digital copyright

Copyright Laws

The ways the copyright laws are written make it difficult to know if you (the educator) need to get permission or not. In class we learned if you don't step outside your classroom when using any permission granted copyrighted material, and you just show it to the students for educational purposes, you are acting within the law. Could I show it to another teacher? I would think I could within my classroom. What surprised me was when Jaquella asked if she could make copies from an old textbook she used to use in order to supplement her new textbook and was told no. I can't imagine how many unknowing violations occur every day. The music examples in class pointed out how arbitrary and tricky these laws can be. I would think that George Harrison's lawyers did the proper searches prior to releasing his song. It would be interesting to see if his lawyers were sued. I really think the copyright laws cover too much ground and that is why they are so open for interpretation by people. Fair use is great but it is easy to make a mistake with the four fair use factors. It seems very subjective. If your being sued, you just have to hope that your judge, who is performing a "reasoned" analysis, is looking at the case from your point of view. The following paragraph came from module 2 of our reading:

A fair use analysis is fact driven. Each unique set of facts regarding a proposed use
leads to its own reasoned conclusion. Reasonable individuals may come to different
conclusions concerning the same set of facts, but the word is "reasonable."

I am comfortable with the statement that fair use is fact driven, because when you deal with facts it is either a yes or no situation. You know exactly what behavior is expected of you. The rest of the paragraph takes you into the subjective gray zone of uncertainty, because reasonable is not clearly defined.

We are all taught in school that you cannot copy someone's work verbatim. Until reading about copyright laws, I thought that it was all right if you copied a picture to use in a report for educational purposes if you properly gave the author credit. I was never taught in school that you actually should get the permission from the materials creator. From now on I will get permission. I have an animation I found last semester that I would like to use in the future. When I looked up the parties involved in the making of the animation it turned out to involve, NASA, The French space agency CNES, IPSL (French Institute), and Hampton University. There were three people from the Hampton University listed and I have emailed the director of the program for permission to use the material. It will be interesting to see what happens.

21st Century Classroom

I will be teaching middle school age students, which is the age group my son just left last year. Over the last four to five years I have observed my children grasp and master any new digital "toy" that they were given for birthdays or holidays. They are more savvy then my nieces and nephews that are six to ten years older then them. It is funny to see these younger kids instructing the older ones when we get together. It did worry me that I did not see my son reading much and I am surprised at the lack of assigned reading from school. Apart from an occasional book here and there, I only saw him carrying these big complicated manuals for his games. That is when I realized that the digital games get him to read, like our favorite novels got us to read. The added benefit with the "game" reading is the learning taking place in order to operate the game. He has unending patience when playing these games and perfecting his skill. The games are the only thing that requires all his attention. He applies what he learned from the previous game to the next one and if it does not work, then he reads the manual. For the most part he will be on the Internet while texting and watching TV. He never just does one of those three things. He multitasks constantly, so when I think of engaging students in the classroom, along with traditional labs, I picture using ones that incorporate new technologies.

When I observed in the schools recently, I did not see a gigantic difference in the methods of teaching and I did see a lot of squirmy unfocused 7th and 8th graders in several classes. One teacher used the Smart-Board to draw a diagram in different colors and another teacher used the online textbooks quiz to teach. The classes that had students actively working in groups on labs or projects were the most focused and engaged. Not all students have access to a computer and quite a few do not have cell phones. Only one school I observed had a computer lab, two others are hoping to get one. The laptops are carted from class to class. I think it would be great if at the middle school level they started a technology class. The students would have forty-five minutes to learn all about the latest technology and develop some skill with it.

I would want to have a Smart-Board that is attached to the wall along with all the necessary, and suggested (by the company) equipment like the projector and ceiling attachment, in order to optimize its use. There are so many interactive engaging lessons you can do on the Smart-Board with the students. It really brings the subject alive. I would want my students to have Mac laptops that have web cam capabilities (I’m not sure if this is standard or not) and the school to have Internet throughout the building. Students could continue with their projects regardless if they are in the auditorium or a study hall. There would have to be something in place to restrict access to undesirable sites. I would have the students learn and use Google Docs for their assignments. This is a great tool for quick communication between teacher and student. I would also have them use Excel for their data organizing and for plotting lab charts and graphs. If I had six classes then one person per period would use each laptop. My classroom would have eight lab tables and I would want eight digital cameras available to my students for group projects. The cameras could also be used outside the classroom for class projects like identifying and taking pictures of different types of weathering. We spoke about some uses for cell phones in the classroom and I would like to be able to give my students cell phones with GPS and Bluetooth capabilities. I have come across great lesson plans using the GPS. Bluetooth seems like it could be used as a facilitator for quickly transferring information from one device to another, like a photo on your cell phone to your computer. I would also need a Bluetooth dongle per computer in order for the computer and bluetooth to be able to communicate. I would also love to have clickers in my class. I like how it interacts with the Smart-Board and you can quickly assess the students. I also like an old tool that I used in the Methods I class and that is an Elmo. You can use this to quickly make points that students bring up during class or put on a picture or diagram to make a point. I’m not too sure how often we would use these in the lower grades, but I would like my students to have a graphing calculator and get comfortable with its basic functions

Excel - A great Classroom Tool

There are many reasons to use Excel in the classroom. No matter what subject content you are teaching, Excel can make it instantly more visually understood by putting the data in chart/graph form. This also makes the data easier to understand. Students don't have to get bogged down in the actual plotting of the data on a graph (as we used to), but can spend more time analyzing the information presented to them quickly and efficiently by Excel. I do think that in the early grades that students should go through the actual "hand" plotting of their graphs when first learning the basics of graphing. It is important to get students familiar with Excel. School districts should make an effort to have the most up to date version for their students, so that they can go smoothly from the secondary classroom to college or the workplace.

Some examples of how students could use Excel in my classroom are listed below:

• Lets chart the effects of earthquakes on buildings. Over the past decade earthquakes have increased and are affecting the world population. It is current events and this is a lesson that could be coordinated between the Science, Social Studies, and the English departments of our school. I think projects like this have a much bigger impact on the students than just each class studying separate topics all the time.
  

• Lets create a Timeline. This could be for an experiment, to compare several experiments or to show the history of famous scientific experiments.

• Lets help the environment. We will track and chart our family's water usage on a weekend day when everyone is home. We will all compare our family's water usage and come up with three ways each family can conserve (I would get parental approval). We could take it one step further and plot the most common ways that all the students feel that they can improve the water usage.

• Lets see where solar energy works best. We will plot the annual daylight patterns for our area, the equator and the arctic. By doing this exercise they will also see how the earth's rotation affects the amount of daylight over the course of a year.

• Lets find out the acid rain levels in our state. We are going to research the pH levels, use Excel to make a graph. We will also look into the causes and possible solutions to this problem. This lesson would also be a good one to coordinate with the Social Studies and English departments.
  

• Lets look at this chart and work backwards. We are going to reconstruct the original study from the data represented on the chart. What was the reason this chart was made?
  

There are endless ways to incorporate Excel into the students daily activities associated with the current lesson plan. It helps students look at information in an analytical way. In an instant they can see the comparison and relationship between multiple sets of data. They can pick which type of graph or chart they feel best represents their data. Excel does help students visualize and interpret data.