The Educator’s Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons

Some excellent pointers for all the copy/pasters out there.

The Educator’s Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons

Dreaming

I was reminded recently how long it has been since last posting on this blog. Let's see if I can't turn this around a bit.

In my NyQuil induced coma last night, I had a dream or maybe it was a vision. I was sitting at a table or desk or perhaps it was a podium, but I was alone and reading a magazine. So chances are it was not a podium. A computer was present and in the magazine was lots of text. I would touch the text in the magazine and the computer would instantly take me to that page. That was cool. It seemed rather matter of fact in the dream. I would turn the page and the supporting content on the screen in front of me would shift to more relevant materials.

In the morning, I came across Crossfy.com which is kind of this idea except that we still need the mobile device to make the connection happen.


Crossfy - www.crossfy.com from Crossfy on Vimeo.

Excuses Excuses

A nice post on psyblog about dangerous excuses.

Self-Handicapping: Why Making Excuses Hurts You

My next question is how to gently point this out to those making the excuses?

Grokit Answers

A promising tool for conversing about a YouTube video. Performance was a little sluggish for me, but maybe that's the old satellite acting up again?

Here is a nice how to: http://quickshout.blogspot.com/2011/10/create-online-social-interaction-around.html

Here is the official site: https://grockit.com/answers

Blooms Apps

A practical organization of apps for teachers and students. Hope to see more of these.

http://sites.google.com/site/bloomsapps/

Texting for Your Class

This looks to be a fantastic service.

http://remind101.com/


Remind101 from remind101 on Vimeo.

DTL - Confused Students

Ok, last DTL Conference post.  There are fundamental and meaningful differences between high and low achievers in our classes. According to this presenter, high achievers are able to prepare their study environment and better organize materials. If this is the case, instructors can provide suggestions or explicit instructions for the rest of us on how to organize and prepare ourselves for learning.

There were several take-aways from this session.

• Over-confidence is a barrier I had not previously considered.
• Moving ALL course communication to public discussions makes entirely too much sense.
• Due dates as part of the assignment name (eg "8_14 Descriptive Essay") - clever but a little ugly.
• Have students explain what they will do to prepare for some major task - give feedback on their plan.

Here are my visual notes:

DTL - Empower Learning with Mobile

So, here is a high school instructor making mobile happen for his students. The claim was made, and I have no reason to question it, that he is teaching a high school calculus class entirely via mobile devices. He didn't go into details about it, other than to say it's possible. It's remarkable when how normal and commonplace such an idea can be communicated. I mean, no one in the room shouted and slapped their heads with the palms of their hands. I looked around to see if eyebrows were raised, but the reaction was more like, okay whatever, moving on.

His description of the different contexts of mobile was intriguing. The message is "You have to start somewhere." So, jump in where you can and do something. If you need to use free apps to deliver information -- while it may not capitalize on the mobileness of these devices, it's still something.

The real power and empowering of mobile devices he claims is when students can be guided to apply the informal learning and social functions in the interest of learning (practice).

Here are my visual notes:

DTL - eLearning Today

This keynote was very witty, but the tone of the talk was incredibly depressing. But depressing in a good way, like pressure on a sore muscle. The message is that while we've been engaged with eLearning for a good 20 years now, we still struggle with a definition - we can't even define it for ourselves. There is so much digital crap called eLearning - the profession is suffering from a serious image problem.

I can't say I remember what her solutions were. Something about DO-ing. Perhaps it's in her book: First Things Fast. I'll probably buy it (once soft cover comes out).

Here are my visual notes:

DTL - Screencasting for Feedback

Learned about Transactional Distance Theory in this session. Something to Google later I think. Ultimately, this instructor found the use of screencasting for feedback a bit too time-consuming to be practical. And yet, she referenced studies that claimed audio only feedback was hands-down better than text only.

Here are my visual notes (they aren't very visual this time):