Daily Archives

23 March 2011

Learning from the Students

Today brought me to the Altoona campus for three project advising sessions with Heather Eckels’ history courses.  One really interesting aspect of her teaching is that she asks students in small groups to find a current event relating to controversial social issues and present it at the beginning of class. The first fifteen minutes of each period are devoted to this presentation and a conversation led by the student group, which prepares questions they would like their classmates to think on.  

I was particularly taken with this interview clip presented with questions regarding copyright, artists’ rights and the legality of profiting from a post-modern mashup of others’ works.  I have been a Girl Talk fan since for years but had never bothered to actually look up an interview with Greg Gillis, who creates an eloquent analogy:  we’d have a lot more painters if paint was being given away on the streets.  Does make you think, doesn’t it?