Intellectual Property

What is Intellectual Property? Most people knows what it means, but it can be useful to take a look at the defination of these words. What does intellectual property mean for us - the people who use Internet?

When I started to write this blogpost, my son came up to me and asked what I was doing. I told him that I had to write about Intellectual property, and he asked "what is intellectual property"? After explaining the meaning, his reaction was "no one cares about that, everybody is downloading".

The right to protect our photos, music, texts etc, beeing used by others without permition, is maybe not taken seriously enough. We knows it is illegal to walk into a music store and steal a cd, and most of us don`t do that. But a lot of people hava no concerns when they download pictures, music and poems which belongs to author.

Why don´t people in general respect intellectual property? It is very easy to download for example pictures and music from Internet. I think this is one of the reasons. It has become available and easy to reach for everyone who are online and when they download these things, they don´t feel like a thief. It is a lot of websits which offers shared content; Flickr, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Well, my opinion is that intellectual property is a topic that deserves attention in school. It is a topic that I, as a teacher, easily can bring further on to my students by making them aware of the problem. It is not OK to "steal" from the Internet by downloading other peoples property, and it is several places where it is possible to find what you are looking for, for free or by paying for it.

Intellectual property in digital age.

Information privacy

In the mid- 1990s something happened in the world, ecpesially in the western world. What happened tourned out to affect us in the coming decade more than we could imagine at the time. The name of the phenomenon was THE INTERNET. In the beginning this was strange, and not something that everyone had accsess to. However, that changed quickly. Today most people are on the Internet. They are surfing, chatting, participating on different social medias, writing e-mail, reading news, searching for information - the possibilities are enormous.

Digital dossier

What is the price to pay for this availability? Does people have control over their data privacy? Since before todays youth were born, they started to leave digital footprints to their digital dossier.Well, its not quite right, THEY did not do that, but their parents or other grownups did. Maybe it started with the sonogram, which was distributed to friends and family, and of course put into the digital file. Nowadays it is focus on how children behave on Internet and what they leave of information. I think that it is important to make parents aware of what they leave behind in cyberspace too.

Privacy

I think young people in general have no idea what is collected of them by companies behind the screen of their computers. It is so easy and harmless to post a picture on a web-site, because they are sitting in their own safe room at home and thinking that they posted it so their friends could se it. They may not see ahead, they may not think that what they do today can affect them when they wants to apply for a job. Maybe the picture never should have been posted, maybe the text they wrote was inappropriate.

Teachers and parents need to take responsibility for the youth and children who are participating in the cyberspace. Many of them lives more and more of their lifes online and they have to get to know the consequences of releasing information into Internet.

Data Retention Directive

The Data Retention Directive is issued by the European Union. After the terror attacks in New York the 11. of September 2001, in Madrid the 11. of March 2004  and in London the 7. of July 2005, the authorities saw the need for storing data traffic to avoid crime like terror.

The Data Retention Directive allowes the authorities to store information about where, how, and with whom you communicate on telephone, cell phone or electronical mail. It is also possible to find out where you are when you use the cell phone. The information can be stored for six to twentyfour months. Information which reveal the content of the communication is not going to be available. This Directive was adopted by the Parliament the 4. of April 2011 in Norway. The Department of Justice has the opinion that the Data Retention Directive will be usefull to fight terror and child pornography.

In Norway it has been a tremendous debate and disagreement about the Directive, conserning both ordinary people and in the Parliament. Some people wants to have it and other don´t. In the Parliament it took the members nine and a half hours before they could vote over the Directive. It was adopted with 89 against 80 votes. On the social media, Facebook, it is created a site for people who are against the Directive. It is called  Stopp Datalagringsdirektivet.

Why does this Directive cause so much involvement? People who are against the Directive claimbs it will harm the democratic freedom to communicate, and the authorities expresses a bad attitude to people in general.

What did you REALLY learn in school today?!

In the curriculum Kunnskapsløftet you can read that one of the five basic skills, is that the pupil must have digital competence. It looks like this is a tremendous challenge for schools today.

Digital tools in school

As you can see in this video, pupils finds it natural to use the digital tools that they are surrounded with ever day. The teachers has the responsibility to convey the subjects of learning in a way that brings all the pupils to achieve understanding. Hopefully, using the digital tools, will reach more of the pupils. The school of today is extremly theoretically based, and a lot of children will welcome the computers in the classroom. The reason is that the youth are familiar with computers, and many of the pupils wants a diversion from the theoretically teaching. They also see the value of the computers as a digital tool which make their work more effectiv.

What kind of digital tools are appropriate to present for the pupils? First of all, it is an enormous number of tools to choose between. If we look for something that can be used in general, my first thought is mindmap

source: blog.startwithalead.com


The mindmap helps to structure and organize all the information the pupil has around a theme. They also will take advantage to the mindmap when they have to practice for a test.


If you are teaching older pupils, it could turn into a big success to use social medias in the classroom. A lot of pupils have their own profile on Facebook. This is an arena where they feel comfortable and "at home". An idea for the Norwegian class could be to challenge the youth making their own poems and publish in the Facebook area which is organized for the group. Or they may find a poem or a text which means a lot for them and publish it on the Facebook wall. Of course one of the tasks is to write and tell why they like this so much. 


In my opinion schools owe the pupils to take ICT seriously. Digital skills is one of the five basic skills and if they don´t get to use this wonderful tool in their education, they are getting fooled by the school system. The teachers and the school owners has to take the responsibillity and ensure that the pupils gets what they are entitled to! 

ROFL MAO XD

What is happening to our language? And where is it going to end? 

I have learned a lot of new words during the past years. This is thanks to the galloping use of the social media. First it was the cellphone with its sms-abbriviations. Then different social networks popped up faster then mushrooms in a moisty wood. But are all this new words necessary in our language?

Internet relay chat

In the community of today most children are on facebook and they have a cellphone. Some even have their own blog. "Everyone" are chatting! In all theese social networks use of cyber language is extensive. How do all this abbrivations affect the childrens ability to spell correctly? In my opinion it will be difficult for young children who is going to learn to write, to distinguishe what is correct spelling and what is cyber language. I doubt all parents knows the meaning of: 

• ROFL MAO, LOL, BTW, MILF, PW, BRB, Facerape, WTF, IRL, JFGI and FYI. 

Well, if they don`t, may be it is an idea to check up the meaning of these letters :-) 

sms-og-chat-ordliste

English words and phrases in our language are freequently used, especially among the younger generation. The new literacy is here to stay. Some may think this phenomenom is ruining our language. In the other hand this can be an enrichment and helps spice up the language. Examples of english words which is often used among the youngsters are: 

• skills, nice, join, burn, sorry, by the way, nasty, chill, grose, insane, fighte, fuck you, nerd, disgusting, game. 

People also use hole phrases in norwegian sentences and mix up both languages. This is mostly used in spoken language. Well, what can we say about this development? I`m sure there are different opinions on the topic. 

What is the problem anyway? If you can make yourself understood why can`t you use what language you want. BTW the new literacy are here to stay, you can`t stop this developing. Our language is changing, it is not static, and has never been. ^_~