Content Creators and Content Recyclers

A crafty shopkeeper in Rehoboth, DE created an entire display shelf from panels of tightly-rolled magazine pages-- recycled material, yet still "new content." — A crafty shopkeeper in Rehoboth, DE created an entire display shelf from panels of tightly-rolled magazine pages– recycled material, yet still “new content.”

My student’s hand shot into the air before I could finish my sentence, and I called upon the jersey-clad, lacrosse-obsessed eighth-grader knowing exactly what his question would be, the same one bouncing within most of my students’ heads, “Do we have to draw, or can we use the internet?”

“I want you to draw.”

Cue rolling eyes and sighs, a chorus Handel would have found impressive, if not musical.

“Why can’t we just use the internet?”

“I want you to be content creators and not content recyclers.”

Students remembering my previous explanations of this concept started their work, some had forgotten the concept, and others pretended to not remember. So, I chose to view this moment as an “opportunity for reinforcement” and repeated my explanation. The internet is a great medium, but it needs people creating content: conducting the research, taking the photographs, drawing the pictures, designing the pages, and expressing new ideas. Those that cut and paste– merely collect and repackage others’ words, art and ideas– are content recyclers.

Inspiration hit me. I fired up our classroom projector and loaded a website on the first topic coming to this American History teacher’s mind, “George Washington.” The whitehouse.gov website seemed like a good place to start, and I copied the first line of text I found there, “On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States.” After pasting the text into a search bar and adding quotes, I scrolled through dozens of results indicating each appearance of this line in the excerpts.

“All those sites copied the first website,” said a young lady in the second row.

I nodded. This made an impression. We talked briefly about the appropriate use of citations, something needing repeated often in Middle School, but, more importantly, we talked about the need for people to add their unique voices to the net, to the body of human knowledge.

“What is more important for our society,” I asked, “imitating something already done or creating something new?”

The lacrosse player raised his hand. “Do the drawings have to be in color?”