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Anki for the Lifeprint (ASLU) curriculum?
Question:
Dr. Bill,
Can I have your permission to create Anki decks out of your material?
Thanks,
- Anki Enthusiast
Response:
Dear Anki enthusiast,
I get approached rather often by Anki enthusiasts (AE's) wishing to turn my materials into open source Anki decks.
It is sort of the equivalent of a person going a farmer and saying "Hey, nice crop, you mind if I put it to better use?"
Other than getting my face out there (which sure, I recognize that free publicity is nice) -- Anki just always seems to be a win / lose proposition -- with me on the losing side: losing traffic, losing the need for people to visit Lifeprint.com, losing the market for any future anki-like apps that I might someday figure out how to build and host on my own website or sell via the Playstore or iTunes store, etc.
A number of Anki users have already simply taken my content without permission.
An individual contacted me stating that I have already made my "Anki debut" and pointed out a deck labeled as "Lifeprint ASL." Actually no, that is not something I put together.
The deck only had 18 cards. That is the way it often is with enthusiasts -- they are enthusiastic -- until they are not. Then they misrepresent me with dippy little 18 card decks with "Lifeprint" branding -- but over which I have no access or control.
And that's the problem. If someone uploads something and brands it as "Lifeprint" and it has my face -- but they screw up a card, the language evolves, or certain signs become inappropriate (cultural attitudes and opinions change over time) -- I can't just log on and fix someone else's deck that is sitting there making me look like I either don't care or don't know what I'm doing. Neither of which are acceptable.
Anki needs to come up with a system like Youtube wherein I can set up a deck and then authorize assistants to build the deck but them not have access to my password, credit card, or other user information. That way later, if I need to fix something or make some other change I can -- long after the assistant has moved on to other interests. If you know of a way to make "that" happen then sure, I'd be very interested in Anki development. I could foresee developing gobs of decks, giving most away free, and then selling the "premium" decks or the "advanced vocabulary" decks or some such "freemium" approach -- thus ending up with a win / win instead of a win / lose. I've got over 12,000 videos in my sign bank -- just waiting for the right win/win solution.
- Dr. Bill
___________________
William G. Vicars Ed.D.
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