I came across a link via a tweet last night. The link led me to a slideshare presentation on Bring Your Own Device created by Sam Gliksman. The presentation was creative and artfully arranged. The advice on building an educational tecnology plan was rational and cogent. I found the argument advocating for a BYOD initiative to be very appealing; however, something was bothering me. A series of early slides highlighted the ubiquity of cell phones and the growing popularity of smart phones. The computing power of modern washing machines and the greater liklihood of children in the UK owning cell phones than books were also included. I kept questioning, What are the sources for this information? Is it factual and if so, is it verifiable? I remember being similarly troubled with some of the unattributed figures for labor and technology usage statistics that appeared in the Did You Know series.
These small queries lead me to my larger questions. Do the creators of content have a responsibility to colleagues in their PLN and beyond to substantiate the facts they include in their creations? In the absence of such substantiation and attribution are the arguments put forward in this content weakened? My intent here is not to lessen Mr. Gliksman's contribution. It definitely has value and can be very useful. We in school leadership often draw on such content in planning programs and initiatives in our schools. I can easily envision a scenario in which a savvy school committee member or member of the community could take exception with some of the factual information that lays the foundation upon which a BYOD school initiative argument rests and, in effect, distract attention from the well-intentioned and high-quality rationale that follows. Shame on that school leader who does not do his/ her homework and takes a public stance with questionable support.
The information posted on-line often does not have the benefit of being peer-reviewed or fact-checked by a dedicated research staff. I would argue that this places more responsibility on the creator to ensure that fine details are properly attended to. I am realizing that throughout this post I have used the term "creator" instead of "author." It begs the question, should the standards expected of serious authorship be extended to creators of mixed-media content. In our enthusiasm for 21st century content creation and sharing, are we forgetting about a hallmark of high quality 20th century research?
