Access Copyright Decision - the impact, and the possibilities for change

Ontario school boards have been recently informed that they face huge retroactive copyright bills following Access Copyright Board's decision. (read the news coverage of this story )
This average 6-figure $$ charge per board covers the retroactive copyright charges for photocopying texts in schools...

While this comes at a time that many boards are struggling to balance budgets, it should come as no surprise... the boards have been challenging the payment of copyright fees in education and have known a ruling was coming for over a year now. .... so that's a can of worms I'm not going into...

The silver lining... an opportunity for change

What I *do* want to comment on is the opportunity, or silver-lining for education in this ruling. The paper-bound era of the photocopied classroom needs to be rethought.
This ruling makes a solid case toward using online / digital resources in the classroom; resources which add currency and relevancy, are primary-sourced, and cover broader scoop. They are much friendlier to environment too!
... And there are MANY solid digital and online resources provided for educational use:

• The excellent online journals and databases provided to the entire province through Resources Ontario are just one prime example - they cover resources from EBSCO, Gale, Cedrom, etc.

• The amazing "primary-source" digitized originals included in the OurOntario.ca discovery portal add a richness to the study of social sciences, civics and heritage that make a photocopied page pale in comparison.

Using these, and similar resources, students' assignment work can be expressed in full digital, multimedia formats... boosting student interest and engagement.

Surely it's time to step away from the binder of photocopied handouts as student notebook!

Gaming on education

The game of school: game theory has something to say about education
There's a think-tank session coming up in mid-May on this topic (more on this later), and in advance I'm really digging into current theory and controversy in this area - and there's a lot!

Let's start:

Getting your head around a more expansive understanding of serious gaming and its implications for the future of learning and education? Here are some thought-provoking background resources as an initial jump off -

The concepts and ideas on Clark Aldrich’s blog provide lots of food for thought - samples include:

1) Aldrich's time line for how he envisions the next five years will play out in terms of gaming and simulations and learning/education;

2) A venn diagram outlining the convergence:

3) An interesting interview transcript:

easily way of summarizing this approach is, "the world has changed - what schools need to teach should also change." But that simple statement will be hard, perhaps impossible, to achieve because schools have a dark secret. They rely on media. Schools can only teach in a way that is predictable and scalable if they rely on mass media. And again, because media today is linear, it forces a focus on passive "learning to know" skills rather than active "learning to do" skills. Schools today can't teach big skills like leadership, innovation, stewardship, and relationship management because they are not supported by today's linear media. Thus learning how "to do" is unscalable.

A different take on gaming and online life

South Korea has heavily gone down the road of integrating internet into education.
Watch the excerpts from "Digital Nation" recent PBS special on S Korean kids:

PBS: Last October we traveled to South Korea, one of the most advanced digital societies in the world. We wondered if Korea has any lessons to teach the rest of us as we move forward in the digital age. Much of the footage we shot on our trip aired as an episode of FRONTLINE/World on April 13, 2009.

.. I found both the segment with the kindergarten class being rotely taught netiquette (in isolation from actual use) as a standard part of the curriculum, and the "detox" center for gaming addicted children to be fascinating clips of what can go wrong.

My thought process...

Over the next bit, in the lead up to the Knowledge Ontario Ideas Forum (to be held in Toronto on May 21st at Oakham House, RyersonU) I intend to update and post what matters to me in this discussion space, and well as over on the main NING space set up for the forum...

Please add to the debate and share some ideas with me...