Technology Enhanced Interactivity

The article basically summarized a lot of information we learned in Educational Psychology. Some basic information you should probably take away: text and visual are better together, cone of learning is a myth, three types of memory: sensory, working, and long term, students learn more when the activity is personally meaningful, and significant increases in learning can occur through informed use of visual and verbal multimodal learning.

I think learning can increase greatly by including multimedia tools and resources. Students can better connect lessons when they are personal and meaningful. Multimedia can provide a foundation for this type of building. The important factor when including multimedia in a lesson is the purpose. If the lesson just has it to use it, the lesson will not work. The multimedia needs to enhance the lesson to create a purpose. You are not going to remember the power point your teach use to read from, but you will remember dissecting a frog using a simulation.

I would try to use mostly interactive tools and resources. Students would probably rather do things themselves versus watching the teacher. Hands on learning is very helpful and multimedia tools can help provide students with opportunities to try things for themselves. As an English teacher, including interactive resources may be difficult. I will try my best, however, to find ways to get my students involved.

Using multimedia tools and resources can be time consuming. The teacher has to figure out the technology then scaffold it for the students. With trying to teach all the required material plus technology extras, the teacher could run themselves ragged if not done effectively. I do think it is probably worth it in the long run with proper planning.

Life on the Screen, Digital Directors Guild, and Podcasting

I really like George Lucas' viewpoints on visual communications in education. He brings up a good point about it not being very easy to measure progress and competency when using visual communication. Does anyone have any ideas on how this could be standardized, at least within your own classrooms? I think he made a good correlation between grammar and film rules. That made this a lot easier for me to understand. I also liked how he says that we should be spending more money on developing education rather than the military since it is education that makes the nation, not strictly being able to take over the world. I didn't really think he made any concrete suggestions on how to incorporate visual communication into lessons or really any ideas on implementation. What do you all think?

The Digital Directors' Guild was very helpful to me in answering my previous question. After looking at the website, I would like to incorporate some means of visual communications during the school year. Looking at some of the example videos was very helpful too. Do you all think you might try this at some point? I also think that it's very cool that Dr. Hofer and other people from Virginia are involved with this project.

Podcasting sounds really cool to me. I will admit that I have zero experience with them, but I think I will look into them more. I don't know about you all, but the science people have to teach a lesson this semester and videotape ourselves. This podcasting information has been and will be helpful for me with videotaping. I really recommend looking at the tips in the booklet if you all have to videotape yourselves.

The first thing that struck me about podcasting though, was how the "Learning at Hand" site said that teachers could have their students posting their videos worldwide. That would make me kind of nervous, especially after our last class on copywriting and not posting things to the internet, only to an intranet. Anyone else have any thoughts on that?

See you all tomorrow,
Melissa

Copyright Issues

I also agree that realizing citing the author does not get you off the hook is an important point to remember (1). The fact that works are protected from their creation until 70 years after the author's death makes things a little difficult to use fairly off of the web (2). It seems like, as sort of a general rule, if you are not trying to make money off of your use of someone else's work, you're probably okay using that work in your own (3). You definitely have to remember and remind students about the Golden Rule of Copyrighting (4). It's very interesting to me that copyright applies to unpublished works as well (5).

I agree that I am not quite sure how I would handle a student infringing on copyright. I think I would probably handle it as plagiarism (give the student a zero for the assignment and report them to the administration). The tricky part is that the student has to be informed of copyright rules, and I don't think schools do a very good job of that. They definitely focus more on plagiarism, and even if you cite the author, you could still infringe on copyright.

A big issue for me with copyright is that the science teachers in my placement school use each others' materials all the time. I have already received other teachers' materials and witnessed my teacher accepting materials from others. My teacher has also told me she uses materials from teachers in other schools and divisions. All of these materials are given with the author's original consent, but the way material passes from teacher to teacher, I know the original author is not receiving credit or giving permission to each teacher who has it, to use their material.

Handling Copyright Issues

I agree with both Amanda and Katlin that education about copyright issues will probably (hopefully) reduce incidents of copyright. Since my students would not be doing research papers, they may have less chance to violate copyright laws in my classroom.

While plagirism and copyright are separate issues, I feel that they can be dealt with similar ways. First, prevention is key. This includes telling students what copyright violation and plagirism is and what use of other's work is acceptable and what is not. Also, projects and assignments should not be conducive to copyright violations. For instance, it seems that most fair use violations would be committed by the teacher and not the student. For instance, if you copy a complete poem for the students to analyze (and for some reason it is not fair use) and distribute to the students, then you have really violated copyright law and not the students.

However, if it cannot be prevented, teachers need to be prepared to deal with such offenses. This offenses should not be treated lightly- as in most cases it will constitute not only copyright infringement but cheating. Depending on the situation, I think it would be appropriate to either give the student a 0 for the project or give them an imcomplete until they have redone the project that does not violate such copyright. In either case, the student needs to be fully aware of what they did wrong and why what they did was wrong.

My Thoughts On Copy Right

I think Laura did a really good job finding five important pieces of information from the article. I learned about copyrighting in my government class and when being editor of the literary magazine in high school. I had to get all the students permission to use it. It was time consuming, but I understand why. When someone creates something, it becomes very personal. As a teacher and person I do not want to infringe on their personal space.

I am sure I will have to consider copyrighting and fair use as an English teacher. I may need my students to use material from the internet or other sources for class. Copyrighting and Fair Use may even be a good topic to discuss when the students are working on research papers. They need to understand the value of creation and taking pride in their work. Hopefully a full understanding will limit plagiarism.

Copyright and Fair Use in the Classroom

This is still a work in progress, bear in mind.

In the first part, identify five principles related to copyright and Fair Use that you find particularly important for the ways in which you see using copyrighted materials in your teaching.


As a Social Studies teacher that will assign projects that require research and multimedia, the 5 principles that stood out to me were:

1. Giving the author credit does not let you off the hook.
2. Using less than a certain number of words from an author's work does not automatically constitute fair use
3. Fair Use materials can be used, but is dependent on the purpose one is putting them to (i.e. whether they are utilized for commercial or educational, non-profit purposes)
4. Anyone who exploits any of the exclusive rights of copyright without the copyright owner's permission commits copyright infringement
5. Non-commercial use is often fair use.
   

In high school I was not taught much about copyright protection until my 12th grade government class. As far as my future students are concerned, I think that education is key. Teaching the basics of copyright law at the same time students are learning how to conduct research and utilize multimedia properly is critical. When I have them create projects, I need to have them provide a list of sources and check their origin. I'm not sure how I would handle a situation where a student infringed on a copyright. What do you think?

Notes: September 7th

How to make technology work in class:

Creative

Open-ended

Engaging/fun

Collaborative

PURPOSE

- when it makes a class more efficient so you can focus at the task at hand.

Digital Divide

Digital

- How to get students who don't have access to computers to interact with computers

-Public Centers- Library

-After School

-provide time in class

-provide extra time

-having students grouped together that are a balance of skills/experience- must be planned- must be concious of making sure one student does not dominate the group

Didactic

- educate teachers in new resources

-connect with other teachers to new ideas

- put tools in kids hands whenever possible

-provide technology and non-technology options for having the students show what they know

- modelling good use of technology- how to use limited resources well

- Don't make assumptions as to what the students know or don't know about technology
-collaborative, open-ended

- practicing with technology before putting in front of students otherwise students can become distracted by issues with technology, always have a plan b in case technology fails you

For Next Class:

Blog!- See article on schedule

Tech Module possible topics (can work in pairs or individually)

Schedule

First- Amanda
Second- Melissa
Third-Katlin
Fourth-Erin F.
Last- Laura J.