Who owns information?

By Harry Smals on 20 September 2010

Why is it that I like to download from YouTube? Since I have put RealPlayer on my computer it offers me to “Download This Video” every time I watch a video on YouTube or any other website.

Downloading and owning my own copy sometimes feels better than watching a streaming video. With a streaming video I feel dependent on a stable internet-connection and on organizations that own or distribute the video. For example video’s are removed regularly. Also YouTube could decide that from now on I have to pay for their services. Or they can go bankrupt and disappear with all their video’s. 

Similarly Apple might decide that I have to pay for using iTunes, and if I don’t pay, iTunes doesn’t work and it will be very difficult for me to access the music, video’s etc. that I have bought.

This might sound like a doom-scenario but it must be very tempting for companies to make people dependent on services that they offer for free and then – when we are “addicted” to the ease and convenience – ask money for it.

Wireless- and mobile-internet are promoted as offering freedom, making you independent of time and space. But it also makes users dependent on organizations that offer technological infrastructure and organizations that offer content. One important player for me, for example, is the University of Applied Science where I work. We have WiFi everywhere in our buildings. But at the beginning of a new academic year we always have a peak of lessons and therefore students and lecturers who want to use the WiFi-network. During the past few years this resulted in an overload of data-traffic resulting in a slow or not working internet. Not very helpful when you prepared a lesson with some nice video’s.

Having my own copies of those videos makes me feel more secure, less dependent on factors I have no influence on such as a proper working internet or a company that removes video’s or might decide that I will have to pay for it. Using my own copies also saves me from unexpected and undesired advertisements while I am showing a video to 30 or 150 students.

In general it is inevitable that everybody will be more dependent on digital information. More and more people read books, magazines and newspapers on their eReaders and iPads. Virtual learning environments are part of every-day teaching. And there will be a moment that also management decides that educational organizations should be reshaped from physical buildings with some additional virtual learning facilities into truly blended learning environments. There will be a shift from linear teaching to learning-on-demand; from forcing to learn to willing to learn.

Traditionally information is stored in and consumed from analogue sources, resulting in tons of paper in libraries and school-bags. In a blended learning environment students and lecturers only have to bring a small device such as an iPad that will give access to eBooks, eMagazines, ePapers, internet, agenda, email etc. etc. Libraries will not have to store so much paper anymore. But it will make us also more dependent on organizations that provide internet and content.

I still like to have my own bookshelves full of hardcopies that I can access also if my computer has crashed, or when internet is down or when there is no electricity, or when some organization decides that from now on I will have to pay for opening a book. Even if I would get rid of all my books and would exchange them into eBooks, I would like to have a case with SD-cards containing my eBooks.

It just feels better to have a personal physical bearer of information. This gives me the impression that I own that information; I paid for it – or I copied it – and now it is mine. Digital information that is stored on servers around the world just doesn’t give me that same feeling.

Now, eBooks will be more than a digital version of a paper book; an eBook can be much richer and it can become part of a complete virtual learning environment that a publishing-house can offer. Then there could be an editorial staff making a complete offer of a paper book, an eBook, a website,  PowerPoints, exercises, assignments and exams. This could make teaching much easier for lecturers, because they only have to concentrate on teaching, and don’t have to bother about finding examples, making assignments, making exams etc. Teaching might become more easy, but perhaps also less challenging and less interesting. Lecturers will become more of a coach, whereas many lecturers like their job because they like to gather and share information about the subject they feel enthusiastic for.

A complete learning environment offered by a publishing-house also will be more efficient, because the same PowerPoints, examples, exercises, assignments and exams can be used by several educational institutions.
On the other hand, lecturers were always quite autonomous in what they taught and in how they taught it. They compiled parts of books and articles into what they thought was the best offer of information for this class of this year. Tailor-made. School and students needed lecturers because they knew something, they owned information in their heads and on their bookshelves. But in a situation where a publishing-house offers a complete learning environment, including all the information, exercises, assignments and exams, lecturers loose much of their autonomy.  And schools too. 

Lecturers work for a school and the information they produce – PowerPoints, exercises, assignments, exams, etc. – is possession of the school. Now, if there is a shift from tailor-made education offered by a school to efficient blended learning offered by a publishing-house, there will also be a shift from information owned by the school to information owned by the publishing-house.

Then it will be more difficult for a lecturer to assign students for example to compare two authors, if those authors publish for different publishing-houses. In a worst case scenario a publishing-house can educate whole generations with one view on reality, banning a competing view to oblivion.

tagged with: realplayer, future of teaching, blended learning

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