Week 9: Thing TWENTY THREE

Creative Commons. Cool idea. I really like the concept of adapting muddled copyright laws and putting ownership back in the hands of the creator. In addition to exploring the site, I also checked out a YouTube video that further explains, in a little bit more straightforward fashion, what Creative Commons is.

The nice thing about Creative Commons is that it is progressive, and it very necessarily centers around the fact that technology and global networking almost demand the sharing of resources, creations, and publications. The website is very user-friendly, making it extremely easy to obtain a Creative Commons license.

A Fair(y) Use Tale is very well done, and a clever way to put copyright laws in a relevant, lucid context. I'm also glad that the author/editor of the video was able to find an outlet for his wildly extensive knowledge of Disney films.

*****

As for my feelings about this course -- I'll try to be both concise and thorough.

This is my fourth year as a certified teacher, and in that time, I have taken what I would consider to be an ambitious amount of professional-development credits. With that experience, I can confidently say that Raven About Web 2.0 is one of, if not the most useful class that I have taken. First of all, the curriculum content is spot-on. Technology is no longer an important part of the educational system; it is an integral part. This course presents an extensive amount of information, but does so in a very casual way. Because the course is for the most part self-guided, I was free to explore each of the different "things" at my own pace, and therefore was allowed to invest more time in the "things" that I felt would benefit me most. At the same time, even if I came across a "thing" that wasnt necessarily something for which I could find an immediate classroom or personal application, in order to accurately reflect on it, I still needed to explore it in at least some detail, giving me some a valuable amount of familiarity with it.

To the ladies of Raven About Web 2.0 thank you first of all, for offering this course (and extending the inviation to classroom teachers), but also for your diligent and thoughtful input on each of the blog posts.

Week 9: Thing TWENTY TWO

I like the idea of ebooks, in that they are a very convenient, if not green way of obtaining literature. Ebooks allow readers the luxury of accessing a myriad of titles using nothing more than an internet-compatible computer. From an ecological standpoint, ebooks save on printing, paper, and shipping costs, which considerably reduces production costs, and electronic access translates into reduced automobile emissions by eliminating the need to drive to the public library or the bookstore.

An immediate drawback that I can think of, is that ebooks are, to some extent, less portable (or more cumbersome) than traditional books. Ebooks can be accessed online, which would require that one has a laptop with an internet connection, or, because the ebooks can be downloaded, one might only need a laptop and a sufficient power source. Alternatively, the ebooks can be downloaded and printed, which to me seems more taxing than simply buying the actual book. In any case, having an ebook is not quite the same as being able to crack open a traditional book on the subway, under a shady tree, or during a long flight on the airplane.

Librivox is a brilliant tool. While I have some reservations about people becoming too dependent on being read to, as opposed to reading for themselves, I certainly think that audio ebooks have a niche. Personally, despite never really taking long, independent drives in the car, I love the idea of being able to download an audio ebook and listening to it during a long drive or flight.

I decided to go out on a limb and search on both World Ebook Fair and Librivox for some of the more, shall we say thoroughly written books that came to mind. Interestingly enough, neither site had A People's History of the United States of America (Howard Zinn) or Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond), but both sites contained The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas) and Democracy in America (Alexis de Tocqueville).

Week 9: Thing TWENTY ONE

I think I first stumbled upon podcasts about two years ago. At the time, I didnt even have an iPod, and podcasts became my sole reason for downloading iTunes. Let me rattle off a list of the podcasts that I subscribe to, and then I will explain the educational tie-in:

• Ask A Ninja - I dont have a fascination with ninjas, but this is the type of humor that I personally find side-splitting.
• Cash Cab - the podcast version of the Discovery Channel TV gameshow. I'm a trivia geek.
• How Stuff Works - Stuff you should know.
• NOVA Science NOW - Bascially audio excerpts from the TV series.
• NPR: Thistlepod - My link to contemporary Celtic music.
• NPR: Wait, Wait, Dont Tell Me - "The podcast version of the NPR newsquiz".
• Stuff Mom Never Told You - Not that my mom didnt do a good job preparing me for the real world -- but there's just so much to cover.....

For the most part, these podcasts are used for my entertainment, but the NOVA podcast specifcally, has tremendous practical application in my classes. Odds are, most of the topics covered in the NOVA podcasts, at some point or another directly correlate with a concept that I teach in either my Integrated Science or Chemistry classes. And to fully ensure my place in the "Nerdery", I download the NOVA podcasts to my iPod and play them when I am driving back and forth to work. For the sake of symmetry, I also subscribed to the NOVA Science Now RSS feed.

Week 9: Thing TWENTY

To further cater to the limited attention span of my D-Gen (digital generation) students, I've begun to incorporate short, content-relevant video clips into my lessons. Being that YouTube is unequivically blocked by our district, TeacherTube has become my go-to site for videos. As a side note, I often use a site called Zamzar to convert web videos into .mov files and play them for my class, rather than stream them -- because streaming during the schoolday is a big NO-NO.

A video that my class particularly enjoyed was that of a high school teacher demonstrating the sublimation of dry ice. I used this video during the chemistry unit of my Integrated Science class when we were discussing the transitions of states of matter.

Another video that I found on TeacherTube was one that was designed to heighten awareness of cyber-safety, targeted especially for teenagers, called "Think Before You Post" (this one is the second in a series of two PSA's). I considered posting this video on my blog, but, in spite of the fact that it is less than one minute long, I refrained, as I didnt want to considerably slow down the loading time of my blog page.

One more cool side note, spurred from the above sentence. If you have a blog, and are at all concerened/curious about the time it takes your page to load, check out Stopwatch site, by Numion. All you need to do is enter the URL of your blog (or any URL, for that matter), and it calculates how long it takes for the page to load. This is a good way to tell if you've got too many accoutrements on your page.