Your 2nd Grade Teacher's Thoughts

The last two weeks’ readings and sources have been centered around information sharing and access to that information. One of the biggest questions I have begun pondering is: do content creators have a responsibility to share their knowledge and content freely? At first thought, my immediate response is YES. As we all know knowledge helps create learning and as an educator, my goal is to promote learning. Authors Smith and Casserly also align their thinking this way feeling “that the world's knowledge is a public good” and the positives for the open sharing of knowledge outweigh the negative concerns (Smith & Casserly 2006). However, when I think about all knowledge sharing being completely open and free to all it also makes me worried. Worried that future content could be misused or misrepresented in ways. Worried that “fake news” will become an even bigger problem or that the content creators will lose credit. These worries then validate some of the reasons why copyright laws

  As technology has evolved so has our ability to communicate with new people and gather new information from a variety of sources. However, while we have more access than ever before to new content we also might not always be using that access to our best abilities. One major question I have been exploring these last two weeks has been how am I using technology to explore new perspectives? Technology can allow us to search much more quickly for content and delivers the content much quicker to its users. New algorithms for search engines, websites, and social media platforms have made it so easy to see content that is relatable to you. Google uses 57 signals “everything from what kind of computer you're on to what kind of browser you're using to where you're located -- that it uses to personally tailor your query results.” ( Pariser, 2011)   However, if we are constantly consuming content that doesn’t encourage us to consider different perspectives than our own it becomes