Stop #23: Creative Commons

In the apsu23things blog, nearly all of the posted media was created by somebody else, so it ought to be accompanied by a Creative Commons license.  An example of this is shown on Thing 21 at the very end of the post.

Prior to this class, I had never heard of Creative Commons and was uneducated on fair use practices.  I want to make sure that my students don't get as far in life as I did without being exposed to licensing and fair use.  In the classroom, I would like to be able to teach about Creative Commons on the first day of class every semester/year because I want my students to understand my expectations of coursework very early.  Since we already worked on creating a tutorial for Creative Commons in this class, I have an idea of how I could construct the lesson.  Understanding fair use is as important as understanding plagiarism, yet schools place way more emphasis on the latter.  I want to ensure my students understand the implications of both clearly.

Stop #22: LiveBinders

For the LiveBinders assignment, I chose to create my binders as if I were already teaching high school courses.  My binders are named "Sophomore English," "Creative Writing," and "My Teaching Stuff."  The first two are for lesson plans and resources for the classes I "am teaching" and the third is a place for me to gather information to improve my approach in the classroom.  I chose to embed my Sophomore English Binder.  It includes a document with a game board I made for pronoun bingo and a lesson about pronouns as well as passages my students can use for proofreading.  This site would be useful both for me as a teacher and for my students.  They could actually use LiveBinders instead of keeping a 3-ring binder (which no one likes after all).  It could really cut down on paper waste, and it would make it easier for my students to maintain organization throughout a semester.

Stop #21: Animoto

RIP Grimace

Using Animoto was actually very easy.  There were really only three steps and you can choose photos from social networking sites, flickr, or your own computer.  I chose to make a video with pictures of my cat who passed away last month.  The video turned out really nice and I am glad I was introduced to this website for a chance to memorialize him.

While Animoto is excellent for personal endeavors, it also has a place in the classroom.  Rather than make photo collages on poster board for presenting, students could create 30 second Animoto clips that would catch the attention of their fellow students much more than a tri-fold would.  It would also be cool to use for clubs or teams to recap an event or game.

Stop #20: Video Sharing!

To begin, I love YouTube and access it nearly every day.  The video I chose is about choosing a type of school and a recruiter for teaching in Korea.  Teaching English in Korea is something I would love to experience, so I spend a lot of time researching my options.  This video is a little silly, but is full of great information.  In fact, eatyourkimche (the creators of this video) make many helpful guides for working in schools in Korea.

Another video creating/sharing site I explored was Powtoon.  While this is not necessarily a video site like we most often expect, it would be an excellent resource in the classroom.  I could use it to create unique, fun lessons or assign a project to my students in which they use Powtoon to create a presentation of their own.  I think the students would enjoy putting their lessons to work in such a creative way.

Stop #19: Other Social Networking

My feelings about most social networking are aligned with my feelings about Twitter.  I use Facebook to keep my mother up to date on myself and the family and to keep up with my old friends, but I just can hardly see the use for it in the workplace.  Sites like Classroom 2.0 make sense for teachers because they can share ideas and tactics, but the layout was very busy and hard to read.  I just don't see what these sites can offer that my RSS feed and blog cannot.

Stop #18: Twitter

To be honest, I have never seen really any point in Twitter.  Even after this discovery activity I don't see any reason for it in education.  I gather that it makes it simple to keep up with people and news in education, but I can easily do that on the blogosphere I follow.  Maybe this has to do with my initial reluctance to join twitter when it first came out, but it just seems like a pointless website for teen girls to keep up with the Kardashians.

Stop #17: Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking has many uses in the classroom.  The first of these is organizing classroom resources for my students into one simple location using tags and links to put websites I want on my dashboard.  Using social bookmarking in such a way will enable my students to access any website I reference in my course.  These sites are also useful for organizing online applications for use in my own learning process.  We even used a bookmarking website in class as a method for student presentations.  I liked that concept and can see myself using that in my own classroom in the future.