Re-invent the wheel and call it a tire.
Posted by Greg on October 19, 2007
It appears that teachers, the ones that continuously yell the importance of citing your source, are amongst the worst copyright breakers around. This Wednesday, for instance, I watched ‘Teacher Bob’ go to a common file drawer expecting the third file from the front to be unlabeled but contain an assignment that he had created. Instead, he finds the third file to be labeled ‘Ms. Jane’s assignment XYZ’. Curious, teacher Bob opens the folder to see the assignment that he had created reprinted with Ms. Jane’s header and title attached.
On the flip side, when I have approached teachers and asked if they might be willing to share anything with an up-and-coming shop teacher, all of them have been most helpful. Although they have given little as of yet, they have all indicated that when I ‘get out there’ and know what I am teaching, I am more than welcome to swing by and I can borrow or copy anything that I want.
What I have found, both in person and on-line, is that most teachers want to share what they have learned, created and/or worked with and share of their successes and failures. However, I have not yet met a teacher that wants to publish their projects or findings under another’s banner such as our group web project. Perhaps this is because too many others have done as Ms. Jane did and not give credit where credit was due.
As our major project this semester, we are assigned the task of creating a shop teachers survival guide. Essentially, a shop teacher should be able to turn to our website and find everything they need to succeed in an unfamiliar class. While I think this is a great concept, I wonder if we can do it justice in the short amount of time that we have together this year. I also wonder why this has not yet been done….or has it?
While searching the web today, one of my group members stumbled on the jackpot; the ‘any subject teacher’s survival guide’. We now have three websites that will cover anything that a high school shop teacher could need to know. So now what? Do we continue to build our site based entirely on links to these other sites? Do we recreate the wheel and call it a tire? Or do we go back to the drawing board and try to redraft the stone wheel?
Personally, I am not big on duplication, and since these sites are so comprehensive, what do we gain in trying? I suppose we gain the experience of learning where these sites are and sharing them with our colleagues, and perhaps we could create the webpage of best links, but beyond that…..? After all, if the wheel already exists, who am I to steal it and call it a tire?
