to explain our world. These kinds of creative endeavors should not be hamstrung by archaic systems of citation or attribution.

What’s our role as educators in copyright usage in schools?

• To move past the “letter of the law” approach focusing on a minimalist “what we can get away with” attitude,  or “the world’s your oyster” approach promoting the tired rehashing of an ever-decreasing pool of original thought.
• To re-introduce a regard for intellectual property that seems to be slipping away, emphasizing, from our efforts at introducing students to scholarly research, the ethical consideration of using other people’s work in the service of our own.
• To consider the “logical conclusion” of promoting uncritical, smorgasbord-based information selection and regurgitation instead of meaningful data harvesting and thoughtful digestion leading to the synthesis of real new ideas.

I don’t believe that it’s possible to overstate the seriousness of this situation. We ignore the “globalization of cheating” at our, and our future decision-makers’, peril; perhaps at the peril of the very societies that have brought about this Information “Garden of Eden”.

How can I make such a broad, sweeping statement? I base this on Jared Diamond’s fifth core reason for societal collapse, which is “the political cultural, and social factors in a society which make it more or less likely that a society will succeed…”

I believe that our inability to retain certain core societal values truly does threaten our very future. Who will generate new Eureka experiences if we teach the next generation to just “borrow” without building on original ideas?  Will the breadth and depth of “scholarly” thought wither from the inevitable decline of original thought when everyone is continually rehashing the thoughts of a few renegade thinkers? Will our society truly Fail, as proposed by Jared Diamond, because, among other things, we do not address root social problems that threaten to destablilize that society – like the “globalization of cheating”.

All of Diamond’s arguments are compelling – and truly frightening for the future. Worth 18 minutes of your time if you haven’t read the book…

TED Talk “Why Societies Collapse”  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collapse.html

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…my hat is off to John Liu, for both the fundamental pragmatism of his ecological vision, and for the potential generalized applicability to the global crises facing us today. John’s the driving force behind Earth’s Hope, an organization committed to disseminating the ideas that fundamental ecosystem balance ultimately determines the survival or failure of whole civilizations, but that it is possible to rehabilitate large scale ecosystems we have allowed to degrade through societal “development”.

Reduced to a few basic concepts as I’ve wrapped my head around them, and with apologies to John if I’ve misunderstood or misinterpreted his message, he has convinced me to seriously consider that;

• In addition to initiatives on carbon conservation and reduction and efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewables, we need to add a “third leg” to the global environmental recovery strategy, and that is to restore every degraded environment on the planet to its natural balance.
• This is not an insurmountable challenge. John’s documentation of the changes to 35,000 square kilometers of the Loess Plateau in China over just 10 years is an amazing affirmation of what can be done when political will is turned to practical implementation of real-world projects.
• The 21st century preoccupation with atmospheric CO2 reduction is a misplaced and overly complex approach to simple systemic global problem. The overarching problem is rooted in human activity planetwide which replaces natural ecosystems with subsistence agriculture.
• Replacing natural ecosystems with subsistence agriculture has one logical natural conclusion, which is the ultimate degradation of the environment resulting in barren, unproductive deserts.

Furthermore, John proposes, and makes a strong case that;

• ALL of the environmental issues we’ve been bombarded with over the past ten years can be addressed at some level with a simple fix involving rebuilding the land’s ability to retain available rainfall and so to recover its natural propensity toward biological diversity and equilibrium.
• Physical reclamation of biodiversity on a local level can have  global climatic impacts – and virutally all of these impacts are positive.
• integrated poverty eradication and large-scale ecosystem rehabilitation go together. Local biodiversity recovery projects lead to the reduction of poverty and overal raising of the standard of living, which in turn can lead to the reduction of negative ecological behaviors, which reinforces ecological recovery, which leads to regional weather modification, which ultimately can have global impact.

Further, in order to become globally effective;

• the movement has to be “organic” – “grass-roots”, if you will. It has to be furthered by the actions of committed individuals involved in local action with regional or global consequences.

The source material for the notes above are available in more detail at a post somewhat down the homepage on the Earth’s Hope blog but the very essence of what John presented can be seen in the before and after images at the Earth’s Hope website. If you find these images striking, be sure to download the “Lessons from the Loess Plateau” video and watch the entire amazing story unfold.

I’ve spent several hours with John over the past three days, listening to his vision, revelling in the imagry he has presented, and mulling over where to go from here. Although John argues vociferously against adopting a “ready, fire, aim” approach, cautioning that the first step is to seek to understand how the current state has been reached, and then to adopt sound ecological interventions around water retention and biodiversity reestablishment, at the simplest level, it seems to me, I need to do something…and so do you... You can start by reading John’s story, viewing some of the footage posted at the Earth’s Hope website, and then reviewing (and perhaps contributing to) the issues raised on the Earth’s Hope blog.

My personal memmonic for the second half of Buddhism’s Eight-Fold Path (Right “Livelihood” through Right “Effort, Mindfullness and Concentration”) is -”Live Every Moment Carefully”

“Earth’s Hope” is that each of us will do exactly that. It’s never too late to start.