It was with real disappointment that I read Shelly Terrell’s post “When Education Leadership Fails You #Edchat” the other evening. It wasn’t actually her post – it was well written – it was the content. I wasn’t aware of the origin of the post but, as it turns out, I “know” the student work involved. I did share the link to any of those who care to follow me.
Please take the time to read & comprehend this post from @ShellTerrell. It’s a message that we all need to understand http://t.co/locksImlqN
— Doug Peterson (@dougpete) August 10, 2015
There are a number of things that disturb me about this:
- reuse of someone else’s work without attribution;
- support from parts of the educational community that support the action;
- that no apology had been extended for the action.
It’s the last point that, I guess, hits me deepest. We all make mistakes. At times, I feel like I’m leading the field. While an apology may not necessarily make everything all right, it can go a great distance in smoothing over any hurt feelings.
Beyond the reuse without attribution, I think the situation is amplified since the product used was that of a student. You know, the reason why education exists. The beings that we hit over the head about doing things properly and avoiding nasty things like violating someone’s copyright.
The situation serves to remind me of the value that we put into the sharing of ideas and resources. We are all so much smarter and richer because we’ve amassed this community of continuous learners. I so value turning to my social media sources and find all the latest “finds” that my community finds and shares. In a small way, I try to contribute back by sharing my readings and thoughts on this blog. Sometimes, I feel like the noisiest kid in the classroom. I used to think it was OK since I did my reading and sharing first thing in the morning and that people would have to conscientiously go looking for it. It was only then that I stepped back and realized that we’re interacting in a global learning community and I was only concerned about people in the Eastern Time Zone.
Social media tools make it so easy to share. The truly nice thing is that the Twitter, Facebook, Google + spaces that I use will honour the original author by crediting them whenever I share something. That makes it easy to track back to the original source AND it lets people know that I’m not the original creator of the content. I’m just the vehicle that passes it along.
But, if I was to remove the original poster name, then a reader would be well within her realm to expect that it was mine. My ego likes it when you like my thoughts. My ego likes it when you like a blog post. My ego would never stoop so low as to intentionally take someone else’s work and repurpose it so that it looks like it’s a dougpete original. That’s just wrong.
I like it when someone takes my original works and makes it better like Sylvia Duckworth did with some of the good folks that I’ve interviewed for this blog.
If you take a good look, you’ll see that there are attributions to the original contributors of the content. Rightfully so, Sylvia signs the graphic with her name. She’s built upon the works of others and is perfectly justified in claiming ownership to the final sketchnote. She doesn’t make claim to the content by removing the original references.
As my dad once told me, “you make yourself look good by making others look better”. Sylvia demonstrates this perfectly.
That’s the kind of learning and sharing that I want and I hope that others want and respect as well.
To do otherwise is a loss of integrity. When you’ve lost that, what do you have left?
I remember a line that’s stuck with me about a jury instruction “if you determine one statement to be a lie, you’re entitled to ignore the entire testimony of the witness”.
doug --- off the record 