Copyright (blogpost 7)

After doing the readings for tomorrow, I feel like a lot of educators are either ignorant of copyright laws or care to ignore them. I, personally, was ignorant. I'm very glad that we took a brief detour into the world of copyrighting, so I can feel as though I'm making good decisions about "fair use" and the use of copyrighted material.


All of these copyright laws make me rather nervous. It makes me want to create everything I need and not rely on copyrighted material, which, of course, is insane. The implication this has for me as an educator is that I need to become familiar with the copyright laws and legislation so I can feel comfortable and secure when using copyrighted material in the classroom. I should not have to want to rely on my own creations (photography, for example) and take advantages of all of the resources that are out there. There are tons of websites that collect different kinds of things that can be used free and clear, like


magnatune
or creative commons


These sorts of sites should give the educator piece of mind when it comes to using resources that won't cause a stir.

udl and the power of digital media (blogpost 5b)

In our readings for this weekend, we read a chapter from an online textbook called Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age. In our two assigned chapters 3 & 4, the power of digital media was broken down into its advantages, and its implications for teachers in the classroom along with a detailed definition of UDL and how to implement it.

This reading made the advantages of digital media very clear in chapter three, even if those advantages were rather obvious at times. I found the implications for educators to be somewhat vague, and it left me wanting more. I did appreciate its attempt to encourage educators to use digital media to assist the learning of every student. The text made the reader aware of changing culture, the move away from a text driven society to a more multimedia environment, and encouraged educators to follow that change and adapt the classroom to make it a more multimedia learning environment. However, it does make me wonder if something might be lost if we more away from text and into multimedia. What does it mean to abandon text? I don't know.

I found our second reading, Why Won't More Teachers Set up a UDL Classroom, to give a good definition of UDL, and to give more concrete examples of what it means to create a UDL classroom. Her blog made it clear that educators have the responsibility to adapt their teaching and their classrooms to the individual needs of every student. To link this to the first reading, that adaptation could, and should, include the use of digital media.

I've created concept maps for the first reading, shown below.

Chapter 3 concept map




Chapter 4 concept map

stand up for standards (blogpost 6)

My content area is English, grades 9-12. The standard I choose to use this month is the following:

Producing Texts
Content Standard 2: Students will produce written, oral and visual texts to express, develop and substantiate ideas and experiences.
	a. select from the complete variety of text structures (essay, short story, poetry, academic essay, report, research paper, response to literature, documentary, etc.) the appropriate organizational pattern for addressing audience, purpose and point of view
	b. identify and use effectively the salient features of all appropriate oral, visual and written discourse
	c. determine which primary and secondary sources are appropriate to the task (research paper, fiction, school newspaper, video) and integrate and elaborate upon information effectively in the final product
	d. identify and use the most effective process for them to create and present a written, oral or visual piece
	e. maintain a multimedia portfolio which, along with providing a means for collecting their work, provides opportunities for student reflection and teacher/student dialogue regarding the students’ creative processes

This standard links to visual media with b. d. and e.. Students can use both digital manipulation and inspiration to help them (b.) identify and use visual discourse effectively, (d.) create and present a visual piece or project, and (e.) help them maintain a multimedia portfolio to allow for reflection and dialogue.