Spotlight

Image via Wikipedia

Integrity and copyright compliance seem to get put on the back burner many times and this issue deals with many of the concepts for administrators, educators, students as well as parent responsibility. The current issue of the Journal of the American Association of School Librarians (Volume 37, NO. 3 January-February 2009) is filled with information about "Doing Honest Work".

As pointed out in this article by Leila Christenbury, Newton North HS in Massachusetts, library website has a section on academic integrity that is worth reading. Many schools are providing this type of information to make sure it is absolutely clear what the rules state about plagiarism. There are numerous sources of excellent information throughout the issue.

For some additional information about copyright compliance visit Kristin Hokanson's wiki "Unlocking Copyright Confusion". There is a good background on how this information was gathered and disseminated to teachers and students at Temple University. She has presented at several regional conferences on the topic and her sites are a must read for librarians, technology teachers as well as parents, students and any educator from k-12. Be sure to read the Q&A page for some additional clarification.

Getting most students to write is like pulling teeth with a string. Want to use a web2.0 tool to get them started? Then try http://www.oneword.com/ . The directions are simple, right from the site:
There is a one minute timer at the top of the page to let you know how much tine remains. It is quick and even though I am a pretty good typist, I was frazzled by the timer and time limit and made too many mistakes in the writing. But I expected a summary of how many words, spelling/grammar errors or some feedback. That was my disappointment. I wish I could change the time limit to 2 or 3 minutes to make it a valuable tool for language arts creative writing.

Image via Wikipedia

Visit this site at the History Channel to select a speech. Listen to Regan's Farewell Address, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and sports celebrities.

Image via CrunchBase

Most of the time people click the "Terms of Agreement" button "I agree" without reading the actual terms. Most of the time there is little to concern you as a consumer, but in the case of most social networks such as MySpace, Xanga and FaceBook, THEY own the content you post. All the photos, text, music and illustrations you put on your page or a friend's can be republished by the network without your permission and without attribution or royalty. Here is a story about the agreement from Facebook.

Image via CrunchBase

When I first used Twitter about a year ago, I just didn't get it. Why would anyone care what I was doing? Why do I care if CandyBar44 is grading papers from her 8th grade class? So I put it aside and sometimes would "lurk" and see what others were reporting. Still boring, until I put out a "tweet" asking for help with a GoogleEarth idea and was flooded with replies. People sent me links to tutorials, lesson plans, their own files and images that could be downloaded. None of these folks knew me, but were willing to share their own intellectual property.

Along came plurk.com in June of last year. Steve Dembo from Discovery put out the invitation at NECC to join him there, so I did (plurk= RobinMartin). I felt the same way, even though the discussion was threaded a different way it was hard to get used to, but I tried. It took a longer time to buy in to this concept, but after 8 months, I have built up a great group of online friends and developed a unique PLN (Personal Learning Network) that shares ideas freely. When we meet at a conference such as the recent PETE&C in Hershey, PA it is like a family reunion! There are hugs and a feeling of already knowing the person. The community is open and not a clique.

Moving to the why of blogging. I would regularly send teachers in my school a few links a week for interesting sites they could use in their lessons. By reading other blogs of my PLN, I bookmarked quite a collection of sites and ideas for our teachers so I started blogging with Blogger to share these links with a description to everyone.

Trying to explain these concepts to a novice web2.0 user can cause a headache. But this morning, someone "plurked" about a blogger, Steven Moore, who is a tech aid. His explanation of blogs, plurks and tweets is just the thing I need to give a visual to these tools. Read his post and see if it clears up your head about how these are intertwined.

If you are an elementary teacher and are looking for a simple science idea try this site: http://www.abc.net.au/science/surfingscientist/magic.flower.htm This link will bring you to an easy Valentine's idea. It is safe and only uses water, paper and some colored pencils.

If you want to change the look of reading blogs, then try tabbloid.com. You can enter the feed from several blogs you read and decide if you want it delivered daily or weekly and a tabloid style newspaper will arrive in your mailbox. If you are trying to get some staff members onboard about technology, choose several blogs, make a tabbloid and print it or send it out email. If you are studying the Civil War, then locate a few blogs on the subject and make a tabbloid.com and print it for your students to read. You can also post them to yor blog for download. The above image shows what the heading looks like.

There are many sites where you can put a text bubble into a photo and this is a new one called Speechables. Upload an image and add speech bubbles like this example! You can use this completed image as embedded code or URL link, or inserted like this one.

Visit http://speechable.com

Original photo here.

Image by plemeljr via Flickr

Jason Heiser - He created the GE tour and assigns kids to read the information on the tour and "Identify the 3 most important battles in the Pacific by reading the info in the tour."

http://peteandcpreso.wikispaces.com/

You can import video, audio and Glogster files into a google earth placemark. He used the 5 themes of geography as a topic. Link for this HERE.

Students become responsible for their own learning but the teacher creates the content. Flash, video, audio photo, or text can b used. He has his web page and rubrics in placemarks for students to access.

Fly to: simple starting point for students to fly a tour. Readtheword.com will take your text and make an audio file so you can embed it into their wiki. Use the directions on the wiki.

Activating Layers: This is where you add content. You can use youtube.com, Epressr.com, slideshare.com, scribd, Voki

Have students create history tours - students can create their own icons to mark the battles and who won

Jog the web - Jason's collection of Google Earth sites including student projects.

Image by rj43214 via Flickr

Wiki space includes a chat/question location so the speakers could monitor the questions.

If you start with the assessment first, it is much easier to get your students to the end of the journey. Perhaps you want to make the rubric first before starting the study. Some teachers include students in the creation of the rubric!

See the presentation on the wiki. The image at the right is not from the presentation.

Louise offered formative and summative samples for teachers to use and change.

Glogster.com/edu - now has edu site free accounts
Can create 200 or more accounts – enough for a team teacher
Carylmcneill.wikispaes.com

Getting tricky with wiki – website will help with mashup to blogger/gloster

Ktitraci.wikispaces.com/Glogster site from te presenters - all resources are here.

The first embedded code is for DE builder, and blogger and makes the glog small, if you want a larger glogster, wait for the next window to get a code for wiki etc.

Filter manager = boarder patrol

Taking notes at PETE&C over the next two days. The notes are in draft format and I will clean them up later. Keynote speaker at PETE&C Jason Ohler talks to the audience about digital storytelling. Beyond Essays, New Media, new Media, New Literacies. Stop lecturing, and giving paper tests, challenge your students to excel using the tools they are familiar with, project based learning.

Literacy means consuming and producing he media forms of the day whatever they are. Students need to be able to write whatever they read. Be time efficient and deputize the students to help one another, guide on the side, not technician magician. Create learning communities.

Image via Wikipedia

Matt Monjan is our guide to using green screen today with Adobe Premiere Elements (PC) and PhotoBooth (Mac side).

• shoot
• edit
• create menus
• share

Instructions are on Matt's blog GeekyBird.com. Using PhotoBooth, make any DiscoveryStreaming video the background, then you can be in the front. PB does not use sound, so you would need to do this, then do voice in iMovie. Soon you will be able to upload this to DiscoveryMediaShare and get an embedded code to put it on your web pages or blog.

Image via Wikipedia

February 2009 issue of Good Housekeeping has several articles about technology. The first is about a mom who wanted to learn more about Club Penguin so she created an avatar and checked it out. She found there were some interesting games which were age appropriate, but was very upset about the sexual innuendo and flirting. Read more of her article here at Good Housekeeping online.

The second article remarks about several sites including tikatok.com where kids can create their own storybook complete with self made illustrations. Another site recommended is makebeliefscomix.com. Kids (ages 4 and up) can create comic strips using built in characters, by filling in the text bubbles. FREE The third site is a FREE crossword puzzle generator. Completed puzzles can be printed. The site is http://readwritethink.org/crossword/.