Live Blogging Jakes & Shareski The Power of Powerpoint

It was great to finally get to see David Jakes and Dean Shareski present live. I have had the opportunity to network with them but their message in how to tell a story is great.

They gave 10 tips of what to teach kids.

1- Teach them biology
2- Teach them to make it visual
3- Teach kids how to search for images
4- teach kids about creative commons

5- Teach them design
6- Teach them to sell
7- Color and font choice matters
8- Teach them to incorporate multimedia
9 - Teach students some PowerPoint secrets
10 -teach them to share

***one of my top NECC takeaways I learned about in this session Flickr storm...I am sure this is going to be something that I spend some time reflecting on

Wes Fryer and Ewan McIntosh both have better notes that I do...I especially like Ewan's title...why would you use words when they do just fine in your mouth? but here is my "live blog" in coveritlive from the session.

• Jakesonline Wiki

  list of resources for Jakes & Shareski's worshop

  tags: necc2008, powerpoint, jakes

Technorati Tags: necc08, necc2008, jakes, shareski, powerpoint

NECC Unplugged session on Copyright

This morning I led a session on Copyright and Fair Use at NECC Unplugged. There were about 40 people in the room, and 11 folks watching on ustream. Unfortunately the conditions were not so great, but the conversation was amazing and I think folks left thinking
Here is the ustream recording...
Free .TV show from Ustream
and the information that I posted for the session can be found here
http://theconnectedclassroom.wikispaces.com/necc_copyrightconfusion

Thanks to all my "twitter pals" who helped set up and made for great conversation and all the new folks I met.

Technorati Tags: necc08, necc2008, neccunplugged

Edublogger Con Closing Notes

Technorati Tags: necc08, ebc08

Convene, Connect, Transform...

So this post started this morning and I never got a chance to finish, and it started out titled...the calm before the storm, but the day began and the storm blew through...which you may have noticed in my posts :) but I wanted to post some reflections about NECC so far...

Last year was my first NECC...it was the place where I made many connections that have helped me to build an amazing personal learning network. At the end of the conference Steve Dembo posted a twitter wondering if these types of large conferences were really necessary...with the ability to stream, twitter, and liveblog do you REALLY need to attend? I thought about that as I was running along the riverwalk. It was really quiet, the calm before the storm. Very few folks were out...very unlike the night before. As I was running along the river, I was thinking about the evening before seeing all the folks that I "work with" all year long, but only get to see and connect with face to face but 1-2 times a year. I was preparing for the week ahead when across the river I saw Pat Sine....a "colleague" that I met only recently but have connected with a number of times. We called out to one another like old friends and it struck me, THIS is what it means to attend a conference face to face. Is NECC needed, YES... it really is and at breakfast this morning Michael Baker summed it up perfectly...

When it [the conference] is streamed to you, you get the information yes, but today information is EXPECTED to be free…When you attend the conference…you get the connections…and you can’t put a price on that

I hope to connect with many of you as we convene here for together we can transform what is happening in today's classrooms

Technorati Tags: necc08, ebc08

Edublogger Con Session 4 Web2.0 Smackdown

Unfortunately I had TERRIBLE internet connectivity issues during this session
All tools shared are listed
HERE

Technorati Tags: necc08, ebc08

EdubloggerCon Session 3-Strategic Tools to Save teacher time

Technorati Tags: necc08, ebc08

Edublogger Con Session 2 Social Networking for Schools

Am sitting in session on Social Networking in schools. Will have to go back later for the recording
.TV online : provided by Ustream

Technorati Tags: necc08, ebc08

Edublogger Con: Session 1-Creating Reasonable Filtering Policies

Technorati Tags: necc08, ebc08

One Word...

It has been a long time since I posted...owe cliff mims a PD meme (it's coming cliff) but as I was going through my Diigo drafts I came across this goody...thought it about summed it up

• one word. so little time.

  FROM THE ABOUT PAGE...
  the real purpose of this exercise is to alleviate
  our natural tendency to edit everything—and learn
  to flow.
  
  an analogy would be a film camera:
  when a film is shot, the camera just rolls and captures
  everything—good and bad. when all the shooting is
  complete, the raw film is edited into a cohesive piece.
  
  the camera operator doesn't keep stopping the camera and
  rewinding and editing on-the-fly—the camera just rolls.
  if it were to stop, some of the best performances
  and spontaneous moments might be missed.
  
  so:
  be the camera. well, that's a stupid saying, but
  you get the idea. in writing—just flow. go back later
  and edit.
  
  Go write.

Leaving for NECC in a few hours....Guess it is time for me to get back at it!

Catch the Fever: Viral Professional Development - Add your voice!

Viral Professional Development is emerging in education as a viable method of increasing teacher engagement and learning. Using tools such as Twitter, rss readers, blogs, educational networks, and wikis, educators are collaborating on a grassroots level. This year at NECC, a panel discussion of educators on July 2nd at 1:30 pm CDT will be discussing and live Ustreaming a session to discuss viral professional development.

How did this panel discussion originate?

On Monday, September 17, 2007, Google launched the Google Presentation web application to their suite of services. News of this new service spread quickly through the blogosphere and Twitter and soon more than fifty different people made over 500 edits in a twenty-four hour period to one Google presentation. Since introduced, this presentation has been used by hundreds of people to begin conversations centered on free online tools used to weave a web of connections between people around the world.

As a result of this transformational experience, educators begin discussing the importance of sharing the changing nature of professional development and documentation of best practices in VIRAL professional development. The proposal was written in Google docs and since acceptance, an expanded group of educators around the world has used a wiki, elluminate, and a variety of tools to bring a collaborative, immersive viral PD experience to NECC and to people around the world.

Presenters
Vicki Davis, moderator
Darren Draper
Kelly Dumont
Kristin Hokanson
Robin Ellis
Ryan Bretag
Beth Ritter-Guth
Carolyn Foote

Backchannel Presenters/ Moderators
John Maklary
Stephanie Sandifer

How can you participate?

At 1:30pm CDT on July 2, we will be participating in a NECC panel discussion that centers on the power of the network. During our presentation we hope to demonstrate to all those attending our session in person (and virtually), just how powerful global collaboration can be. Hence, we are asking for your participation in our presentation as well.

1) Join our Ustream

We will be streaming the presentation live on the Open PD Ustream channel at 1:30 pm CDT on July 2nd. You may watch here and participate in the conversation (and even ask the panelists questions).

2) Leave a comment on our voicethread

One way that you can participate now is by adding your voice to the VoiceThread below. Please take a few minutes and add your thoughts about the different tools depicted through images in the thread. We would truly like as many voices possible, offering a wide range of thought on the usefulness of the common tools we all use in our collaborations.

How do you use these tools? How are they important to your professional development? Please add your voice.

Insert embed code for the voice thread from this page - http://thewallscamedown.wikispaces.com/Join_In

3) Join the conversation on the NECC Educational networking site

We've created a discussion thread to converse on this panel discussion at the NECC educational networking site.

Follow our most recent announcements.

All announcements and events pertaining to this session will be announced at the Walls Came Down wiki.

Technorati Tags: necc08,

Everything you need to know about NECC

Carol Teitleman presented a webinar to the PA Educators about how to make the most of the NECC experience. Kurt Paccio and I were asked to discuss the back channel. As a model of best practice we used Cover It Live for Notes

Professional Development and technology

Parenting in the 21st C

This is a live blog from a parent workshop at Princeton eve of May 1st

A Lesson on Reflection: MORE Copyright Confusion...

One of the things I love most about my job is the opportunity to learn and reflect on new ways of doing things with a really AMAZING group of educators. One of the projects I have been working on is a research project on the animal kingdom with several of the biology classes in our school. The objective was to teach the kids to use research skills to become experts on a particular phylum or class and then to build a web page based on how this phylum or class fit into the animal kingdom. In addition they were to create a "guide" some questions that were of importance if someone were to learn about their particular class. In essence we were creating a virtual zoo that users could visit to see what they learned.

Within the project... students use library data bases and google docs to research, wikispaces to discuss and plan, noodletools to cite our information, flickr as a way to find images that we could use under Fair Use Guidelines. Wee discussed the ideas of transformativeness...and yet the morning after we posted the drafts to our podcast server for the students to check their work for accuracy, we received a few somewhat threatening emails from Flickr users regarding our "theft" of their content.

-----Email 1-----
It is not legal or moral to use what belongs to others.
At least when it is without permission. I realize that in making my photos public on the photo sharing site Flickr.com I've left myself open to pirates taking my photos and using them with out permission to do so but it is especially disheartening to find people within the realm of education so flagrantly disregarding copyright law and decency. Had you asked to use my photo for your project i would have gladly dug out the original and sent you a higher quality image for your site.
I cannot help but wonder if in addition to biology your school is also teaching children that theft morally justified. I will be searching your site for the use of other stolen images and notifying the Flickr users involved.

----Email 2-----
What does it teach your students to ignore copyright symbols and simply take what they want from the web?
I am referring to one of my images used without permission on: (note site page removed to protect identity of writer)
I have been asked to use my images by many others, I've always given permission to students and non-profit organizations. To use a copyrighted image without permission (credited or not) is stealing.

Now as you can tell by my last post, I am really questioning the ideas of copyright and fair use, so I crafted this response and sent it off to the users...

Thank you for contacting us. Copyright is designed not only to protect the rights of owners, but also to preserve the ability of users to promote creativity and innovation. As a school moving to a 1:1 laptop environment we are working hard to teach our students ethical use as content creators. One of the things that we stress STRONGLY with our students is the ideas of Fair Use and transformativeness... I have been involved with a study through Temple Media Lab http://www.mediaeducationlab.com/index.php?page=265 and have spent a lot of time discussing with teachers and students their role when creating transformative content using materials that belong to others as we design our project. You can read about how I have been struggling with these issues as well
http://khokanson.blogspot.com/2008/04/copyright-confusion.html

Traditionally Educational use of media had to pass four tests to be appropriate and fair according to U.S. Code Title 17 107:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is commercial or nonprofit
2. the nature of the use
3. the amount of the use
4. the effect of the use on the potential market for the copyrighted work.

However, what is fair, because it is transformative, is fair regardless of place of use or even purpose. Even in commercial use there have been instances where permission has been denied and works have been used in a transformative way. Peter Jaszi a copyright attorney and professor of Law at The American University, who is a partner in the Fair Use for Educators study, points to Bill Graham Archives vs.Dorling Kindersley (2006) http://fairuse.stanford.edu/primary_materials/cases/GrahamKindersley.pdf as an example of how courts liberally interpret fair use even with a commercial publisher. In summary, Dorling Kindersley wanted to include images of posters owned by the Bill Graham Archives in a book they were writing, Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip, a cultural history of the band. They sought permission to use the posters and although permission was refused, DK choose to use the images anyway. A suit was filed against DK for copyright infringement and the the case was thrown out, based on DK's claim of fair use. You see, the posters were originally created to promote concerts the new use of the art was designed to document events in historical and cultural context. The publisher added value in its use of the posters and such use was transformative.

We have worked through the project to have the students use images from Flickr and for the student to use advanced search to find images whose license under creative commons states that they are free to modify, adapt rework. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ If you are concerned about permissions, there is a way in flickr for you to set the protection on your images so that they are copyrighted and may no be downloaded with out permission. Images posted in this way do not provide a download link and if a user attempts to download them they receive a file that is called a spaceball.gif...the image will not copy and can not be downloaded. In addition one of the requirements of the project was for them to site these images by linking to the page in which the image was taken. In this way under fair use we were not only transforming the original work (changing the intended purpose) but crediting the user and linking to their other work (adding value).

If there was an image that a student really wanted to use, and it was copyrighted (not freely available under creative commons), we did ask the students contact the users. If you can refer us to the specific web page(s) that contained your images, I will be happy to check to make sure that they have correctly linked back to your work or have the student replace your photos with others, especially if you did not intend for your images to be available under creative commons.

Right now, we are in the revision phase (students are peer evaluating and making content changes etc) but I am out of the district and cannot make any changes to the site until I get back. Please let us know what pages / images are yours and how you would like us to proceed whether the students may use the images as linked or you would like us to find replacement images. I might suggest however, that you check how your work is licensed on the flickr site so you do not have a situation like this occur in the future.
I look forward to your reply.

Regards,

I also sent it to my friends at Temple Media Lab and a summary of their response is below...

Wow! I am so impressed by your thoughtful and eloquent response to that Flickr user. I can certainly see why teachers would not want to use copyrighted materials after receiving angry emails like that. In my opinion, you are absolutely correct. While the extent to which the use of these pictures is transformative is debatable, I think you have a strong fair use argument and the links to the original sources on the pictures were a courtesy (although apparently not enough for this particular Flickr user).

She also shared a situation in which her boyfriend, a professional photographer took a photo of a local restaurant and put it on his website, where everything is marked with a Creative Commons “no commercial use”/ “attribution is necessary” license. The restaurant then took that photo for its commercial promotional materials without compensating him in any way. That is clearly unfair but it did give the kids an understanding about why photographers might feel that permissions are important.

So after the final drafts were turned in, the teacher posted a powerpoint slide with 3 questions....

• During the virtual zoo project: How did we ensure that all necessary measures were taken to avoid using copyrighted information/ information?
• How did ensure that the value of the pictures on our webpages was increased through our use?
• Does anyone care?

We decided to capture their thoughts "live blog" style using cover it live so that we could continue to use this as a model and for point of discussion. Really I am glad that we got these emails, the lesson that we did initially on Fair Use and Transformativeness was not NEARLY as powerful as the students' reflections on the ideas we taught afterwards. I think what we REALLY learned was...

It is SO important when we look at anything we do, to consider the process and not just the product. Seeing the virtual zoo alone without the project requirements is not a reflection of what the students were given as a task NOR a reflection of the evaluation of the students' work.

Reflection is important. I think that had the students not had the opportunity to have to think about the idea of copyright and fair use from BOTH SIDES...content owner and content creator, they may

I am confident that as this group of students goes on to do other projects, they are going to think twice about the source and how they are going to transform the works they are using....and isn't that our goal, to produce students who have the ability to think about things at a higher level....

but don't just take my word for it...look at what the kids had to say


Even more refections & thoughts are here http://kushnerkorner.wikispaces.com/Zoo_Reflection


Would love to hear YOUR thoughts?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Math & Science Bookmarks from Diigo 04/15/2008

• Law of Cosines and Law of Sines for Triangles

  interactive model for learning sines & cosines

  tags: sines, cosines, trigonometry, math

• Levering's "Puzzling and Perplexing Problems"

  Resources for science learning. Puzzling & perplexing problems from Levering Science Magnet School & Franklin Institute. ready-made problems for each month of the school year. These problems include holidays, seasons, and sports. Many of them are open-ended so that children can get extra practice for the standardized tests. If you do use any of our problems, we would appreciate your feedback.

  tags: science, hots

• ClassTools.net: Games for Education

  Templates for creating online games...great samples in all areas

  tags: smartboard, interactive, tools

• BaslerCast: Physics

  Basler's podcasts for physics students

  tags: podcast, physics

• Interactivate: Home Page

  Great group of lessons, tools & discussions for Math & Science

  tags: math, interactive, science, lessons, tools, resources

• That Quiz - Math Test Activities

  Similar to quia...but free with less options. Can sign up and create an account to keep student scores

  tags: quiz, interactive, math

• WebQuest: Index

  Series of math webquests each one has definitions and examples

  tags: math, algebra, webquest

• The OnLine Test Page 100% Free(SAT, ACT,SOA EXAM P, EXAM FM, EXAM MLC)

  Onine test prep
  Preparation Tests From Morrison Media LLC

  tags: assessment, sat

• The OnLine Math Tests Home Page - Department of Mathematics - University of Missouri-Columbia

  Welcome To The Online Math Tests Home Page
  Department of Mathematics
  University of Missouri-Columbia
  Author: Professor Elias Saab
  Tested by Professor Paulette Saab and Daniel E. Saab

  tags: math, assessment

• MathsNet: Interactive Shape

  tags: geometry, math

• DaylightMap

  use a s a "real world application" of trigonometry. This site shows the day/night contrast for the world. Could be used
  for exploring trig functions. You can set the time and date to see
  how the daylight changes
  

  tags: map, visualization, math, trigonometry

• NASA - Digital Learning Network : CATALOG OF EVENTS

  Digital Learning network catalogue of events

  tags: nasa, space, science

Bookmarks from Diigo Week of 04/07/2008

Superintendent's Blog

tags: adminblog

Gray Seal Facts - National Zoo| FONZ

tags: zoo, virtual_field_trip, science, biology

Sample page from National Zoo.

Zoo Home

tags: zoo, virtual_field_trip, science, biology

The big zoo virtual home...organized by Kingdom Animalia...browsable...similar to the setup for our project (with ads)

WAZA - World Association of Zoos and Aquariums - Virtual Zoo

tags: zoo, virtual_field_trip, science, biology

WAZA virual zoo by species

WAZA - World Association of Zoos and Aquariums - Virtual Zoo map

tags: zoo, virtual_field_trip, science, biology

clickable zoo map goes to images which then show page about each animal

Toronto Zoo > Animals > Fact Sheet

tags: virtual_field_trip, zoo, biology, science

Toronto Zoo Fact sheet provides good examples of animals classified by habitat

Empower Peach

tags: socialstudies, collaboration

Empower Peace is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to building a worldwide network of high school students and teachers committed to breaking down cultural barriers and misperceptions through open dialogue using videoconferencing, the Internet and other new technologies. Out goal is to bring about a climate of mutual respect and understanding by exposing youth to their contemporaries from abroad.

CSI: The Experience - Web Adventures

Based on CSI

tags: csi, science, biology, forensics

Number2.com :: Free Online Test Prep

Create an account for feedback

tags: free, gre, prep, resource, sat, test

SAT Institute

SAT prep blog....has both tips and tricks as well as sample questions.

tags: sat

SOUNDKEEPERS.com: Vocabulary Builder

jm: Study for GRE, GMAT and SAT using our vocabulary builder. These FREE services also provide you with muliple choice questions to these commonly used words. You may also create your own set of cards that you can review as you learn these words.

tags: SAT, vocabulary

The Official SAT Question of the Day™

create an account to save your question of the day statistics

tags: sat

Bookmarks from Diigo Week of 04/01/2008

U.S. History - Roaring 20s

tags: roaring20s, socialstudies

A collection of "rated" sites from besthistorysites.net and taching with technology

Parade of games in PowerPoint

tags: templates, powerpoint

Series of downloadable powerpoint games for educators would be good to use with Interactive Whiteboards

30+ Mind Mapping Tools

tags: brainstorming, graphicorganizer, mindmap, resources

Mashables list of mindmapping tools

The Connected Classroom: Copyright Confusion

tags: copyright, fairuse, medialiteracy

My take on the copyright / fairuse conversation at Temple Media Lab. See Joyce Valenza's blog as well (below)
Interesting conversations to start to have about Fair Use and what we can do as educators. Keep an eye on the media lab at Temple as this project develops http://www.mediaeducationlab.com/index.php?page=265

NeverEndingSearch - Blog on School Library Journal

tags: fairuse, joycevalenza, medialiteracy

This is joyce's blog RE Temple Media lab discussion

Copyright Confusion

Copyright and fair use issues are definitely things that I think about often and have written about in the past. I work with teachers both within my building and through state run programs and I have always taught people that in order for use of media to be considered appropriate and fair one must consider the following

1. What is the purpose for which you are using (commercial or nonprofit)
2. What is the nature of the use
3. What amount of the work being used
4. What is the effect of your use on copyright holder
   

In order to be "clear" in these "rules" I have also been steering teachers and students to use copyright friendly materials which follow fair use guidelines in the creation of their own original projects. If it didn't "fit the guidelines" we would not consider publishing the student work. HOWEVER a recent webinar on copyright and fair use has REALLY started to challenge the way I think about digital media project creation. (link at post end). The webinar was hosted by..Renee Hobbs Professor at Temple's Media Education Lab and Peter Jaszi who is a professor of Law at American University who specializes in Copyright Law. Using a model started by the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use they are working to create a statement to assist media educators in making better use of their fair use rights under copyright law. The project has been written about in many newspapers, magazines and blogs, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, School Library Journal, and Youth Media Reporter and they shared with us some of the "survival strategies that they encountered in developing their own ideas and guidelines.

During the webinar, Peter told us that one of the ways that the courts have begin to think about whether or not a given use is fair or not is through the concept of transformativeness. The idea is that when the user of copyright material has added value to existing material and has re purposed the material for an audience that is different from the one it was originally intended then the creator can go forward. Most educational uses are inherently transformative. As Peter said it is good news for educators, but it is good news that needs to be translated into more specific guidelines in order to be effective. NOT the circulating guidelines which are often given more weight or the the wrong kind of weight in practice. They were well meaning, but misunderstood as the law rather than someone's attempt to interpret the law and outerlimits vs safe harbors...floors rather than ceilings they are certain to be fair use but by no means are the limits. We also need to understand that not everything educational falls within the domain of fair use. Trying to develop guidance not from OUTSIDE the community but within a best practices in fair use for education. That the rules we learned are not really rules at all, but negotiated agreements to provide guidance but that actually limit our ability to take advantage of the full legal power of fair use.

I had some SERIOUS QUESTIONS during the webinar about what I have been asking kids to do and also how we have been limited the quality...the transformativeness of their work by holding them to these strict "guidelines" so afterwards and I contacted one of the research assistants in the project, with my questions. I shared a project in which the kids as a part of a video comparing the genocide in Darfur to the Holocaust, used an entire licensed song. Although the video was AMAZINGLY powerful, we did not publish the video. Katie & Renee seemed to feel based on their work that it would constitute fair use of the material...WOW, this changes EVERYTHING

I was really excited to be invited to join them in a discussion this past Friday night, one of several to be held around the country designed to develop a common understanding of how copyright and fair use applies to what is happening in schools. Among the folks in the room were Joyce Valenza who wrote in her Neverending Search Blog for School Library Journal... Fair use and transformativeness: It may shake your world:

"I am no longer sure that anything I learned, or anything I regularly share relating to fair use, is either helpful or relevant....

Ok, good, I wasn't the ONLY ONE who was feeling like my world was rocked...

Renee Hobbs director of the project shared with this group: copyright is designed not only to protect the rights of owners, but also to preserve the ability of users to promote creativity and innovation. Teachers are often afraid to share their innovative practices, to post materials online or distribute samples of their students’ work because of misinformation and fear. Another POWERFUL concept for me to mull around.....After introducing the project and much of the information shared at the webinar, we were asked to examine and discuss a variety of scenarios to determine what did and did not constitute fair use under the definition. I am not going to review each one and my notes were quite random, but here were some of the big talking points or questions that arose.

Is there a difference between a paper copy and a digital copy? Is it different if you make 20 copies of an article or offer 1 copy online? What about sharing 60 min video…does time make a difference. There was lots of conversation about repurposing and how once you commit to putting something online, it is out there

• Sharing in classroom
• Sharing in conference
• Sharing in an email
• Sharing on the web
• All have different risks / ethical and moral
  

Can you "publish" someone's lesson plan in a book of model examples if you share it with the same purpose? What about sharing as a critical example? We shared several student examples. And what about student use of copyrighted material? If we continue to steer to creative commons and say you can ONLY have this, this or this type of content (creative commons) aren’t you doing both the kids and the creative process a disservice

I brought up an example where a teacher asked her kids to take a section of Beowolf and retell in comic form. The fun part of the project was that they were asked to think of modern day people to represent the characters in the story...The kids immediately went to google, and I cringed... The folks in the room seemed to think that this was clearly a transformative use of any images the kids found. In addition, the fact that kids needed to think through and reason WHO in the modern world make a good Beowolf is clearly a higher level skill. The conversation turned to the idea that if we send them to copyright friendly sites: then copyright becomes a wall we can’t go past and those guidelines become less of guidelines and more of rules.

Ok so why do places like the Library of Congress then offer clearly animated directions that follow these guidelines....

Peter brought up that the Library of Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the copyright industry…When you stop to critically analyze…WHO PAID FOR IT…isn’t that a model of higher level thinking skills? The copyright industry is a fee dependent organization that is funded by movie making, music industries..they know who is paying their bills...they are going to protect the rights of these copyright holders-and who is protecting OUR rights as educators?

One of the reasons that I was so excited about this project is that in order to maintain our own creative rights, we need to articulate our OWN positions and reclaim our legal rights under the fair use doctrine and it CAN'T be just the media educators who are involve in this process.

The pedagogy of practice modeled during this experience is worth analyzing as well. Renee used an instructional method that is reasoning of principals it made us think “Fair use is an application of reason and I have to do that as an educator…” This whole process is moving us TOWARD the critical thinking goals, it is a new paradigm they are bringing to the table.
One of the stated final goals is to produce something that will make it possible for media educators to be effective, successful and model the full range for students…so when they feel challenged they have something to fall back on. I think it is essential that this information gets out to ALL teachers who are integrating technology. After all, isn't our purpose in assigning projects where kids are creating content to get them to think deeply about the material?

As Joyce wrote... Transformativeness gives us new freedoms in a mix-up, mash-up world of broadly shared media and ended her post with some pretty powerful questions I highly encourage everyone reading to check out the resources at the Media Education Lab. Watch the video Download the PDF: The Cost of Copyright Confusion
Think about the definition of transformativeness and encourage your students to do the same. And follow the work coming out of Temple Media Education Lab . It is sure to transform our practice.
THOUGHTS? What have you been teaching about fair use? Does this change the way you think?

Link to the full webinar recording

Technorati Tags: joycevalenza, medialiteracy, fairuse, copyright, copyright_confusion

DIG-ging diigo...

There has been a lot of talk in the last 24 hours about Diigo....ok perhaps I did a little nudging...:) I have to admit, while I am one who is always willing to try something new, I prefer the old standbys...you know the type, the one who ALWAYS orders Thai Curry Chicken when out to eat...For me there really has to be a reason to "jump" to something as a replacement...People ask: why wikispaces....well wikispaces has all the features I need and I have tons of wikis, so why switch? Have you tried eevoo....is it different from Skype? I like my networks and once I have established a network somewhere, it is tough for me to switch. Let's face it...together we are much more powerful learners than we are as individuals. For a long time I have been a huge fan of del.icio.us for social bookmarking even thought I hated my nickname...I developed a huge network and was although I have been looking for a cleaner looking, more user friendly bookmarking site, I have been really reluctant to make changes.

Enter diigo..
The first time it was shared with me...it was shared as a way to share links like twitter...ok that sounded cool, but really not anything I needed. After all I had del.icio.us and twitter when I found a link I just copied and pasted into twitterific and went about doing my thing...But I recently read something, somewhere that diigo had a new improved tool bar and started to read up on the other Diigo features including the ablility for messaging, creating lists of bookmarks, the ability to turn bookmarks into slideshows, tagrolls and linkrolls, a Firefox sidebar, a Facebook application, blog integration .... not even an exhaustive list mind you I decided to give it a whirl....and what a whirl it has been!!!

How to describe diigo?
Diigo is not just a bookmarking tool, it is a bookmarking, sharing, discussing, and learning tool LParisi : posted on twitter..My quick take on Diigo..while I have not spent much time creating links, tags, etc, I see it as much more powerful a network than delicious. and I couldn't agree more.. I have presented del.icio.us at LEAST a dozen times to large audiences. One of the apple trainers for our state grant points folks to my del.icio.us bookmarks DAILY. I have a HUGE network and yet I get perhaps 1-2 links for me on a weekly basis. Yes Del.icio.us is GREAT for housing your own personal bookmarks, and providing a public link for others, but with Diigo you can keep in touch intellectually AND socially. Think of it as facebook or twitter without the distraction...ok the discussion feature adds SOME distraction but it is one of the things I think was missing from Del.icio.us. Diigo makes it easy to share your links and thoughts with friends and what I have found powerful, is that it doesn't take much time to go through and actually engage in conversations about some of the rich links that folks are sharing. Granted we are all just learning but I have had more great resources shared and talked more about great things in the past few days...on my OWN TIME...not as it pops up on twitter for me to catch or miss... although I am just learning, I can't say enough good things about the power of diigo already.

SO where did I start...
I started by downloading the diigo toolbar...and I think that was just about all it took :) The tool bar includes a sidebar, which can open like another bookmarking sidebar...nothing new here. The main diigo bar though has a TON of features
When you click on the diigo you get a drop down and you can use this with any url as you are surfing...to find out more information about it.

You can also use the diigo drop down to easily get to your
dashboard

bookmarks

Lists

Groups

Friends

Find out what is recommended for you
what is hot on the network

In addition you can easily Import your bookmarks from here or change your options for the site






In addition to the diigo drop down the toolbar includes a bookmark button...
THIS button gives you a similar pop up to delicious but with WAY more options

When you click on bookmark this is what you see
The url and title appear...nothing new about that right, but notice you can
1. Click twitter this ...when you save and send, it sends the link and description to your twitter acct (note you must log into twitter to do this)
2. Description...I am finding myself more apt to do this because I am sharing more...
3. Tags you still get the recommended tags...but a LOT less clutter with tags and diigo gives you a 10 tag limit (sorry Vicki time to go on the tag diet:)
4. and this is the part I LOVE you can add this bookmark to a LIST, share with friends (no for: tagging...just type your friends' names and viola) AND share with a group...no approval needed

THIS is what makes it different...
These are all hings I have been LOOKING FOR that Diigo offers and frankly, now that I know actually exist, I don't know that I can live without!

The network
The biggest for me, is being able to know who is a part of my network. Notice it calls them friends on Diigo? The relaunch has detailed user profiles, where you can add all of your profiles from facebook, flickr, blog, delicious, youtube, etc..You have the ability to identify users as friends as well as several search tools to find them and GROUP them...which is a huge when you are like me working with different groups of people that I might want to share out to. I thought it was nice that you can look for people whose bookmarks resemble your own, AND you can message folks even if they are not a part of your network. But THAT'S NOT ALL...you can great groups (public and private) communities where groups of users can combine to leave shared bookmarks. You’ll even find a comment wall on profiles. These features enable both group collaboration and socialization. There hasn't been on time in the past 2 days that I have gone and had less than 10 things shared with me...ok some I already had bookmarked, but some are really, really good...AND they are there when I have TIME to check them, I don't have to interrupt what I am doing because something pops up in twitter and I want to quick open the page and then never get back to it.

OK well there was a network, in delicious, why does this one work better for me?...well in del.icio.us I never knew who was joining my network or how they found me so I couldn't communicate with them directly if I had a question or comment about something they shared. As far as communities...in Del.icio.us we did this by creating a separate delicious account for the community and having folks share links FOR: this account. Yes, it works, but it requires that someone log in using THAT account to approve all links...kind of defeats the purpose. With diigo I can view what has been marked for the group, who marked it, and choose to add to my own account or send to my network...1 person, several, mailing lists...you get the jist
Here is the eduwiki group I am a part of on diigo. Admittedly groups is something they are still working on, but this is one area I think is going to become even more powerful.

Learning the tool
There is SO MUCH to explore on diigo, I knew I would never get to it all, so I started asking questions...in diigo and in twitter and talking to some users in skype and collaboratively, these were some of the things we learned...

Diigo Dashboard / Profiles
When you visit your own diigo page, you land on the dashboard. This to me resembles facebook and as aly so humorously put it ... Watching friends meet friends in diigo - like watching 12 year olds at a spin the bottle party. "Sue and Joe are now friends" Off they go...
Your dashboard is COMPLETELY customizable...so if you don't want to know who is friending who, you get rid of that box and leave more room for who is adding what sites and what they are saying about it. I do like how you can get quick info from the dashboard like who wants to connect with you, messages that are left, and bookmarks that are new. The public version of the dashboard is your profile (this is mine:) and again completely customizable down to what the public, vs diigo users, vs your friends will see. Now that I use google notifier for my calendar & gmail, my diigo page could almost replace igoogle as my generic homepage. Hmmm is it helping me to condense :)

Other Diigo Tabs
Across the top frame of Diigo is "MY" stuff..
My dashboard
My bookmarks
My links
My lists
My groups
All things that you set up personally

Above in the blue bar are community things...ways that you can search the community, people, tags, sites for things that are going to match what YOU are interested in (hmm similar to stumbleupon)

Diigo has RSS & Advanced Features
Thanks to Chris Champion who discovered that tags in diigo have RSS feed AND that they are embeddable

chrischampion: Just replace the text after the last / and you'll have an (embeddable?) RSS feed for any tag. about or more specifically: http://www.diigo.com/rss/tag/web2.0 (that's the actual RSS file) Or not. Hey, did you know that every TAG in Diigo has an RSS feed? http://www.diigo.com/tag/web2.0

Can I mass remove a tag from all my links?
Michelle asked
Yes, you can...click on my tags tab>then edit >and click on the individual tag to either edit it or delete it. I discovered this because ALL of my tags including the for:jgate513 came in to diigo. I wanted to remove some of the tags that I don't use and condense tags which I found difficult to do in delicious. In diigo, tags are alphabetized so you see them ALL neatly organize. This is different from delicious because in delicious you cant see it while you are editing it so if you have blog, blogs, and blogging, in diigo you can see all 3 and change them so they merge together. Whereas delicious shows a bunch of different ideas for tagging in groups...diigo shows one group of recommended tags, the one you have used before...will appear GREEN when you are tagging them

Michelle also discovered the cool webslide view of any list you create...
http://slides.diigo.com/list/khokanson/shakespeare

A FEW MORE FAVORITES

• Post to delicious: Go to Options: Bookmark & Highlight: Bookmark elsewhere and click on set up. This will open a new window where you can click elsewhere and set up your delicious account. Once you set this up, not only can you simulpost to diigo and delicious, but if tag the site with the for:delicioususer it will go into that user's links for you in delicious. OK so I don't have to abandon my del.icio.us followers just cause something new works for me...
  

FROM THIS SAME LOCATION IN OPTIONS...you can also:

• set up to post to your blog... diigo allows you to add your blog information and set up a "job" to ost daily links to your blog-while this CAN be done in delicious, there was all kind of urls and codes you needed to figure out (which I never could). When I put my blog info into diigo, it did it FOR me. I set it up to daily post, but you can set it to publish direct OR as a draft I am going to have it do this...then cut and paste once a week all my links into 1 post.
  
• IMPORT / EXPORT links from other online sites and from your browser...the links come in with all comments and tags which was pretty cool
  
• Send to twitter: while you are posting your link to your diigo account you send to your twitter network.

----THIS JUST IN: adding to post...for my own archive...I didn't realize that you don't have to FRIEND everyone in diigo, you can add people to a watchlist....might be a good way to manage your network if you are just starting-----

WE DISCOVERED SOME QUIRKS
Lucy Gray had some problems getting what she posted in diigo to actually show up in del.icious but contacted tech support and they put in
and Kate expressed some concerns that delicious links didn't initially import--stating server errors
I think these are all things that are result of a beta program, but from what folks say their support is quick and professional.

SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
Ken asked some great questions throughout the day in twitter as he thought about the idea of adopting a new tool...

Is diigo the amazon.com approach to bookmarks? will reviews stop you from checking it out on your own? That could be dangerous.....
just thinking about this could it actually hurt research for some, too much group thinks perhaps? ....
add a skype piece 2 Diigo and I am 100% on board.....
Worried this makes "skimmers" vs. scholars easier. Suppose thats always been there too.

Jimbo asked
Can you bundle your Diigo tags?
Hmmm that is a good one, but I like being able to create "lists" of things for classes...better than bundles for now.

TO SUM IT UP...
Liz Davis wrote about diigo as well and created a great Getting to know Diigo screencast with Jing

Do you wanna know where I got all the links to their "stuff" ...why from their diigo profiles of course...no more hunting to link....Could it GET any better?

If still aren't YET convinced that Diigo is the way to go, check out the new YouTube video http://tinyurl.com/2h3ger

BY THE WAY Yesterday Maggie Tsai from Diigo was online at Classroom2.0 ... cclassroom2dot0 » LIVE Conversations (which I learned btw from twitter via www.diigo.com) if you go to this page http://www.classroom20wiki.com/LIVE+Conversations#diigo and click on Playback link you will see the recording from this session.

Please take some time to explore, ask questions, check out some great resources, join some groups and start learning together. Would love to hear your thoughts about diigo and please share your great sites with me.

Technorati Tags: diigo, bookmarking, delicious, networking, web2.0, tools

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Five on Five: A Dialogue on Profession Development

Those of you who read my blog know that I am passionate about treating technology as a tool and supporting teachers in learning how to best utilize this tool in their instruction. I am SO LUCKY to get to do this through my job as a coach for the Classrooms for the Future in PA
Recently Jim Gates passed my name along to Matt Villano of T.H.E Journal who asked if I would mind being interviewed about my thoughts about Professional Development and how we can best support teachers in learning about these new tools....

Would I mind? Heck I talk about it enough, absolutely. I spoke to Matt spoken some other "tech experts" and wanted to get us together to do a panel discussion podcast. Well it wasn't until I got on the "line" that I realized that the panel I would be speaking with not only included Jim Gates (instructional technology trainer for the Capital Area Intermediate Unit 21 & CFF Coach) , but Bob Keegan and Cathy Groller (executive director and assistant executive director, respectively, for Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit who manage PA Tech Integration Mentor Program) and Sylvia Martinez (founder of GenYes an organization where students learn to provide high-quality, curriculum-focused professional development support for teachers in their classrooms school wide.) WOW what a group to be asked to be a part of...

It was a great conversation which you can hear by going HERE and clicking on the podcast link at the bottom of the page...read the article HERE. Don't forget to subscribe to THE Journal for more integration ideas.
And please...leave me your thoughts about what is happening in Professional Development in your district

Technorati Tags: professionaldevelopment, jgates513, genyes, CLIU, sylvia_martinez