Graham Davies

Just an addendum to my previous message: Chris Sweeney wrote (Ask an Expert / ICT / Websites and Copyright) I replied: In response to numerous questions regarding copyright, especially copyright and the Web, I have produced the following Web page at the ICT4LT site: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm

Siobhain writes: It sound like you have it sorted!

Maggie writes: This is pretty standard advice these days. Names can be a problem, even in email addresses. I used to display my daughters' and my wife's (who are also my business partners) names in their email addresses at our business website. Bad move! I have now removed all references to any email addresses at our business website. We use an anonymous contact form instead.

TeachIT looks like a very useful site! Andrew writes: Yes, many of the so-called interactive websites that I have seen fall into the category of what I call “point-and-click-let’s-move-on-quick”, and they are not truly interactive, e.g. in the sense of requiring learner input in the form of typed text or spoken language and offering discrete feedback, etc. Hot Potatoes is a useful tool for creating quick-and-dirty exercises, but there are more sophisticated tools around if you wish to create truly interactive materials. I have been using the word-processor in teaching Modern Foreign Languages and English as a Foreign language since the early 1980s. You might take a look at ICT4LT Module 1.3, Using text tools in the modern foreign languages classroom, where a few examples are presented, as well as links (Section 6.3) to sites offering further ideas. See http://www.ict4lt.org A couple of questions to Siobhain: There has been a lot of correspondence in the forum about copyright recently. Two questions that relate to issues that have been raised elsewhere: 1. How do you ensure that the materials sent into TeachIT are original works? 2. Anyone who creates an original work is automatically granted copyright in that work. Do your contributors retain copyright in their work or do you ask them to assign copyright to TeachIT? My own answer to Question 1: As editor of the ICT4LT site, I always ask contributors of materials to the site to endorse the following statement: “Guarantee of originality: The Author warrants that the Work is an original composition and that it in no way infringes any existing copyright either in whole or in part and that it contains no material which may be considered libellous or defamatory. The Author shall indemnify the Publisher against all actions, proceedings, claims and demands made against the Publisher by reason of anything contained within the Work constituting an infringement of copyright or being libellous or defamatory and against all costs, damages or expenses in respect of such action, proceeding, claim or demand."

David writes: I don't think this is off-topic. Computers can be an excellent aid in helping learners memorise facts - and I am currntly finding a series of CD-ROMs (published by EuroTalk) invaluable in acquiring basic vocab in Polish (in anticipation of next year's EUROCALL conference in Poland. We do need to memorise facts as well as applying them. I have an excellent memory (even at the age of 62). I can easily assimilate facts - and apply them. It save loads of time looking things up continually. London cabbies spend around two years "doing the knowledge", i.e. memorising lots of different routes through London. Then they apply that knowledge when they drive their customers around. OK, don't read too much into this. I am merely statng that maybe we are underestimating the value of committing facts to memory.

John writes: It depends on the subject. Memorising information is vital in foreign languages. For example, you need an active vocab of around 3000 words in order to function adequately in a foreign language - and it's more efficient to memorise these words rather than walking around with a dictionary or a wifi laptop Furthermore, you have to be able to assemble the vocab according to the language's rules of syntax and morphology.

I really find it difficult to understand why teachers get so confused about copyright and the Web. If you place materials on a publicly accessible website you are a publisher and thereby subject to the same copyright constraints as any other publisher. I am currently writing an article for an encyclopaedia to be published by Elsevier, a major international publishing company. The article includes eight screenshots taken from other published materials, namely CD-ROMs and websites. I have had to write to the copyright owner of each CD-ROM and website to seek permission to publish these screenshots, and I have to present a signed form to Elsevier from each publisher confirming that they have given permission for the screenshots to be published. This is standard procedure. It is common courtesy to ask for permission and, as I have indicated many times before, you may be breaking copyright law if you fail to obtain permission. Regarding audio and video materials, the same rules apply. The next time that you watch a feature film or a documentary on TV, look at the credits and acknowledgments at the end. You will find that the source of every piece of music that has been played and every video clip that has been shown in the film is documented. The film production company has sought permission for these recordings to be played and video clips to be shown, and has probably paid a fee to the copyright owners. You have to do the same if you are making materials public. As I indicated before, there are no special concessions for education, and it does not matter whether you are publishing in order to share resources free of charge or for commercial gain. Publishing on the Web is quite different from using materials in the classroom, where there are substantial concessions for education, e.g. as embodied in the terms of the Copyright Licensing Agency and the Educational Recording Agency in the UK. You may find material that is stated to be copyright-free or in the public domain, and the terms of using it are much more liberal - look for a clear statement saying "This video recording is in the public domain" or something similar. A good example of a Web page containing archive video clips is the BBC site on WWII: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/ Scroll down to the bottom of the page and look at the terms. These include, for example the following statement: "You may not copy, reproduce, republish, download, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use bbc.co.uk content in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use. You also agree not to adapt, alter or create a derivative work from any bbc.co.uk content except for your own personal, non-commercial use. Any other use of bbc.co.uk content requires the prior written permission of the BBC." The key phrase here is personal use, i.e. not public use. Posting something on the Web constitutes public use. A useful Web page is Brad Templeton’s “10 Big Myths about copyright explained”: http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html It’s mainly about copyright legislation in the USA, but international copyright legislation is tending to converge these days, and a good deal of what he says applies to most European countries.

10 films that I can watch over and over again: The Third Man Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday Citizen Cane Casablanca A Matter of Life and Death Battleship Potemkin Blow Up Once Upon a Time in the West Midnight Cowboy Out of Towners (the original, with Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis)

This is probably not quite what you want, but are you familiar with my Fun with Texts program? See http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/fwt.htm It works very differently from what you have proposed, but it's been a best-seller in the UK since 1985, and the new Version 4.0 enables you to combine texts, images, sound and video. The "Living Books" series, published by Broderbund in the 1990s were exemplary programs for stimulating reading: Just Grandma and Me, Arthur's Birthday, The Tortoise and the Hare, New Kid on the Block, etc. Definitely ahead of their time!

I am using ZoneAlarm Pro and I have no problems accessing the Forum when ZoneAlarm is running - providing I remember to set Cookie Control OFF under the Privacy tab. I hesitate to disable ZoneAlarm Pro completely, as I was hacked three times before I installed the program (around 3-4 years ago). Fortunately, my ISP spotted the intrusions and disabled my account as soon as they spotted the intrusions, so no damage was done. I have not been hacked again since then.

Chris raises several important issues. I derive about half my annual income from selling software that I have written. It’s not a great sum of money - roughly half the annual income of an average teacher. Naturally, I feel very strongly about copyright. I have only had to take serious action to protect my rights on one occasion – when an LEA ICT centre adapted a piece of software that I had written and began to sell the adaptation. When I approached the LEA about this they closed ranks and called in their big-gun lawyers to defend what they had done. Legal action against the LEA was out of the question for me. The legal advice from our family lawyer was not to go to court, as it it could prove expensive, but to contact every possible organisation through which the LEA might publicise the adapted package, i.e. to blacken their name. This I did, and it was very effective. Within a matter of months the LEA was ostracised from conferences at which they might present the adapted package, and government agencies refused to publicise it. The adaptation swiftly disappeared into oblivion. I have also written lots of materials that are available free of charge, e.g. the materials at the ICT4LT site (http://www.ict4lt.org) and at my own website (http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk). I don’t object to teachers making multiple copies of these materials and using them for non-commercial educational purposes, subject to due acknowledgement of the source. I do object – and I have done so on two occasions, when I found my materials appearing without an acknowledgement on someone else’s website. On each occasion I admonished the offender and asked them to remove the materials from their website – which they did. Chris writes: You have considerable rights and you can exercise them with the full backing of the law. I would be furious if someone published my work without asking me and I would challenge the publisher immediately. You automatically have copyright on any original work that you create. If a work has been created as part of your employment duties then, unless a contract specifically states otherwise, the copyright resides with yourself. You have a good case for complaint - and may even be able to demand a retrospective fee. I know of one teacher who succeeded in obtaining a fee in a similar situation. He found a photograph of a street scene that he had taken in Berlin appearing on the cover of a published pamphlet. He recognised the photograph from the passers-by who appeared in it. Chris writes: As I have indicated above, you automatically have copyright on anything original that you create. Your message to this Forum and my reply, for example, are subject to copyright. Materials posted on the Web are subject to the same law as any other published materials. If I write a text, take a photograph, make an audio or video recording and publish it on the Web I still have intellectual property rights with regard to such materials. Just because they appear on the Web they do not automatically become freely available for all and sundry to do what they like with them. There are several relevant documents at BECTA's ICT Advice site: http://www.ictadvice.org.uk Search the site under "copyright" to find them. Here are some important points that have been extracted from the documents at the ICT Advice site: * Copyright information often appears on a Web page, usually at the bottom of the page. This tells you what you are allowed or not allowed to do with the Web page. If the conditions of use of the Web page are not clearly defined or are severely restricted, contact the site owner or webmaster to request permission to use the page, stating clearly what you intend to do with it, e.g. make multiple copies for classroom use. Permission is only granted at the discretion of the copyright holder, who may wish to charge a fee for such use. * Fair dealing permits certain acts without requiring the permission of the copyright owner. These include what is reasonable for private study and research. Making multiple copies for classroom use has been established as being outside the definition of fair dealing. You are normally allowed to: i. make a temporary copy of a Web page, otherwise known as caching, as it is integral to accessing the Internet; ii. print a single copy of a Web page, although not the whole website, for private study or research; iii. make a single copy of a Web page, although not the whole website, to a hard drive or floppy disk, as long as it is not for the purpose of producing multiple copies; iv. quote from a Web page as long as the source is acknowledged and it is for the purpose of criticism or review; v. make a temporary copy of a Web page for the purpose of electronic transmission such as email, to an individual for their private study or research. The copy should be deleted as soon as the transmission is complete. * Fair dealing ceases if: i. a single electronic copy is made with the intention of producing multiple copies or redistributing it either in paper form or electronically; ii. it is known that a licence is available to permit copying, but has not been sought; iii. the copies are used commercially, sold or hired, whether it was the original intention or not when the copying took place; iv. the copy is made publicly available, such as on a website, without the permission of the copyright holder.

Don't get too complacent, Mike My daughter is a professional graphic designer, running a 100% Mac-based business. She used to make fun of the way in which I (as a PC user) have to protect myself against viruses - until her business was hit by a Mac virus that was an absolute pig to get rid of, necessitating an expensive visit by a Mac consultant to fix the three Macs on her LAN. Mac viruses are rare, but when they arrive watch out!

John writes: I think you'll find that most newer email systems have reasonable spam filters. Oultlook is the email software that is most frequently targeted by virus writers - because it is so widely used and because Microsoft has a habit of leaving each new version of Windows full of holes that allows this stuff through. If you don't keep patching your Windows system you are prone to such attacks - log in to http://www.windowsupdate.com and find out which Critical Updates and Service Packs you need in order to patch the holes and fix the bugs in your current version of Windows. I use MailWasher Pro to filter spam before it hits the two different email systems that I use. So far, it's proved very effective. But both of my ISPs filter quite a lot of the stuff out before it reaches me.

Anders asks: I wouldn't DARE make such materials public without consulting the owner of the rights to the recording. Under UK law, making public any copyright audio or video material that has been produced in the last 50 years could be in breach of copyright. Copyright clearance MUST be obtained - unless there is a clear indication in the information about ownership that it it copyright-free. It makes no difference whether the materials are sold or offered for free, e.g. on an educational website. Texts and images are also subject to copyright law. I wouldn't reproduce someone else's text on a public website, unless it's just a properly referenced short quotation from a complete work. A work can be a novel, a speech, a poem, a short story, etc. I would be particularly careful about reproducing images as legislation with regard to reproducing images (in the UK, at least) is particularly stringent. My daughter is a professional graphic designer and her advice is: "If you haven't created the image yourself or haven't bought rights to use it then don't use it!" Note, however, that certain clipart images and photographs are copyright-free for educational purposes, but only within a physical classroom and not for use in a "virtual classroom", e.g. on the Web.

Significantly, Outlook is often referred to by computer buffs as "Look Out!". I never use it, as I have experienced too many problems with Outlook. I use Eudora for email and Dreamweaver for creating Web pages. No problems!

Sorry, wrong URL! The ICT4LT URL is: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod3-5.htm I should have checked this first.

Rowena writes: I have worked as a professional translator (German-English) and I continue to take an interest in translation, especially in the ICT tools that are now available to translators, e.g. “Translation Memory” tools that remember documents that you have translated before and that can patch in whole chunks of translated text where the archived source text matches the source text of the document you are currently working on. It’s a great system for producing updates of technical manuals and for official documents where there’s a lot of repeated standardised language. The EU uses a version of the TRADOS TM tool. It can save up to 80% of a translator’s time. You can read about this kind of stuff at the ICT4LT site in Section 3 of Module 3.5, Human Language Technologies: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_3-5.htm Mike writes: No, it’s probably a lot worse now that no pupil HAS to study a language beyond the age of 14. Another anecdote: When my daughters were at school I had a running battle (I was a parent governor) with the headteacher over timetabling. One example: My elder daughter wanted to do Electronics, which was timetabled against Typing (that takes you back a few years!) which was taught at the local tech college. When I queried this, it was clear that the headteacher perceived Electronics as a boys’ subject and Typing as a girls’ subject. My daughter chose Electronics, and I bought her a keyboard skills program that ran on our ancient Commodore computer – which brought her typing skills up to scratch (and mine too). My daughter was the only girl in two 25-pupils set studying Electronics. She got a good CSE pass and found later on that what she had learned was highly relevant to her current occupation, namely running an electronic-based graphic design business.

I set up my system to accept cookies, but they are zapped daily. I use Window Washer at boot-up to get rid of the masses of Web clutter that accumulates while browsing the Web.

Rowena writes: I cannot point immediately to research results, but there are many bilingual people whom I have met who function perfectly well in both languages with a full vocabulary in both languages. Conference interpreters have often had a bilingual upbringing and they have to be equally competent in both languages. Rowena writes: I've only experienced "loss of English" once, when I returned from a six-month period as a student in Germany. On my return to England I found myself hunting for English words on occasions, but it didn't last long. Bilingual people are so used to "code switching" that they are sometimes unaware of which language they are using. A German friend of mine was trying to hold a conversation in German with my wife, who does not speak German. I had to intervene and point out to my friend that she was speaking German! I speak fluent German myself, and I have found myself recalling conversations I have had with bilingual friends, but I could not remember in which language they took place even though I could clearly remember the topics of the conversations. A psycholinguist can probably shed more light on these fascinating phenomena.

Rowena writes: I rarely have a problem with North American English, but our relatives in Canada often fail to understand some British words I use - usually swear words such as "b*ll*cks". I find I start to drift into North American while I am in Canada, especially when talking about cars, and I'll use words such as "gas", "windshield", "fender", "trunk", etc in order to avoid having to repeat myself or translate! I have a friend in Montreal, an ex-pat Brit whom I have known since my schooldays. He runs a small business in downtown Montreal. He speaks pretty good French, and he claims that this gives him an advantage in business, as French-speaking customers appreciate dealing with him in their own language.

David writes: See The Language Investigator website. This site is aimed mainly at primary school teachers who are interested introducing a multilingual dimension into their lessons, but the materials are relevant to teachers and pupils in secondary education too. The work is a result of a one-year project called "Thinking through Languages" which was developed within a group of Coventry primary schools. The project was funded by the Nuffield Foundation. An excellent site for raising awareness about languages, with lots of useful links: http://www.language-investigator.co.uk There was a lot of this kind of stuff going on in connection with the European Day of Languages, 26 September. See the European Centre for Modern Languages site: http://www.ecml.at/edl David writes: Exactly - "it all depends where you are coming from". Indo-European languages are broadly similar, and even if you move from one sub-group (e.g. Romance) to another (e.g. Germanic) you often find a lot of similarities in lexis and grammar, and once you've learned one language in the sub-group you have a good starting point for learning others in the same sub-group, e.g. my first foreign language is German but I can make a lot of sense of written Dutch (not spoken Dutch, however). I had to learn Hungarian a few years ago. Now that's a challenge if your previous experience is only within the Indo-European family! The lexis is totally different, and there are aspects of Hungarian syntax and morphology that you won't find anywhere in other Western European languages, e.g. "Bécsbe a feleségemmel mentem" = "I went to Vienna with my wife". The sentence parses thus: "Bécs" = "Vienna", with suffix "be" meaning "to". "a" = "the". "feleség" = "wife", with an infix "em" meaning "my" and a suffix "mel" meaning "with". "mentem" = "I went", the "t" indicating past tense and the "em indicating first person singular. The normal position for the verb is at the end of the sentence.

Just a few quick reactions to the message from Anders: 1. Interactive whiteboards: See the REvIEW Project: Research and Evaluation of Interactive Electronic Whiteboards, University of Hull in collaboration with Promethean: http://www.thereviewproject.org 2. Using audio and video materials: We do a lot of this in my subject area, Modern Foreign Languages. See Module 2.2 (Introduction to multimedia CALL) at the ICT4LT website: http://www.ict4lt.org. Module 2.5 and Module 3.2 on authoring one's own materials might be relevant too. 3. Copyright: A can of worms! I have addressed this issue elsewhere in the Forum - I'm not sure where it ended up now. See my guidelines on copyright at http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm - which refers mainly to the situation in the UK. In the UK, copyright on audio and video materials lasts for 50 years from the end of the year in which the recording was made. Copyright on printed materials last for 70 years after the death of the author. Basically, if you are putting any kind of material up at a publicly accessible website, you should seek the creator's permission. Material that you gather from other websites is not copyright-free, unless it is specifically stated to be so, so you can't just assemble it and distribute it further via the Web. There is usually a copyright message on websites indicating who owns the materials and what you are allowed to do with them.

Marco writes: Yes, SUBSTANTIAL differences. The local dialect is known as "joual", which is how "cheval" (horse) is pronounced in the Québec dialect. My French-speaking relative in Canada is perfectly intelligible to me (she has an educated accent) but I am always fascinated by the way she pronounces the nasal sounds "-en", "-in", "-on", etc.

Audrey asks: It's not just the UK. Ireland fares only slightly better, even though Irish youngsters are exposed to two languages, English and Gaelic, from an early age, which should in theory raise their awareness of foreign languages in general and be a good preparation for learning French, German Spanish, etc. It has to be said, however, that only highly motivated students make good progress in Gaelic - unless they happen to live in one of the few remaining Gaelic speaking areas. Americans and Canadians are no better than the Brits - probably a lot worse on the whole. Our family has relations in Canada, way out on one of the islands off the coast of British Columbia. All but one are resolutely monolingual, in spite of Canada's supposed bilingual policy, and they frequently complain about taxpayers' money being wasted on translating documents into French. The one exception on the Canadian side of our family happens to be a native French speaker from Ontario. I visited Montreal a few years ago, and I always addressed waiters/waitresses and shop assistants in French, only to be told immediately how wonderful my French was - and then they switched to English. I was surprised to discover how many Anglos living in Montreal made little effort to master French. A colleague of mine, a very experienced language teacher, argues that English is a bad starting point for learning other languages. English lacks, for example, gender in nouns (v. French and German), cases (v. German), agreement of adjectives (v. French and German), etc - i.e. too many new concepts. There is also the well-documented point that boys are "turned off" by French - they often perceive it as a "cissy" subject, and failure in French is regarded by many boys as an achievement! There have been several articles on this subject in the ALL Journal.

I think our apparent weakness in learning foreign language boils down to two issues: 1. Lack of motivation. 2. Insufficent time allocation in the school curriculum - or badly organised time allocation, e.g. two double lessons per week. I am also aware of an increasing reluctance among young people to read these days. Does this explain why students find languages hard? This article caught my attention recently: "Online health advice for people with diabetes is often too complex to understand, analysis suggests." A scientist at Bath University looked at pages about diabetes on 15 internet health sites run mainly by charities and official bodies. He found people would need a reading ability of an educated 11 to 17-year-old to understand the sites. However, he said the average reading age of people in the UK was equivalent to an educated nine-year-old." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3641634.stm Poor reading ability seems to be a growing problem. Over the last two years my business has received an increasing number of telephone calls from ICT technicians in schools requesting technical advice on installing software packages that we have sold them. My initial reaction is to refer the technician to the technical section of the manual that accompanies the software. When I do this there is often an embarrassed silence at the other end of the telephone. There appears to be not only a reluctance to read anything in print but also an inability to read anything in print. It is clear from emails that I have received from some ICT technicians that they cannot write correct English - maybe they can't read it either.