06.30.08
Posted in K12 Learning 2.0 tagged Creative Commons, RockYou.com, slideshow at 8:29 am by sblovett
Here is an example of how I might turn some Creative Commons images into a slideshow to introduce the digital camera project I discussed in my
Thing 11 post to a group of students.
Slideshow Photo Credit
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06.29.08
Posted in K12 Learning 2.0 tagged Creative Commons, Flickr, public spelling errors at 3:54 pm by sblovett
What I Like About Flickr:
- Tagging; one photo can serve many purposes (i.e. winter, snow, cold, beautiful, outdoors, etc.).
- You can associate photos with locations on a map; this would be great for classroom geotours, fun spring break or summer vacation assignments, etc.
- You can set the photos you upload to a private or public setting.
- You can send photos directly to a blog or a del.icio.us page.
- There are millions of Creative Commons photos for classroom use.
- I didn’t run across one inappropriate photo in the two hours that I played on site.
- You can comment on and tag others’ photos.
- CDs and DVDs eventually corrupt; Flickr is a great way to store precious memories in a safe place.
- I can upload photos to my Flickr account from my cell phone and even through email.
What I’m Getting Used to
- Flickr doesn’t support posting directly to an Edublogs blog (at least when I tried to; can someone prove me wrong?)
- Tagging can be tough because it’s entirely subjective; what I tag as “trash” might be tagged as “paper” by someone else. This makes searching interesting.
- With a free account, I am only allowed 100MB of upload space per month; I can upgrade to a pro account for $25 for a year or $48 for 2 years. With all the free Web 2.0 tools out there, I am resistant to spend any money..
For some reason, grammatical and spelling errors seem to jump out at me as I float through my daily life. I find them in the books I read, hear them on the radio, see them on billboards, and find them in restaurant menus. These kinds of errors irritate me and I think people should be more careful about the text that they make public (I have my fingers crossed that I’ve done a good job editing previous posts!) So, in true editor form, I searched through the Creative Commons section of Flickr for photos documenting misspellings seen out and about in the world. It was amazing what showed up! There was even a group pool of photos labeled “Public Spelling Errors.” Can you see the error “set in stone” in the photo below?
I thought it might be fun to encourage a group of students to experiment with digital cameras in a similar way sometime next year. Some questions we might investigate could be: How many errors are we able to find in the world? Where do the most errors appear? What are the most common errors we find? What do these errors say about us? What are the implications of such errors? Why is careful editing so important? It would be interesting to post our findings on a class wiki and solicit responses from our parents, other teachers, or students in our school. I’m excited about the possibilities!
photo by sylvar
Flickr Photo Page
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Posted in K12 Learning 2.0 tagged Creative Commons, Library of Congress, OER at 12:35 pm by sblovett
I took a few minutes to browse through some of the offerings available at the OER Commons website, and this resource excited me as much as Discovery’s United Streaming site when I first discovered it. At OER, anyone can share coursework, learning modules, teaching resources, blogs and wikis, articles, and other kinds of documents with anyone who is interested: teachers, students, self-learners, etc. Topics range from global rainfall to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and tools are available from the primary through the post-secondary level.
I found an applicable resource offered through The Library of Congress that provided a significant amount of information about the Age of Exploration, Christopher Columbus, Native Americans, etc. In my grade level we use a social studies curriculum based around Joy Hakim’s A History of Us textbooks, and we are constantly looking for primary sources and differing viewpoints with which to supplement our social studies teaching. My favorite thing about this “exhibit,” as it was called, was that it included images from several Library of Congress divisions, including the Rare Book and Special Collections Division and the Geography and Map Division.
Through the OER website, you can review and comment others’ contributions, create your own portfolio of resources to share with the OER community, save items to use repeatedly, and subscribe to a specific topic or grade level’s contributions (for example, I could subscribe to the list of resources for the Primary grade level and receive each new contribution in my Google Reader account.)
Go play!
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Posted in K12 Learning 2.0 tagged acceptable use, copyright, Creative Commons, Google Image Search at 11:06 am by sblovett
Wow, I am really behind the eight ball! Did anyone else not realize that the moment you finish a painting, click the final “save” on a document, or send an iMovie to burn you have a copyrighted product? For as many documents as I’ve created over the last two years to support teaching and learning in my classroom, I feel like I should have come up with a creative logo to signal that the work was mine!
I understand and appreciate the concept of Creative Commons, and I feel like thanking each person who opens the use of their products and materials up to the general public through Creative Commons licensing. However, I feel like I still need some clarification. Most of the searching my students and I do for Web content revolves around finding images for projects that we do throughout the year. I understand that we can use Creative Commons to find works that can be used or remixed, but what is the deal when we do a simple Google Image Search instead of working through Creative Commons? For example, I used the search term “flower” through Google Image Search and the first hit was a photo of a beautiful orange flower posted through About.com. What do I assume about that photo since I couldn’t locate copyright information? Can my students use it in a Keynote presentation for science class? Can I use it for a vocabulary lesson in Smart Notebook?
In my classroom, we’re comfortable with tools like flickr, net Trekker, and Web Feet for image searching, but Google seems to be our gray area, and oftentimes it is our preferred search engine. I noticed that Creative Commons has a Google tab, so I’m thinking that it’s up to the individual user to locate the acceptable use policy for each image they come across through Google before they put it into a project. I think it would be a smart idea for individual schools–and maybe even departments–to review Creative Commons and acceptable use policies at the beginning of each school year. The amount of information about copyright out there is overwhelming, and I want to feel like I am following the rules.
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