Collaborative research with delicious

Social bookmarking is one of those unique Web 2.0 categories that evolved from tasks that people used to do in very isolated manners.  Before Web 2.0, when I came to a website, I would bookmark the site and that bookmark would live on my computer.  More specifically, that bookmark would live inside my Internet browser.  If I wanted to share that bookmark with friends, I usually wrote down the site on a piece of paper (how cumbersome!) or I copied and pasted the link into the body of an email. Although  I could categorize these bookmarks, I didn’t really have any way to search across my bookmarks to find something I bookmarked days ago about a specific topic.

In the Web 2.0 world, however, my bookmarks can live online and can be shared easily and quickly with my friends or with a larger community.  I can “tag” the bookmarks with relevant terms so I can group my bookmarks and search across the bookmarks when I need to.

There are a bunch of different social bookmarking applications available on the web.  This week I’m going to feature one of the most popular social bookmarking applications, delicious.  With delicious, you can bookmark sites as you come to them and they’re stored online.  You do need to set up an account to use delicious, but it’s free. To make the bookmarking process seamless and effortless, buttons are available that easily install within your browser (Firefox, Google Chrome or Internet Explorer).

I think social bookmarking has tons of applications in our classes and in our work at the university.  Having students collaborate on research projects and sharing their bookmarks with one another can be really powerful.  Imagine setting up a small research group and having the members sharing their bookmarks.  Very quickly, the group can generate a large list of important websites for the entire group to visit.  Social bookmarking could also be beneficial for committee work, for faculty research projects, or for service projects on campus.  In a way, social bookmarking with sites like delicious allows for greater participation across a community where information is freely distributed across the members.

Be sure to check out the tutorial below for help with using Delicious.

What’s legal? (Part 2)

Last week, I introduced the concepts of copyright and fair use and provided some resources for determining what is legal to use in classroom situations.  As more and more faculty members begin to use multimedia projects as forms of assessment with their students, I think it’s important that students realize that copyright law governs the use of media educationally.  Whether they are selecting music for a podcast or incorporating video into a digital story, students must be aware that while copyrighted works may be used in certain situations, they don’t have complete, unregulated access to copyrighted materials.

This week, I want to talk about public domain works and introduce sources of multimedia materials for classroom projects.  The term public domain refers to intellectual property not owned by anyone.  As such, the works are open for use by everyone for any purpose.  How does a work become part of the public domain?  One way is by the copyright lapsing on a copyrighted work.  For example, many older books are now part of the public domain.  Check out Google Books and you’ll see many of the works from William Shakespeare, John Milton and Walt Whitman available for download for free.  Google can do this because the copyrights on these works have lapsed and the works are now in the public domain.  Another source of public domain works is the government.  Any material created by the United States government exists within the public domain.  For example, the NASA website offers images from the Hubble Telescope and videos from different space missions.  All of this media exists within the public domain and can be used by anyone for any reason, whether for academic, commercial or entertainment purposes.

So, how can someone find public domain works?  One way is by using commons.wikimedia.org. Developed in conjunction with Wikipedia, this site offers a searchable clearinghouse of mostly public domain works.  I say “mostly” public domain works because the site also houses creative works licensed through Creative Commons.  Creative Commons is a relatively new licensing system where creators can give up some of their copyright protections for the benefit of others.  Developed by a Harvard law professor, Creative Commons seeks to expand the content that artists, poets, filmmakers and others can utilize in their creative endeavors.  Much like the Open Source discussion in an early post, Creative Commons promotes “open access” to creative works where people have the ability to share their work with others freely.  To see what media is available through Creative Commons, start by checking out the Creative Commons website.  Besides Wikimedia and Creative Commons, there are other sources of content for student multimedia projects.  For example, Freeplaymusic.com offers loads of free music for use with classroom assignments.  When visiting sites that offer free content, however, it is important that students read the Terms of Service to make sure their academic use fits within a site’s allowable uses.

What’s legal? (Part 1)

Recently, a colleague approached me and asked about copyright and fair use as it pertained to education.  As many people on campus begin to include more multimedia projects as forms of assessments (digital stories, podcasts, etc), she basically asked, “What’s legal?”  Is it okay for students to include movie clips in their digital stories?  Is it legal for students to use famous photographs in their projects?  What about the use of popular music?

To answer these questions, I’ve decided to set aside the next two weeks to discuss copyright implications.  This week, I’ll give a general overview of copyright law and highlight some resources that I use when I discuss fair use with my students.  Next week, I’ll feature some great online sources of multimedia content that can be used with student projects.

To better understand copyright, let’s start with some basic definitions.  Copyright is a set of rights given to authors, artists and other creators of original work that protects how their creations are used, copied, distributed and adapted.  While copyright laws protect a person’s creative works, the laws also provide the opportunity for those creative works to be used by others as long as the works are used fairly.  So, what counts as fair use?  United States law allows for the limited use of copyrighted material for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship.  Typically, four criteria are used to detemine whether use of copyrighted material is fair or not.

1. the purpose and character of the use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the amount of the copyrighted work is used
4. the effect of the use on the copyrighted work’s value and potential market

So what does all this mean for us as educators and for our students?  Well, it depends on whom you ask.  An article in Tech & Learning about 8 years ago provided a copyright chart that detailed different educational uses of copyrighted material and the amount of the material that could be used.  Since the chart was really straightforward and easy to understand, many schools adopted the chart (or similar ones) as the law of the land.  More recently, however, copyright charts have come under scrutiny by groups like the Center for Social Media that see the charts as being overly restrictive and sometimes inaccurate.  They have developed Guides of Best Practices to provide direction when choosing copyrighted materials in different situations.  Rather than giving specific restrictions, each of the documents provides basic principles to help guide people as they face recurrent situations.  Here are links to their code books:

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare

When teaching about copyright and fair use in my instructional technology classes, I discuss the current debate.  I introduce the copyright chart and its prevalence in schools.  I also discuss the Guides of Best Practices and help them understand the principles.  For example, one of the basic principles provided in all of the guides is that the use should transform the copyright work in some manner.  I find this principle is easier for students to understand and apply in their classroom projects then following the arbitrary limits outlined in the copyright chart.  Whether having students follow the chart or the Guides of Best Practice, it’s important that students have some boundaries and that they understand that they don’t have free, unfettered access to copyrighted works for their projects.

Next week, we’ll discuss public domain works, Creative Commons and different online sources for multimedia.

Showcasing Student Teachers

Last Friday, I helped to organize Millersville University’s first Student Teacher Instructional Technology Showcase.  For this event, we selected seven student teachers that were using technology in innovative ways in their classroom.  Our goal was to highlight the outstanding work being done by our student teachers and to showcase their use of instructional technology to support and assess student learning.

Although this was the first time Millersville has put together an event like this, I believe it was a real success.  We set up the event like a poster session at a conference with each student teacher being able to demonstrate and explain their lesson in an informal manner.  Overall, we had many supervising teachers and faculty members attend.  We also received a lot of positive feedback from the attendees and participants and hope to use this information as we plan for the fall semester.

For this week’s Tech Tip, I am going to let the student teachers take center stage.  As part of their presentations at the Showcase, each student teacher prepared a handout explaining their lesson and the technology they used.  The handouts also detail how the applications were used instructionally.  As you can see from the list, the featured student teachers developed lessons using a variety of different technologies at different grade levels and for different content areas.

Andrew Parmer:  Assessing Student Understanding in History with Glogster and Timetoast

Beth Schoelkopf:  Reading Enrichment with Students with Special Needs

Laura Cant: Reviewing with Powerpoint Games

Cassaundra Knouse: Using Webquests in the Elementary Classroom

Jessica Garrett: Using Skype to Connect with Native American Communities

Kelsie Bicking: Using Social Networking to Support Creative Writing

Kassaundra Marone: Podcasting the Presidents

The informational handouts from each project can be downloaded using the links.

TED: Ideas worth spreading

Last week, I gave a presentation on Incorporating 21^st Century Skills in the Science Classroom at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference (PETE&C) in Hershey, PA.   At the start of the conference, Sir Ken Robinson gave the keynote presentation entitled “Finding your Passion Changes Everything.”  The main point of the presentation was that each of us has an “element” which Sir Ken identifies as the point where the activities we enjoy and are naturally good at come together.  When people arrive at the Element, they feel most themselves and most inspired and achieve at their highest levels.  For those of you who may not know his work, Sir Ken is renowned in the areas of creativity development, innovation and human resources and has gotten a fair amount of attention lately after a rousing presentation at TED in 2006.  After seeing his keynote address, I wondered how many people follow TED or use TED videos in their classes, which brings us to this week’s post.

TED started in 1986 as a conference bringing together creative minds from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment and Design.  Each year, invitees meet in Long Beach, CA to hear presentations on a variety of topics.   Over the years, the conference has broadened to include other fields such as science, education, business and global affairs (just to name a few).   The greatest part of TED is that when speakers come to give presentations, they must focus on ideas and projects without promoting products or services.

For the last few years, TED has slowly transferred its library of presentations to streaming videos and offered them online (and on iTunes) for FREE at www.ted.com.  The library can be searched by subject or by speaker.  I use a number of the videos with my students both in the face-to-face and online courses I teach.  The presentations are tremendously thought-provoking and can be great discussion starters.  Instead of including a tutorial this week, I decided to feature two of my favorite TED presentations on the blog.  Be sure to check out Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO on the relationship of creativity and play, and Larry Lessig, a Stanford law professor and creator of Creative Commons on how copyright laws are choking creativity.

Tim Brown on creativity and play

Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity