Creative Commons licenses

Wow! I love this college class I'm taking on using the Internet in the classroom. I thought I knew most everything there was about using technology and the Internet.

I was wrong.

This next couple weeks, my middle schoolers are working on a personal project in Windows Moviemaker. We've scanned in personal pictures to use for the movies but there are some students that did not have or were not able to bring in personal pictures. Because of this, I had to find some generic pictures for them to choose from. Unfortunately, it's hard to find pictures that can be used...until now.

I'm learning more about creative commons. "Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright and the public domain. [http://creativecommons.org/]" Doing a Google search on creative commons pictures, I found that Flickr offers users the opportunity to share their work with a creative commons license. Read about it at http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/. Flickr also explains the different licenses to help us understand.

So now, I can go into my classroom on Monday and teach my students about creative commons license and we can all make sure that we're following the rules.

Now I'm off to find creative commons music! Have a great day!

Photos from http://www.flickr.com/photos/gibley

My first attempt at podcasting!

I'm using Camtasia for podcasting and plan to use it for instructional videos. This has turned out to be too easy! It shocked me how easy it was. I chose Camtasia because I needed to record the screen as I teach the lesson. Not being particularly photogenic in videos, I shy away from being caught on camera. Camtasia allows me to teach a subject that can be viewed over and over as needed with just my voice in the background to go along with the mouse pointer on the screen. It does cost a pretty penny but I think it's worth every cent after seeing how easy the software is to produce my instructional videos. On YouTube and TeacherTube, you'll find many instructional videos and God bless the teachers who submit those but I won't be submitting mine. Instead, I plan to keep them within the secure walls of my organization to teach my staff. My staff members appreciate my documents giving them step-by-step instructions, so taking the instructions one step further into videos should be even more helpful, especially for my visual learners. Now I just need to practice speaking so I don't sound like I have a mouth full of rocks! ;-)

Blogging & Twittering

I'm taking a class called "Using the Internet in the Classroom". Believe it or not, I'm having a hard time keeping up. My friends joked that I should ace this class.

It's not the class that's hard...it's this stupid Internet connection I have. It should be fixed tomorrow but until then, I'll trudge along.

This post, in fact, is one of my assignments. I'd already typed in my answer to the assignment but as I hit "Publish Post", the wireless went down and took my assignment with it. I walked away so upset and tired, kicking myself for not putting it into Word and then pasting it in. (Hold on, let me open up Word and I'll be right back!)

I’ve visited many blogs pertaining to education and technology so I already knew they were out there. During this blogging assignment, I found even more. As a fairly new teacher, I’ve found useful (and very helpful) blogs on classroom management as well as Computer Lab activities. In my field of technology, I have found blogs on how to organize your school network as well as dealing with difficult people.

Twitter has been a wealth of information as well. I typed in the keyword ‘technology’ and found many tweeters who are more than happy to submit helpful tidbits on technology. Unfortunately, it was as someone once said, like “trying to drink from a firehose” so I whittled it down to a specific technology like Joomla which is a website software that I’m in the process of learning. From there I was able to pick and choose from the tweeters that looked professional and as if they knew what they were talking about.

Among the 38 tweeters I follow (and the 35 that follow me – I don’t just allow anyone to follow me), the Curriculum Director and the Technology Coordinator at Central Catholic High are my favorites because my schools collaborate with theirs. Those two folks are a great help to my staff in education as well as working with me on training our staff in technology.

This assignment hasn’t changed my mind about educational blogging or tweeting. It’s only reinforced the fact that, done correctly, blogging and tweeting about education subjects can be a lifeline for new teachers and older teachers new to technology. I’m a huge fan!