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Message board > Some rude moderators! who don īt give a chance to new members! The old ones feel they are like a clan or something!?
Some rude moderators! who don īt give a chance to new members! The old ones feel they are like a clan or something!?
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paula_esl
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Dear Anna, that īs the reason why it doesn īt work; because if there are no rules to follow, decisions will turn out to be different (as it has already happened) when we vote for a ws to be removed or not. In the case you īre referring to, "So far, most believe that it should not be removed", so why was the other one removed or why weren īt others removed on different occasions? There seems to be no coherence. Aren īt the rules or lack of them to be applied to everyone indiscriminately? And how do you explain that in a set of 3 or 4 "copied layout" wss, one or two are removed and the others arenīt?
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11 Jun 2009
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roneydirt
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Here we go again with another flow of he/she says, he/she says... Personally even though I lack the tech skills I really haven īt seen anything really new shown and most even if they either don īt know or don īt care are basically copying stuff that has already been created. The only ones that haven īt copied are the ones that hand drew the stuff themselves but even there is some form of copying. This was discussed in my Education Ethics class how can we be sure if it is copied on purpose or by "accident." Personally I think the way it is set up is very professional but it isn īt anything new. I was looking at that design from one of my old textbooks trying to figure how Mena did it from the text to computer and where I could find it to add to my worksheets for my lower level students and add the traceing technique for my Masters program. (By the way the text was copyrighted 1968 and I don īt think Mena been teaching that long or wrote my textbook. I have a fetish of collecting old books and military things being a person who speciality is a historian is not uncommon. Have a storage closet full of that stuff in the states.) Is it a violation of copyright laws which David brought up in another post.... no it is not. Now there are several documents on here that do violate several copyright laws like using cartoon characters especially current ones as well as posters, movie clips, photographs for a variety of things do violate copyright laws. I said that twice for a reason, but does it really matter that much? Only if we actually profit from it, but it still is an grey area in the legal realm. It is not as big as the music download thing on Napster a few years back. Now it is stated the individual is a new teacher. How many of you can say you did not copy or mimic a style that someone else used in the first 5 years of teaching in till you found your own personal style is lying. Yes I am blunt about that. I still mimic and use material that I saw others use, and I am almost at the 5 year full time mark of teaching and still perfecting my own personal style. I expect to be adapting and perfecting my own personal style long past retirement because that is called growth and adapting to the changes of society.
Oh historically the major changes in eduction over the decades have been done by the minority and not the majority. It was the minority of people that booted slavery, said the world was round, added science to schools, added the number 0, stood up for equal education, said girls could do math, added TEFL to education........ Might want to remember that. |
11 Jun 2009
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alien boy
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Like your opinion roneydirt!
My opinion related to this stuff can be found (sort of) in David īs post:
As far as comments go... īmoderators � are no different to the ordinary members except that they have more points. I do not believe that any moderator is morally ethically or superior to myself, and to generalise, they are not superior morally or ethically to the other ordinary members either...
So please, don īt defend other moderators as being something they īre not... but also, don īt demonise moderator īs comments as being worse than the comments of any member who reports an upload! The only problem that I can see is that īmoderators � apply their personal opinion in far too many cases rather than judging things by the guidelines & rules of the site! The example above is an obvious case of this...
edit: the Âīobvious caseÂī is in the nature of the comments - many of them are based on opinion rather than specific information (as provided by Victor) about the origin of the sheet.
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11 Jun 2009
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victor
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FIRST:
It has been voted by many users. Is it so difficult to accept democracy? Was it better when I decided myself alone?
SECOND:
Moderators were completely right. I give you a proof. This is the link to the document. You can see it here:
Download it, open it, and go to file - properties. You will see that it says Author: Mena
This means that this user downloaded a document from mena. Changed the contents (but not the layout) and uploaded it as his own work.
This can īt be done without permission of the original author.
It is impossible to make clear rules about everything. Sometimes we need to vote using our common sense and personal opinion. For that reason we have a voting system, and it is working PRETTY WELL. |
11 Jun 2009
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zailda
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In my opinion when you make something public through the internet you must be aware that anyone will be able to copy it and if you want it to remain "your own possession" don īt share with others. We are here to "share our work & help other teachers". I don īt think there are professional designers or writers among us, so if we use other teacher īs work to develop ours it īs not to be considered a crime or a plagiarism. I personally don īt mind if someone use "my" layout and every day I see wss on the same topic I uploaded the previous day but I don īt claim them as "my ideas". I īm completely aware that everyone here can be inspired or even use part of my work on their wss, and I īll feel happy because I helped someone develop a better work.
I see sometimes that someone downloaded my ws and imagined a way to make it better by exploring the topic further or adding better pictures and I usually download those wss!
I ask for permission first when I want to develop someone īs ws and I don īt mind if someone wants to develop his/her work using mine because I īm here to share.
As a moderator I follow the site rules and they say you can īt upload other person īs work as yours, but there īs nothing against using other person īs "design".
Yesterday I downloaded a ws on seasons and adapted it with the seasons in Brazil and US and I think it would be useful for South American teachers, they only have to change the Brazilian flag, but I don īt feel comfortable to upload the ws here even giving the credits to the original author because someone could consider I īm only eager to get points and report it.
If we put apart the "creator proud � we could have a better site with more useful material, with teachers working together and where "points" would be less important than how useful a ws is.
Have a good Thursday
Cheers
Zailda Coirano
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11 Jun 2009
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roneydirt
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Question Victor you said it yourself downloaded the file and changed the content but not the layout then there are several documents I could point that have been uploaded that I have downloaded in the past several months that belong in the same realm. So are you going to go through and start deleting those as well? This legal realm has been previously discussed and once again David posted the same question in another post. Even in her post Mena said she didn īt mind and welcomed it, or at least in her public post she seem to have done that. It may have been post approval but it still was an approval to use it. As for the actual item in question I have already found it on a couple open sites to be downloaded and used. So what would have been different pulling from another site or using Mena īs worksheet and it still looking the same? I was getting ready to download a couple more papers during the exams in two weeks but now am questioning that. I downloaded other people īs worksheets because I like the layout and made my work look more professional but I guess with that comment it a sign unless your in the inner circle don īt do it. Great way of welcoming newcomers and new teachers that are still trying to get their grasp on the whole teaching realm. |
11 Jun 2009
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HARIM
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Hi Zailda,
We know that you are a kindhearted person;but how would you feel if I took one of your wss,with its frames,cliparts,designs,templates, removed only the text and replaced it with another one without your permission and uploaded it under my name?
There is no harm if you do it for your personal purpose,to use it in your classroom,but it harms when you upload it under your name and wait for points to be added to your account for someone else īs efforts.
If we all do this,we īll kill creativity and will open our eyes each day to the same frames, templates, designs,cliparts....but different texts.Will you like it then???
Have a nice day |
11 Jun 2009
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victor
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Asking for permission is very easy. That is the least you can do if you want to use other people īs work.
Zailda:
All worksheets here are copyrighted by their authors. If you don īt mind other users copying your designs, other users could do. They have the right to be asked first. |
11 Jun 2009
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Helen McK
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Victor,
Thank you so much for expressing your fair-minded and sensible opinion on this matter.
Helen  |
11 Jun 2009
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Helen McK
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To add to what Harim has said, I don㦙 think I鏆 be half as interested in this website if everybody used the same boring layouts. If I wanted that, I would stick to using textbooks. I like to see creativity as well as read it in the printables that I use; to me, layout is an integral and important element of a worksheet�and the effort that went into it deserves to be respected.
Helen |
11 Jun 2009
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