Thing 9

• Have you noticed the CC logo on any websites you visit? Did you wonder what it meant?

That logo is not something I was actually looking for, so I wasn't aware of it before now. Usually I check to see when the site was updated or when someone added a new post.

• Do you think CC will impact the way students learn and create projects? How?

I think that teachers will need to share this information before it has ANY impact on the kids. They typically think they can copy and paste with no repercussions. I tell my students to add works cited pages on their projects and they don't do it. They don't tell where they got direct quotes from. I don't think they understand how unfair it is for them to be using other people's works without permission. In their minds, it's so easy to copy, why should they do anything beyond that?

• Do you use digital images, audio or video clips from the web in your teaching (or professional practice)?

I use images (like the Eiffel Tower or other cultural images), but not audio or video clips. I do have some lesson plans including animal noises, but we listened to those directly from the original website.

• Do you ever share content on the web?

I've never had a website or blog, so no.

• Who owns your teaching materials?

The materials that I buy all say that they're for my personal classroom use and can be reproduced as many times as I would like. I'm just not supposed to share with other teachers and their classes. I check to make sure there are no other restrictions before I buy them. As for our textbooks, I'm sure the county paid licensing fees for our software so we have a site license for use at school. We have CDs for tutoring and copies of the text which are not licensed, but cannot be copied. We have permission to lend one to each student for use at home. The other materials say they are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced in whole or in part. So, the original authors and publishing company reserve those rights.

• What are some potential negatives for using CC?

I can see overuse by students. Instead of having good content, I think my students would load their projects with tons of pictures. I'm sure they would waste class time searching for the "perfect" music.

Thing 8

I just finished putting up my own wiki space on the Sandbox. It's pretty easy to use and fun to do, but I see there aren't many options for changing how it looks. I'm glad to see how to embed links now. I didn't know how to do that and my previous Blog posts looked bad because of that. Embedding really does make things look nicer than writing out the whole address. Easier on readers, too as they can just click and go instead of open a new tab, copy, and paste. On another note, I really had fun with the image generators. I was looking at what was available and had to go with the Lego people. I embedded the link with the picture, so you click on the pic and it takes you there. I didn't see anything about copyrighted images, so didn't know if I needed to add something there or not.

Thing 7

As I'm looking through Brittany's space I notice that the organization is not very good and that someone would have to be familiar with the specific classroom to be able to follow her information. Vicki Davis' student could have organized this better. Some of the tabs seem to go to vocabulary definitions while others comment about different things (symbols, people, events) from the story. Some of the definitions and comments are not clear. The students did not use page numbers. They had listed a range of chapters like 1-5. I think this would be very difficult to use as a study guide. How could you look up what they're talking about? There is a definite lack of good grammar. As an English teacher, I find that disturbing in an English class project...

From her link on the website about a virtual study hall, I see this lists the current homework and other assignments due. Cute idea, but this obviously does not list all the classes for all students. Maybe these were the only classes her group of students had, so it's not intended as a whole-school reference site? I clicked on biology to see what kinds of information the students posted and was extremely underwhelmed. There were a few definitions, but they were compiled of run-on sentences. Reading these was like reading gibberish! So, I looked at the Spanish tab to see if that was any better. These looked like my students' notes- useless. There was a list of verb endings, but no explanation to show how to apply those endings or when to use the verb forms (situations). I can see that teachers and parents would be excited about the "collaboration" factor, but bad notetaking is still useless and a waste of time to someone who really needs help. To make it better, the kids should be told they can't just copy definitions, but they must explain in their own words and/or give a real example.

When I think of struggling students looking for help on a website, I think back to my experiences with Algebra. Yes, I could do the equations, but they made no sense to me in real life. Then, my mother went back to school and had to take Algebra. Her text was about applying Algebra to real life! An entire text with real examples of how and when to apply all those equations! I would love to see student websites set up with that goal.

So, leaving CoolCatTeacher and not feeling very good about wikis, I decided to check out the Holocaust I only checked out one student post and was pretty impressed by that. The project is told as a story where students provide some background information with maps, pictures, etc. You see where the events were happening, read about your main character and his/her family. The report references facts but in a storytelling setting (the one I read was about a Jewish family living in Poland). Then, the reader is involved by choosing what the character should do. For example, stay or try to leave the country as the Nazis approach? When you choose, you get some results of what happened (you get arrested by the Nazis, etc). This was very cute and creative! Students had to know the background facts, but they were highly creative with what they presented at a more personalized level (what the experience might have been like for real people).

Feeling better about wikis, I decided to look at this website about storywriting. Showcasing student works is a great idea! I read through several stories and was pretty impressed with the variety and quality (and it's not just one school). These are not works in progress nor are they mediocre. This seems like a place to post the best available student works. I know we're encouraged to post in our classrooms and often we don't want to leave anyone out. I'm guilty of putting some of "those papers" up on the wall, too. While examining bad papers is a learning experience, there is a reason for posting good papers- they show the goals for which students should be aiming! The best part about this is that the works are available to a wider audience than just the students who enter the classroom or pass along that hallway.

The projects shown on the chemistry website seem to mostly be an alternative to PowerPoint presentations. What is nice here is that they projects can be reviewed again and again or shared with different classes easily. I had a little more trouble accessing this site because I would pull up instructions for the project and not know where to find the students' finished works, for example. More organization is needed and I liked the first sites use of tabs.