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Vicki Davis

From Groups to Teams: The Key to Powering up PBL | Edutopia - 8 views

  • But its ultimate benefit is to help students think, learn, and operate in the new century by challenging them at deeper levels. That requires reversing the equation between skills and content: PBL is method for teaching students to find, process, understand, and share information, not a way to extend the industrial landscape of regurgitation and recall.
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    Nice article at Edutopia by Thom Markam.My favorite quote about pbl is: "But its ultimate benefit is to help students think, learn, and operate in the new century by challenging them at deeper levels. That requires reversing the equation between skills and content: PBL is method for teaching students to find, process, understand, and share information, not a way to extend the industrial landscape of regurgitation and recall."
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    Excellent article about PBL
Caroline Bucky-Beaver

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education - 1 views

  • Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances -- especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant. It is a general right that applies even in situations where the law provides no specific authorization for the use in question -- as it does for certain narrowly defined classroom activities.
  • guide identifies five principles that represent the media literacy education community’s current consensus about acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials
  • code of best practices does not tell you the limits of fair use rights. Instead, it describes how those rights should apply in certain recurrent situations.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • Media literacy education distinctively features the analytical attitude that teachers and learners, working together, adopt toward the media objects they study. The foundation of effective media analysis is the recognition that: All media messages are constructed.Each medium has different characteristics and strengths and a unique language of construction.Media messages are produced for particular purposes.All media messages contain embedded values and points of view.People use their individual skills, beliefs and experiences to construct their own meanings from media messages.Media and media messages can influence beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, and the democratic process. Making media and sharing it with listeners, readers, and viewers is essential to the development of critical thinking and communication skills. Feedback deepens reflection on one’s own editorial and creative choices and helps students grasp the power of communication.
  • Lack of clarity reduces learning and limits the ability to use digital tools. Some educators close their classroom doors and hide what they fear is infringement; others hyper-comply with imagined rules that are far stricter than the law requires, limiting the effectiveness of their teaching and their students’ learning.
  • Educators and learners in media literacy often make uses of copyrighted materials that stand far outside the marketplace, for instance, in the classroom, at a conference, or within a school-wide or district-wide festival. Such uses, especially when they occur within a restricted-access network, do enjoy certain copyright advantages.
  • Law provides copyright protection to creative works in order to foster the creation of culture. Its best known feature is protection of owners’ rights. But copying, quoting, and generally re-using existing cultural material can be, under some circumstances, a critically important part of generating new culture.
  • In reviewing the history of fair use litigation, we find that judges return again and again to two key questions: Did the unlicensed use "transform" the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a different purpose than that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original? Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use? If the answers to these two questions are "yes," a court is likely to find a use fair. Because that is true, such a use is unlikely to be challenged in the first place.
  • Both key questions touch on, among other things, the question of whether the use will cause excessive economic harm to the copyright owner. Courts have told us that copyright owners aren’t entitled to an absolute monopoly over transformative uses of their works.
  • Another consideration underlies and influences the way in which these questions are analyzed: whether the user acted reasonably and in good faith, in light of general practice in his or her particular field.
  • Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education
  • Through its five principles, this code of best practices identifies five sets of current practices in the use of copyrighted materials in media literacy education to which the doctrine of fair use clearly applies. These practices are associated with K–12 education, higher education, and in classes given by nonprofit organizations. When students or educators use copyrighted materials in their own creative work outside of an educational context, they can rely on fair use guidelines created by other creator groups, including documentary filmmakers and online video producers.
  • These principles apply to all forms of media.
  • The principles apply in institutional settings and to non-school-based programs. 
  • The principles concern the unlicensed fair use of copyrighted materials for education, not the way those materials were acquired. 
  • where a use is fair, it is irrelevant whether the source of the content in question was a recorded over-the-air broadcast, a teacher’s personal copy of a newspaper or a DVD, or a rented or borrowed piece of media. Labels on commercial media products proclaiming that they are “licensed for home [or private or educational or noncommercial] use only” do not affect in any way the educator’s ability to make fair use of the contents—in fact, such legends have no legal effect whatsoever. (If a teacher is using materials subject to a license agreement negotiated by the school or school system, however, she may bebound by the terms of that license.)
  • TWO:  Employing Copyrighted Materials in Preparing Curriculum Materials
  • fairness of a use depends, in part, on whether the user tookmore than was needed to accomplish his or her legitimate purpose.
  • PRINCIPLES
  • ONE:  Employing Copyrighted Material in Media Literacy Lessons
  • The principles are all subject to a “rule of proportionality.” 
  • THREE:  Sharing Media Literacy Curriculum Materials
  • In materials they wish to share, curriculum developers should beespecially careful to choose illustrations from copyrighted media that are necessaryto meet the educational objectives of the lesson, using only what furthers theeducational goal or purpose for which it is being made.
  • FOUR:  Student Use of Copyrighted Materials in Their Own Academic and Creative Work
  • Students should be able to understand and demonstrate, in a mannerappropriate to their developmental level, how their use of a copyrighted workrepurposes or transforms the original. For example, students may use copyrightedmusic for a variety of purposes, but cannot rely on fair use when their goal is simplyto establish a mood or convey an emotional tone, or when they employ popular songssimply to exploit their appeal and popularity.
  • FIVE:  Developing Audiences for Student Work
  • If student work that incorporates, modifies, and re-presents existingmedia content meets the transformativeness standard, it can be distributed to wideaudiences under the doctrine of fair use.
  • Educators and learners in media literacy often make uses of copyrighted works outside the marketplace, for instance in the classroom, a conference, or within a school-wide or district-wide festival. When sharing is confined to a delimited network, such uses are more likely to receive special consideration under the fair use doctrine.
  • Especially in situations where students wish to share their work more broadly (by distributing it to the public, for example, or including it as part of a personal portfolio), educators should take the opportunity to model the real-world permissions process, with explicit emphasis not only on how that process works, but also on how it affects media making.
  • The ethical obligation to provide proper attribution also should be examined.
  • This code of best practices, by contrast, is shaped by educators for educators and the learners they serve, with the help of legal advisors. As an important first step in reclaiming their fair use rights, educators should employ this document to inform their own practices in the classroom and beyond
  • MYTH:  Fair Use Is Just for Critiques, Commentaries, or Parodies. Truth:  Transformativeness, a key value in fair use law, can involve modifying material or putting material in a new context, or both. Fair use applies to a wide variety of purposes, not just critical ones. Using an appropriate excerpt from copyrighted material to illustrate a key idea in the course of teaching is likely to be a fair use, for example. Indeed, the Copyright Act itself makes it clear that educational uses will often be considered fair because they add important pedagogical value to referenced media objects.
  • So if work is going to be shared widely, it is good to be able to rely on transformativeness. As the cases show, a transformative new work can be highly commercial in intent and effect and qualify under the fair use doctrine.
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    Great article outlining copyright, fair use and explaning the 5 principles of fair use in education.
Vicki Davis

How Relearning Old Concepts Alongside New Ones Makes It All Stick | MindShift | KQED News - 7 views

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    Drill and kill doesn't work. Here's what does. (Interestingly, many people don't know what is best for their own learning!)
Vicki Davis

Fighting Childhood Obesity One School Cafeteria at a Time - ABC News - 0 views

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    Can you design a school to promote healthy eating? There are things every cafeteria can do (read to the end.) This is a big problem and something we need to address. Every school should have a fruit basket near the checkout. It is a no brainer, but do we? "Just walk into the cafeteria and you can see this is no ordinary elementary school. "One of the most striking differences is the openness of the eating space," said pediatrician Dr. Matthew Trowbridge, who also consulted on the project. Students can look into the area where the food is prepared, and they can look outside to a planned school garden, where vegetables will soon be planted."
Vicki Davis

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Join the Flat Classroom Global Book Club! #flatclass - 1 views

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    It is finally here. Here are the details on our Flat Classroom global book club. (click the link for more) Every week for 10 weeks we will meet at an alternating time - 12 hours apart. (For the East Coast USA it is Sundays at 6 pm Eastern or Monday mornings at 6 am eastern)  Visit our Book club calendar to convert these times to your Time Zone. Subscribe to this calendar via Google calendar to keep up with events.This is Sunday evenings at 22:00GMT alternating with Monday mornings at 10:00GMT in our Blackboard Collaborate room https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.065891D192F8072208BF5756999CE0 .   The book club is free and everyone is welcome. #flatclass Book Club Meeting Times Week and Date Time Topic of Conversation Week 1: Sunday March 11 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 1 - Flattening Classrooms through Global Collaboration (p 1-17) Chapter 2 - Impact on Learning: Research in the Global Collaborative Classroom (p18-30) Week 2: Monday, March 19 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 3 - Step 1: Connection (p 31-61) Week 3: Sunday, March 25 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 4 - Step 2: Communication (p 62-96) Week 4: Monday, April 2 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 5 - Step 3: Citizenship (p 97-125) Take a break. Week 5: Sunday, April 15 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 6 - Step 4: Contribution and Collaboration (p 126-157) Week 6: Monday, April 23 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 7 - Step 5: Choice (p 158-196) Week 7: Sunday, April 29 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 8 - Step 6: Creation (p197-214) Week 8: Monday, May 7 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 9 - Step 7: Celebration (p 215-234) Week 9: Sunday, May 13 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 10 - Designing and Managing a Global Collaborative Project (p 235-267) Week 10: Monday, May 21 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 11 - Challenge-Based Professional Development (p 268-293) Chapter 12: Rock the World (p 293 - 304)  We're also inviting the educators featured in each chapter to be with us for the conversations about "th
Vicki Davis

Hackasaurus - 10 views

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    Mess around with web pages. This is from David Warlick's post on Educon that I posted as part of the daily news. You're not REALLY changing the page but changing it locally on your machine, but is is still a lot of fun. There are also links to using this site to teach how to make websites.
Vicki Davis

Eric Mazur on new interactive teaching techniques | Harvard Magazine Mar-Apr 2012 - 3 views

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    An article from Harvard Magazine on the Twilight of the lecture. There are measurable improvements when you move to interactive learning: "Interactive learning triples students' gains in knowledge as measured by the kinds of conceptual tests that had once deflated Mazur's spirits, and by many other assessments as well. It has other salutary effects, like erasing the gender gap between male and female undergraduates. "If you look at incoming scores for our male and female physics students at Harvard, there's a gap," Mazur explains. "If you teach a traditional course, the gap just translates up: men gain, women gain, but the gap remains the same. If you teach interactively, both gain more, but the women gain disproportionately more and close the gap." Though there isn't yet definitive research on what causes this, Mazur speculates that the verbal and collaborative/collegial nature of peer interactions may enhance the learning environment for women students."
Tony Searl

Performance.Learning.Productivity: 70:20:10 - It's not about the numbers, it's all abou... - 5 views

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    t's not about the numbers, it's about change top-down thinking and bottom-up action are both essential a new understanding of 'learning' is needed by everyone learning professionals have to step up and let go manager engagement and capability are both critical
Vicki Davis

Mobile Study: Tablets Make a Difference in Teaching and Learning -- THE Journal - 1 views

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    Two studies were released in an attempt to "quantify the benefits of mobile technology in education and the infrastructure needed..." In these students students had tablets and Internet access at home and at school. Of course, I'm not sure that it is tablet computers that give benefits, Internet access, cloud computing, or a combination, but I'm sure these studies will be touted by many far and wide. Of course, remember if they had strapped the tablets to the kid''s back and hadn't used them - they would have had lower scores. All improvement is all in how technology is being USED to teach. "The studies put Android tablets in the hands of students and their teachers in two schools - eighth-graders at Stone Middle School in Fairfax County Public Schools and fifth-graders at Falconer Elementary School in Chicago Public Schools - and provided wireless access to the students both in school and away from school. (The devices were HTC Evo tablets.) Researchers then followed the students' activities over the course of a year, with the aim of evaluating "how access to these devices for communication with teachers and classmates increases comfort with technology, extends the learning day, and allows students to develop digital citizenship skills within a safe and secure learning environment.""
Vicki Davis

Learning, Learning, Learning not Apps, Apps, Apps | dedwards.me - 5 views

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    Wise words about the purpose of tablets, ipads, and more from Daniel Edwards @syde06 from the UK. It is about people, pedagogy, and purpose... the apps come later. "The power of learning with new technology lies with the teacher and the ability to choose the appropriate tool for the right intention. Moreover, success directly relates to the relationships between learner and educator, and the learner and learning."
Vicki Davis

9 Starter Tips for Teacher Who Just Got Ipads (PDF) - 24 views

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    A nice graphic PDF with links for teachers who have just gotten ipads. From iCloud to the SAMR model of using ipads, this graphic is concise and helpful.
Carl Bogardu

Scan Websites for Exploits, Malware and other Malicious Threats - URLVoid.com BETA - 7 views

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    If one is constantly searching for new education websites, as I am, this is a handy tool to use before opening that site.
Jim Farmer

The (Very) Unofficial Facebook Privacy Guide [DOWNLOAD] - 6 views

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    Like Facebook, but wish your information wasn't so public? Time to lock your settings down. Facebook doesn't make this easy, however; features are constantly added and the default for each new one seems to favor transparency instead of privacy.
Carl Bogardu

TitanPad - 15 views

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    Remember Ether pad? Here it is with a new name.
Shawn B

The Parent-Teacher Talk Gains a New Participant - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • At the student-led conferences, our children are learning to be organized and capable adults someday,” Ms. Issa said. “When I was growing up, my parents went to my conference, and I waited at home, scared they would come back with some concerns. With this new kind of conference, there are no secrets. “My daughter is learning that the teacher is not responsible for her learning. Cierra knows that she is responsible for her own success.”
Vicki Davis

The Writing Teacher - Tips, Techniques, and Advice on Teaching Writing - 2 views

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    New blog by teachers about writing.
Brendan Murphy

educationalwikis - Examples of educational wikis - 1 views

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    List of educational wikis that is worth perusing.
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    There are some GREAT examples of educational wikis to peruse here. So many ideas and different ways to use wikis. Take a look and turn up some new ones that you haven't seen and find some new teachers.
Vicki Davis

Bitty Browser Home Page -- Picture-in-Picture for the Web - 0 views

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    Bitty Browser is an incredibly cool and useful tool. It allows you to embed a website inside another web page - so if you want to embed a web page for people to use in your wiki, just use the bitty browser. You can even create up to 100 feeds and make a mini RSS reader for education news for those teachers you KNOW will NEVER use RSS. Fascinating tool.
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    Cool tool to allow you to embed a web page into anything else.
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